The Ghanaian Educational System Already Makes Children Timid And Less Assertive -Attention Dr Adu Twum

The recent UNESCO meeting seems to have drawn attention to Ghana's minister of education after he made a "so-called" wonderful submission about how intelligent but timid and less assertive Ghanaian schoolchildren are.

Well, I appreciate the minister's candour in his submission, but the reality remains that Ghanaian schoolchildren have been intimidated by the "canning system" for as long as anyone can remember. Once more, the deplorable conditions in our schools and the resulting acute poverty prevent students from being as outspoken as the Minister would have them be. One could have expected the minister to explain how he is prepared to turn the already crumbling education system into generating confident school graduates.

His opinion is even more hypocritical and unfair given how the current educational system is set up to control both head teachers and teachers. Teachers in Ghana no longer have a stake in the educational system. Thanks to the current educational reforms, especially the FSHS that was just implemented. The appalling policy is turning teachers into "obey before complaining beings" and stooges.

The government's focus is now mostly on developing the STEM education infrastructure and other unrealistic experimental policies, which is exciting, rather than adequately funding the basic schools' infrastructure and providing them with learning resources. It's unfortunate that teachers, who are an integral component of the educational system, feel threatened by it. Dr Adu Twum was unjust to his teachers and merely spoke politely to garner unwarranted attention.

I worry that while Ghana's educational system may appear to be in great shape on the surface, there are significant flaws there that will eventually cause it to fail. Even with the ban on canning in schools, Ghana has already bred millions of frightened and passive school graduates, and nothing will change. Our society's fundamental elements have also been created to make children timid and unproductive. Once poverty permeates many rural villages and even some urban areas, public school students' assertiveness will only be presented as a speech at larger conferences rather than as a reality in Ghana's educational system.

Sir Evans Davis

(Teachers’ Series Author)

[email protected]