Increase Credit Hours For RME - GES Urged

The Vice-Chancellor of the Valley View University, Professor Daniel Buor, has urged the Ghana Education Service (GES) to increase the credit hours for Religious and Moral Education (RME) in primary and junior high schools.

He said that was crucial because teachers needed enough time to inculcate the values of integrity, honesty and patriotism into the pupils.

“The problem we face as a nation is producing scholars without integrity. What is the essence of academic excellence if a first class graduate in civil engineering uses a bag of cement to produce a hundred bricks for the construction of a bridge in order to furnish his selfish ambitions,” he stressed.

Prof Buor made the call at the 15th graduation of the Labone Seventh-Day Adventist Junior High School (JHS) in Accra.

Prof. Buor said the most significant advantage of a church-run school over the state-run schools “is emphasis of the former on spiritual and moral development”.

He observed that there had not been much emphasis on religious education and good moral beha viour among the youth had been declining with the ceding of mission schools to the state.

“Certain forms of discipline used in the era of the mission schools are not permitted today due to certain social regulations and laws and the use of the hands to gain some practical skills is not emphasised,” the Vice-Chancellor said.

He, therefore, advised the government to relax its hold on limiting the credit hours for moral and spiritual education”.