The cliché that education is the key to success is undoubtedly one maxim seriously
understood in Ghana. Anyone who doubts this may want to go the length and breath of
Ghanato see how many
private schools ably given the sobriquets of Academy or Preparatory
schools there are. It must be given to understand that I trust Education is a
country’s breath of life without which any such
nation—civilised or uncivilised-- is doomed. My problem at the moment is against the
mercenary taskmasters who are bent upon destroying
education in Ghanaand I feel it is only right to raise a strident
advocacy against the numerous charlatans, worst and despicable than
Squeers and all the Yorkshireschoolmasters put together.
I once saw an educator with the following written
on a T-Shirt he was wearing: “All professionals can boast but, the
teacher taught them all!” If this dictum should be trusted, then I have
some qualms about the unchecked mushrooming of basic schools in Ghana. I am focusing
on the primary
school education in Ghanaas a form of giving credit to the Biblical
truism of teaching the child the way he should go so that he does not depart from it
when he grows
up. It is therefore—in my view-- of paramount importance that early
childhood edification is conducted in an apposite manner as it is what
possesses the potential of forming good or bad citizens. The massive
disregard of education, especially in the hinterlands, where children
are taught next to nothing; with some of them unable to write their own
names (shocking, isn’t it?) after school, with proprietors charging
exorbitant fees, should be a concern to every well-meaning Ghanaian.
Ghanais
essentially littered with very pricey private schools, with some having
circus-like school uniforms. What should preoccupy us is certainly the
rationale for setting up these schools and not the fancy dress uniforms
the poor pupils are made to wear like some forlorn prisoners. The first
guess is that the originators of these schools are only interested in
conducting savages into a modern terrain of civilisation. But, a second
deeper look is all it takes to realise that forming good citizens or
future leaders is the last thing on the list of these founders-- if it
happens to be there at all among their very many motives. The point is that: if the
doctor is held responsible if his
operation of a patient goes wrong; if the economist is charged if he
messes up the finances of a country; if the architect is blamed if the
house he designs is defective and the mechanic is slapped with
legally-motivated compensatory claims when the car he builds is
substandard; what then happens to the swindler who tutors these
professionals if he happens to be woefully inadequate with the knowledge he claims
to possess to want to impart?
I hate to mention this but despondently, the monstrous
neglect of education as a way of forming good citizens and so-called
future leaders has brought in its wake the quite superfluous production
of schools by some people who see education as their short cut to
riches! The prominent private schools, I will say without fear or
favour, seem to have taken it into their heads that churning the best of grades out
of their pupils is the best form of education without any
intention of developing their mental faculty to its full capacity. I
have come across a lot of people whose grades pit them against the likes of
Einstein, Newton, Aristotle and Plato, to mention a few but whose
level or reasoning is like that of a naked man on the street who accuses everybody
of being crazy. A lot of "intelligent" people cannot even
think on their feet; consequently, any problem whose solution is outside their
textbooks always leaves them dumbfounded, fumbling for ideas.
Dejectedly, this is the type of education many preparatory schools or
academies are inculcating into our younger brothers and sisters in this 21st Century.
For this reason, I must reiterate that while
the description of the education system in Ghanaas derelict,
dilapidated and ramshackle may be considered offensive; I must apologise to use them
as they are only an understatement with regards to the
gruesome neglect of these schools and must not be seen as the writer's
penchant for exaggeration. It is poignantly distressing to observe that
men who have proven their unfitness for any occupation in life are free, without
examination or qualification, to open a school anywhere;
although the preparation for the functions they undertake, is required in the
surgeon who
assists to bring a child into the world, or might one day assist
perhaps, to send him out of it—in the chemist whose prescription can
chase away a nagging illness or rather jeopardise a rather healthy
person into an early grave.
Nevertheless, the irresponsibility of some parents and their helpless children
make these petty school owners the millionaires who should be accorded
the highest form of respect in the land. Many are the parents whose main priority is
how many “A” grades their wards can make while in a
particular academy. Most importantly, these Shylock school founders know what
colourfully embellished language to use on radio advertisements to get these grade
chasers to part with their moneys and abet their
chosen pedagogues to distort the brains of their children for eternity.
Is it any wonder that we are always being taken for a ride by a few
politicians whose impeccable resort to sophistry, as distasteful as it
is, is mistaken for the astuteness of Solomon? But since majority of Ghanaians are
ready to believe some of
these half-educated politicians and what they expound to them—and with
scores of people refusing to think for themselves-- the devil is
certainly bound to have all the best tunes. This is why when a fairly
balanced opinion is expressed, sympathisers of some political parties
and some disgusting "tribalists" route for abuses simply because of an
inexplicably extreme form of bigotry or brutish logic due to the
stagnation of their brains caused by the nebulous education system being talked about.
With financial gains as the reason for opening schools,
these school proprietors are just traders in the avarice. These
ignorant, sordid, brutal men, to whom a few considerate persons would
entrust the board and lodging of a dog, form the worthy cornerstone of a structure,
which, for absurdity and a magnificent high-handed
laissez-aller abandon, has rarely been exceeded in this world! I do not
need to mention the reasons why boarding houses of such schools have
become a den for criminality, a lair for drug abusers and a practising brothel for
future prostitution and prostitutes. Has anyone mulled over our
education system producing graduates with no jobs to occupy them? Well,
it appears that is the raison d'être of some graduates using the school system as a
springboard to future “better” jobs. How pathetic!
That many troop into the Police Service with its paradoxical motto of
“Service with Integrity”, the Immigration and the Customs Excise and
Preventive Services as a means of enriching themselves in the shortest
possible time in occupation.
Let anyone come out and say what a nation we
expect of Ghanafor posterity when pedagogic moral moulders trade grades
for sexual favours from their female students. These people who are fit
for teaching pigs relegate pedagogy to the background and end up
polluting innocent children both morally and academically. With their
dodgy money-making managers at the helm of affairs, the most vital
preoccupation of some of these teachers who need to school themselves on how to pass
on knowledge to others only force children to fill their
heads with irrelevant nonsensical understanding. Children are thus forced to “chew
the cud” as they have
to commit so many unimportant stuffs to memory and become the bleating
sheep of George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Perhaps, it is apt to paraphrase Montaigne's
contention that a
well-formed head is better than a full head!
Need I quote Alexander Pope?: “A little learning is a
dangerous thing; drink deep or taste not the Pierian Spring: there shallow draughts
intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us again”. We are all
happy to quote this saying to impress our intellectual prowess on others but do we
know where exactly this Pierian Spring is, let alone attempt
to sip it lightly or gulp it down voraciously? A Ghanaian professor will normally
have his name written proudly followed by a long paragraph of
his degrees. Much as I respect these learned folks and envy what they
have achieved, I am quite baffled that they have very little or nothing
to show for their degrees. Edison, Fleming, Einstein, etc, boasted in what they
achieved after years of researches and not their university degrees. We
have thousands of scientists yet, we still import cars and common drugs
from China; we are yet to develop a potent antidote against malaria. We have
thousands of journalists
however, most of them are bedfellows of politicians, who disguise the
truth of which they are meant to be a watchdog; we have very brilliant
economists yet, our economy is so badly broken that the name for it is
now “ecomini”; we have thousands of musicians still, most of the songs
we hear are sampled from other countries. The list can go on and on but
how wretched we look if this is all that we have to show for our 53 years of
Independence.
Furthermore, I would like to acknowledge the aphorism that
there is an exception to every rule as I am not seeking to entangle
myself in the web of a fallacious generalisation argument. It is
therefore noteworthy to say that there are very excellent pedagogues out there. Each
of us can give names of these excellent teachers without
whom we could have landed on the moral and academic rubbish heap where
most youngsters are being dumped now. What I do know of good teachers is that they
choose the profession for the love of it and not as a means
of fulfilling a gap year to better jobs! I have overheard some graduates who go into
teaching with the devilish thought that they will teach
until they find a good job. Such is how the mercenary taskmasters as aforementioned,
are bastardising the noble teaching profession.
Maybe it is about time we reminded ourselves that knowing
all the classical Greek literature, the entire psychology books, every
bit of the philosophy books and being able to recite the whole of
Shakespeare do not make an intelligent person. What are our deductions
from these books? We have read, re-read and memorised the Bible umpteen
times but we always leave ourselves open for impostors with crooked
reasoning and arguments to mislead us. Men who should be titled “Men of
Lies/Darkness” have always entered our homes and led us on to believe
that they represent Light. How many times have we not seen or heard two
people pretending to be part of the same religion but interpret the same literature
differently for their own whims?
Bringing this article to an end, I must reiterate a point I have made earlier: we
hear sometimes of an action of damages against
the unqualified medical practitioner, who has deformed a broken limb in
pretending to heal it. But, what about the hundreds of thousands of
minds that have been forever malformed by the incapable pettifoggers who have
pretended to form them? I am not against the abundance of private
schools in Ghana. All that I am requesting is that the Ghana Education
Service adopts very stringent measures to ensure that the fellow who
stands before twenty to thirty children with the aim of moulding their
mental faculties is both of the highest integrity and pertinent at the shaping of
these young brains.
Thomas Dickens ([email protected]).