The speech

This is the speech that personify the potential of an Obama Presidency.

Obama formative years

There has been bruhaha about the false rumor that Obama attended radical Wahhabi maddrassa when he was living in Jakarta, Indonesia wth his mother and Indonesian stepfather.

Obama's office has already debunked that rumour.

But let me explain further about the type of education he received in Indonesia.

He spent 2 years in a Catholic private school. Catholic and Protestant schools in Indonesia are quite common regardless of the fact that Indonesia is the largest Muslim country in the world.

Such school will have pupils of mixed religions, not just Christians. My high school for example is a Catholic high school although I am a Buddhist. Middle class Parents, Christians or not, choose Catholic schools because they are known for their academic excellence.

How expensive was this private school? Think cheap. We are not talking about some British style up to the ass private institution that will not admit anyone with less than a million dollars of wealth. This private school tuition would be about 3-5 times more expensive than a public school, but not more.

It's something that Indonesian middle class can afford.

After Catholic schools, he spent the next 2 years getting educated in a public school. Now off course this school will have a majority of Muslims in its class, because duh (read up).

This public school teach a national curricullum that includes religious subject (exactly one). Because this is a public school, it will teach Islam as well as other 4 officially recognized religions in Indonesia (Buddha, Catholic, Christian, and Hindu) depending on the needs of the pupil.

How do I know this? I spent my primary school and middle school in public school. My public school employed a Buddhist teacher to teach me and my fellow co-relligionist.

So on the religious subject, the class would be split according to the religions. The Muslims(the majority) would stay in class, and the rest of us go to our smaller and separate Christian, Buddhist, etc classes.

We will be examined in this single religious study as well according to our own faith.

So we learn one religious subject, then Math, Geography, Science, Indonesian grammar, English grammar, history, etc. Normal stuff. One cannot live on the Bible alone.

Indonesia is a religious country, but not a mono religion country. Christmas, Vaisakha, etc are national holidays along with the Muslim religious holidays. Heck, now we even celebrate Chinese New Year. Beat that.

It is actually a good thing for Obama to have spent two years in an Indonesian public school because you can really mingle with everybody from every type of social and economic class. And in his formative years, he would experience the great diversity of cultures that Indonesia has to offer.

Disclosure

Disclosure:

My name is Dody Gunawinata and I am a big fan of Senator Barrack Obama.

I lived in Chicago in 2003-2005 (NYC 2000-2002), partied in the South Side when the White Sox won the World Series and am cheering for the Bears to kick Colt's ass this coming Super Bowl.

Currently I am residing in Cairo, Egypt, my sixth country of residence. I am a 28 year old software engineer.

I am also an Indonesian of Chinese descent, a Buddhist and educated both in Indonesia and Australia.

My personal blog is dodyg.org and I ran nomadlife.org community.

You can contact me at dody at nomadlife.org.

I am not part of Obama 2008 campaign and this blog "has not been approved by Barrack Obama" so to speak. I just want to see him to be the next President of the United States.

Ok, enough about me, let's talk Obama.