Ghana, like most African countries has had an unstable educational system for sometime now with the recent reversal of the four years Senior High School to three years the freshest twist. I was among the first set of students who went through the four years senior high school system and the records in my former school showed that we had one of the best results in the history of the school with almost all of us qualifying for the various tertiary institutions in the country.
This points to the fact that the four years educational system had a great impact on the quality of students produced but it was reversed without a second thought just because a certain professor made a promise on a political platform that he will do so when he is given the power to govern this great nation of ours.
Is that the way we want to develop as a country? Will all the sectors of our economy be used to score political points before we satisfy our quest for power?
As it is wildly known that a good material will produce a good product, I was forced to ask what kind of materials our junior high schools are producing for our senior high schools.
After a long comb for food through the length and breadth of my noble village in the Volta Region of Ghana on a sunny Tuesday morning proved futile, I finally headed to the canteen of the only junior high school in the village to satisfy my hunger. It was around 11:30 am on 21st of January 2014 and knowing very well that the pupils will be back to their various classrooms after their first break, I decided to make my way quietly through the back of the school block to the canteen in order not to distract their attention.
How wrong I was, I was met with noise as loud as expected in the Makola market on a busy Saturday morning. All the pupils in the three classrooms were jumping here and there and playing like nobody’s business with not a single teacher in any of the classrooms.
I later saw some of the teachers in one of the old classrooms chatting and laughing as if the popular actor and comedian Lil Wayne had just given one of his best lines in a Kumasi movie and the others were under trees enjoying the fresh air provided by the serene environment suitable for teaching and learning for free.
I was even more surprised when I saw the headmaster who is supposed to see to it that the right things are done disciplining not the teachers who refused to go to the classroom and do what about 70 percent of the revenue generated through squeezing the ordinary Ghanaians to pay them to do nor the students who were competing as to who has the loudest voice but he chose to discipline some balls of Kenkey under a huge tree just in front of the school.
Sokode Etoe L.A JSS as the school is called, for the past 10 years produced not more than five students yearly who genuinely gained placement into the Senior High Schools we have across the country despite having very nice classroom blocks with a full set of furniture and teachers to match.
Casting my mind back to my basic school days, I remember there used to be the ‘Circuit Supervisor’ who regularly goes round the schools under his/her jurisdiction impromptu just to check on the teachers. Are this category of workers under the Ghana Education Service still in the system and if they are, are they aware of the lukewarm attitude of some of our teachers these days in our public schools? I vividly remembered how my Mathematics teacher was sacked by the proprietor of Dora Memorial School Complex just because he missed two periods. What is wrong with our public sectors?
I am aware the Minister of Education was in the region sometime last year and toured most of the public schools but what have come of that tour especially when we all know she met the absence of some teachers in the schools she visited?
We are always blaming the politician for the woes of our dear nation forgetting the teacher that refused to enter the classroom when it was his period to teach, the lady in the tollbooth on motorway who used some of the money she collected to buy popcorn for herself, the electrician in Legon Hall who refused to change your bulb for you just because you’ve not tipped him, the administrator who signed that bad contract just because he was given a brown envelope.
The politician alone cannot make Ghana the small heaven we all dream of without the help of the ordinary Ghanaian. Ghana will work again when we the citizens start to work again.
Ghana will work again when the working class stops to find private solution to their problems and stand for what they believe in. For the fear of being criticized we fold our hands and watch our dear country go from bad to worse. You and I will make Ghana work again. Ghana my beloved country will surely work again.
