School Vacates but Learning Still Lingers and Little Wendy Is Troubled

Long vacation classes would and if not rarely decode the likelihood of waywardness by ensuring that school goers are programmed that until university is completed there must not be a time in one’s life that he should consider dropping out from school just like a pious man remains steadfast on God’s path!

I was reduced to nothing today but grief after I had seen little Wendy cried profusely because she did not want to go to the extra classes which has been organized by her school during this long stretch of vacation and that evoked long forgotten memories. At the eve of school recess, pupils are seen to be alacritous and well-overwhelmed because after 98 days of schooling they would now take a long break. In the 90s, we can remember vividly that we were mostly bided by the school’s [Headmaster/Headmistress] to bring to school all cooking ingredients and a little amount of money would either be taken from the offertories we have paid or a special contribution is made to facilitate organizing a feast on the day that school would vacate and thus learning is withheld! The euphoria when the day finally comes after writing your last paper is to mirror the very things you would be doing with your leisure time. Government schools from the primary level, junior high and to somewhat the senior high all enjoy this auspicious day meant for rest, those days I mean.

Why must things change rapidly to suit some group of people in this golden age of our education of which pupils hardly walk barefooted to school? The prelude of announcing the date that school resumes is done by issuing a stern threat and cautioning students of the various ramification they may be consigned to if they failed to attend the vacation classes. This to me has warped the very intents of the traditional schools of old by shamelessly diving into the phenomenon of the white coloured system. We met a system that treats us so well and welcomes socialization; keeping the ties of family intact and producing more citizens with ‘home-sense’ syndromes. However, we are in the shambolic times now, yet to know or have known but had been aloof because it pays though.

Long vacation may probably last for 40 days and it brings thrilling events to kids and those slightly above the puberty age. Then, our parents would convey us to the village to meet the entire extended family that we do not know at the time, like Ankpa Djama, the long lived woman of all dwellers of the city. It is that glorious moment we got to know the history behind how come our great forefathers had settled on that land and why we are being called by so and so family names and we observed how the Homowo festival is celebrated. Supposedly, if urbanization and the search of job were the factors that migrated one’s parents to the over populated city, Accra, long vacation is used to instil the heritage of one’s ancestors into him, by ensuring that one grows up as a real African man or woman.

As young kids then, while on this journey to our hometown, we got to know some of the areas which connect to the village and the occupations of the indigenous people because we enquired and our parents infiltrated our thoughts with undocumented historical answers, this pays when writing exams in geography or history! At our stay in the village, we developed the spirit of togetherness; abandoning the extended family was completely obliterated, acquaintance get sparkled, we learned a typical village life and get to travel often because traveling is not our thing. I have a friend who has not understudied linguistics but could speak not more than 7 local dialects because her parents used to ferry them during the long vacation time to visit family members who are dispersed in other regions; she had gone to places like Volta region, North, Central and Kumasi while she was a kid. Today, if you walk in any locality of Accra, the only language the kids are okay with is nothing but Ga, and it is not dissimilar to the Ashanti region, it is because we have been aloof of the real intent of the long vacation! Some years ago the long vacation is used by students to embark on expeditions in a form of excursion; they do visit most tourist sites [Boti Falls, Aburi Gardens, Kakum National Park etc,] in Ghana before school reopens. Other religious bodies also go on a crusade and ensure that goodly life are diluted into the kids perhaps if they had been a missing link elsewhere! We have used it oftentimes to provide man power to boost our parent’s sole business at home.

Our parents met their parents doing these self-taught jobs; carpentry, masonry, farming, fishing and they learnt it without not necessarily being taught; these jobs only require observation and individual artisan skills. The long vacation served as the opportune time because that was the only moment their eyes caught what their parents were actually doing and they run errands, stayed glued by keeping a close watch while they work! Most people who are into vocational and technical jobs would often tell you that they copied it from their parents and if you dig further you would be flummoxed of its connection to the long vacation benefits.

Family heads are so tight because they have to succeed other than that the flood of Accra would wash them away, which is why we have been denied common and home sense quiet recently because we do not have enough time to spend with the old folks. The very popular African adage quoted logic as “book is nothing but sense is man”. When you see a professor protesting for the legalization of same sex marriage, get to know that he was flown to the land of the Caucasians to continue his school without taking advantage of the lives of the grown men then and it is sad that long vacation classes are not fetching pupils with this privilege but rather warding them away from the counsel of the wise men!

You know how students in the boarding schools are most often denied rest, even if they are allowed to take a repose, it is just in a tad time and this has escalated to burdensome; already some of them find it very cumbersome to grasp whatever they had been taught. Allah has injected believers with this verse “We have made sleep for your rest and the night for a covering [Qur’an 78 9-10] and the Bible was unmistakable as it said “to everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven” [Ecclesiastes 3.1], would the obvious books mislead us? Long vacation is supposed to have allowed students to have a sound rest which would reinvigorate all the energy the had lost during school days. Young girls at home 24/7 could learn how to grind pepper, it is laughable but our parents learned it while they were 8 but today at age 7, she can operate social media but would master how to cook after 18, it is joyousness news, right? Interestingly, there is another extra classes when school resumes and some even close at 4pm; so when would this pragmatic step solve the problem of not able to complete the syllables?

We have lost the nuggets of long vacation and it has triggered pupils’ apathy to the extended family and accretion to the western life! Open secret; Long vacation means tedious learning, but we must fathom its causes! Event heralding it which has corrupted the real intent of long vacation could be said to be tacit. In a layman’s point of view, teachers must be remunerated well because they are the fulcrum in the game of knowledge acquisition. If that is compromise and they are given meagre, they would continually use the vacation classes as a bait and excuse would be given if they start not being proactive in normal class hours. They would pushed all the difficult topics to the long vacation classes, making students who want to loathe the idea think twice and thrice. The cost of vacation classes could range from 1-5 cedi per head and if you are to consider the number of pupils in a class you would understand that this classes turn out to compliments the teachers’ take-home. Still and all, teachers themselves do forget that they also need time to rest and their fatigue manifests when a science teacher starts teaching it as if he is teaching music and dance, and an Economics teacher would teach it like he is lecturing physical education!

The issue of completing the syllables is a thoughtful one but our elders have said that if have no teeth do not do not break the cooking pot, thus if it must be done, it must be well planned and perfectly executed. We need to have the collective respective views of all stake holders without neglecting the Parent-Teacher Association [PTA]. Satirically, this long vacation classes had been had almost 2 decades now but my basic question is that has it been able to deal with the national canker of students trailing in Mathematics, Science and English? It may have curbed it to some extent because we have not touched the root causes. A simplest panacea is to get self motivated teachers who would make the subject interesting and comprehensible, omitting all the rotten-chaffs that are thought so that the examinable questions, real life issues and market oriented theories are lectured to stimulate students’ understanding, or maybe I could be also wrong?

It is very crucial if final year students are being made to sit and prepare adequately as they await the West African Secondary School Certificate Examination [WASSCE]. But what I seem not understanding has to do with those who are yet to write the Basic Education Certificate Examination [BECE] which would be conducted somewhere in July and meanwhile the long vacation would resume, and the exams is written in say 7 months’ time or we mean to say that these months are not enough? Not forgetting how sad and awful it looks when my little Wendy [lower primary] was called to bath and get prepared for classes while she was told that school has vacated, as a kid as she is why would she not fumed to her parents’ directive today, I am also irked!

I pray that Ghana Educational Service [GES] would issue a directive to rescind or well regulate this issue of prolonged duress the vacation classes have subjected the pupils to like ‘Bog' has done to the banking sector. And for the Parent Teacher Association [PTA], it must need to protest this at least at the primary and junior level except the wounded [WASSCCE] students!

Our solution to rev this economy fleetingly to the Better Ghana Agenda and Ghana Beyond Aid do not wholly depend on opening books at every time and at all cost; there are a whole lot of essential elements that need to be factored. Let us make education so fungible so that my little Wendy and Ghanaian kids would not always have to cry and fisticuff with their parents before they are being sent to school.

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© Abdur Rahman Odoi Anum Pobee
[rahmanislam5000@gmail.com]
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