Aliu calls for blending of academic excellence with morality

Vice-President Alhaji Aliu Mahama has called for restraint and respect for authority and pleaded with heads of schools and colleges to balance their expectation of excellent academic attainments from students with morality.

He said the heads of the nation's educational institutions would be indulging in a "mirage" if ultimate preference is given to academic excellence at the expense of character formation.

Vice President Mahama said it was good if the two developed side-by-side so as to craft an individual that combines excellent academic credentials with an equally aspiring sense of decency and integrity in public life.

In a speech read for him at the 60th anniversary celebration of the Mount Mary College of Education at Somanya on Saturday, Vice President Mahama appealed to students, particularly trainee-teachers, to appreciate that the state expected them to be disciplined so that they could serve as models to the young ones they are to mentor.

"Your success will be a mirage if discipline does not prevail because positive academic and social results cannot be attained in an environment where indiscipline and immorality are the order of the day."

The Catholic Bishop of Koforidua, the Most Reverend Joseph Afrifa Agyekum, shared the Vice-President's sentiments and appealed to the tutors of the college to tread along that line.

He said the Catholic Church would continue to place its resources at the disposal of the college to enable grandaunts attain the qualities of the Virgin Mary after whom the school is named.

Mr J.A.M. Kor, Principal of the College, said the expansion in student population at the school had not been matched by growth in infrastructure especially in the wake of the transformation of the school to a tertiary institution.

He said, for instance, the college needed another dormitory for women if efforts aimed at promoting gender equity in the college was to be achieved.