body-container-line-1
15.09.2021 Feature Article

What Is the Present State of Public Education in Ghana? – Part 1

What Is the Present State of Public Education in Ghana? – Part 1
15.09.2021 LISTEN

When I saw the announcement or news story, I was very elated. I soberly said to myself: “This is the sort of meaningful summit that the President or the Leader of any country interested in building a proud and worthwhile legacy for his/her people ought to attend.” But the story also had one interesting angle and aspect to it that piqued my attention in no small way; and it was the fact that Ghana’s President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo did not appear to have been directly and personally invited to this London-held summit hosted by the former Mayor of London, the Oxbridge-educated Mr. Boris Johnson, who is widely known to be of Turkish descent, if memory serves me accurately, and is presently the British Prime Minister. The title of the news story was as follows: “Akufo-Addo Attends Global Education Summit” (Modernghana.com 7/27/21).

The meeting was to take place on July 28 to 29; and it was to be jointly hosted by the British Prime Minister and President Uhuru Kenyatta of the Sovereign Democratic Republic of Kenya. You see, we often think of Kenya as simply “Kenya,” without immediately recognizing the fact that, occasional deadly violence and all, Kenya is one of the most stable democracies on the African Continent. It also appears to have a far better ranking on the OECD’s Index of the best public schools around the globe than Ghana. The latest education summit or high-powered confab – that is, “confabulation,” in pretentiously official academic parlance – was reportedly attended by the leaders and stakeholders, as it were, of some 90 countries and territories, presumably, of former British colonies and landed possessions. Which means that it was the countries and territories of the so-called British Commonwealth of Nations, now suavely but no less psychologically deleteriously but, nevertheless, strategically tolerable nations of “The Commonwealth.”

Well, it appears that we have come rather much too far to take slavocratic labels like the “British Commonwealth of Nations” lightly. Which is why the stark and unmistakable label and stigma of being the personal property of the British Monarch, male or female, has been strategically and “progressively,” albeit not practically and effectively, removed. But, of course, at heart and practically so, we are still veritably the “subjects” and “slaves” of Mr. John Bull – I like the “bullish” part of his name – who appears to be hell-bent on bullying us, his/her veritable slaves of yesteryear, like Mr. Caliban and the latter’s former master or de facto master called Mr. Prospero in Mr. Shakespeare’s dramaturgical classic titled “The Tempest.” But, of course, we live in apocalyptically tempestuous times. A lot of seasonal conflagrations on all five or seven continents, depending, of course, on who is doing the counting, have been raging across the world.

At any rate, at the most recent Education Summit of Commonwealth Leaders or Plantation Supervisors, it was the Summit’s Co-Host and President of Kenya who had reportedly directly invited an obviously eager President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, and not the real host of the same, namely, Mr. Boris Johnson or Prime Minister Johnson who, by the way, is not very well known to be warm or genuinely affectionate towards Africans and non-European peoples in general. Which would not, of course, include the Turkish people, when one reckons the fact that the Sovereign Democratic Republic of Turkey is also a bona fide member of the heavily armed Rich White People’s Club, to wit, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), of whose membership craving or desire would almost definitely have been looked upon with amused contempt, as the legendary globally immortalized Dr. WEB DuBois would have sharply and poignantly characterized the same.

Of course, it would have been equally characterized similarly by the legendary mentor and teacher of yours truly, namely, the immortalized Prof. Chinua Achebe, the great novelist, essayist, thinker and scholar, from Nigeria, who would have characterized the membership of NATO as one that was inescapably composed of Heavily Armed Rich White People. Actually, Filthy or Filthily Rich White People. Prof. Achebe was not one to mince words. Anyway, when he departed the refuse-strewn shores of Ghana on July 27, 2021, for Great Britain, exactly 36 years, to the day, after yours truly had departed the selfsame shores for the United States of America, I wondered whether the wet-eared National Democratic Congress’ scofflaw of a pit-bull, Mr. Samuel Okudzeto-Ablakwa, the North-Tongu Member of Parliament and former Deputy Education Minister for former President John “Akonfem-Kanazoe” Dramani Mahama, had been at the Kotoka International Airport (KIA) to assess the prices of the flight tickets of Nana Akufo-Addo and the members of the President’s entourage, which included the Education Minister, Dr. Yaw Osei-Adutwum, and Foreign Minister Shirley “Ga-Nyobi” Ayorkor Botchway.

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

August 7, 2021

E-mail: [email protected]

body-container-line