Let’s begin with the following skit between a father and son. Father: Son, is Professor John Doe teaching you this term? Son: Yes, daddy, he is. But how did you know? Father: I know from reading your notes. He gave us those same – ditto ditto – notes years back when I was an undergraduate.
The mindsets used to deliver instruction in the past have fast become obsolete. The catch is that there’s no need to memorise things unnecessarily anymore.
Information is free of charge, from many sources including the Internet and YouTube, and they can always be used as updates and references.
The important question is this: What can be done with the basic information we have at our disposal? That is the question for meaningful education these days.
Education is at its best when discussions and conclusions flow from applications: That is, from what has been done already, and how to do it better the next time around.
Whether in the Physical or Social Sciences, for instance, the applications through practice become superior reference points.
We cannot lose sight of this and be educated for the real world. Who – in their serious mind – would employ someone, pay them monthly just to sit behind a desk, repeat information, and always be told what to do? Unwittingly, however, that is how the youth are being raised daily: For an impossible dream.
The tertiary curriculum and methodology need more dynamic activities – not merely reproducing notes, and answering “the following questions” about other people’s theories.
The same sources of economics textbooks, for example, that say that Africa’s markets are small and inaccessible happen to be some of the same sources that dump their products here. How come the markets are small and inaccessible for us, but big and handy for them?
The quest for “Critical Thinking” and “hands-on” activities to close the gaps for quality education will not go away.
If the “hands-off” passivity that pass for modern education is not cast off into the abyss we will continue to breed the dysfunctional youngsters now so visible everywhere.
While the bigger world itself is moving in a particular way, our education is moving in the opposite direction. But both the world’s realities and education must converge – be on the same page, so to speak; one cannot be removed from the other for any nation to progress.
Meaningful learning demands deeper and wider margins outside the parochial classroom and halls. Mere lectures, textbooks and isolation are insufficient; and for Ghana, they will not bridge the gap between a poor and rich country.
It’s worth repeating the mantra that it is disingenuous to have about two million youngsters strapped behind classroom desks and lecture halls daily copying notes when they could – on selected days – perform the constructive tasks that will serve the nation’s best interests.
In the students’ and nation’s own interests, it behoves schools and departments to define for themselves various project works that are development oriented, and carry them out productively.
The youth will learn and pick more lifelong experiences that matter from actionable objectives than any textbook or lecture for that same period in time.
People learn by doing, by picking meaningful experiences, not by sitting. Mere information is not knowledge: Knowledge comes from experience, and experience comes from work.
For education to be evolutionary and progressive, and not reactionary and retrogressive, we need to advance the mindset from the abstract modes into practical ones, even starting off with the environment of the schools themselves. Where the practical benefits show off themselves, the abstractions would wean off in time.
The mission statements of youth groups in the country spiritedly display on paper the effort of the youth for Ghana’s development and progress.
But how does one do that in a permanent sitting mode pushing pens and pencils? True knowledge comes from experience which in turn emanates from doing things. With the mindset to think new thoughts; to do new things; to be innovative, daring, and useful – the nation’s progress will advance much faster than ever anticipated by any government or party slogan.
Ghana is not a poor country by any stretch; it is the mindset that happens to be doleful and static. Poverty should never be suggested to the youth in any form.
Our current models of education are beating about the bushes in theories when the real prospects stare the nation in the face daily. Our youth are rushing out in droves thinking the country is poor. Other people are rushing here in hoards knowing the country is rich.
National development experiences are sensible applications, and they can merge with WAEC’s notion of “Practicals”. Teaching and learning models – along these lines – are long overdue. The youth in national development is plastered glowingly on many mission statements, and in the mottos of learning institutions; but, “where’s the beef?” In other words, it’s time to match words with action for “win-win” situations.
