No Child Should Be Left Out

Professorship is generally considered the pinnacle of the academic hierarchy. Yet in the last two weeks two eminent, internationally known Ghanaian Professors have described their early academic achievements as average or below average.

In the book “Fighting Armed Robbery in Ghana” Professor Ken Attafuah describes his own extremely humble academic beginnings and attributes his academic take off to an encouragement he had from a teacher in Primary Four and from his big sister Felicia.

Also, at the recent Ghana Medical Association's 50th anniversary public lecture where Professor Agyemang Badu Akosah gave a presentation on Ghana's Health, one of the many points he made was that a big factor in Ghana not having enough doctors was the fact that the entry requirements for medical school were being set too high.

Today, many great potential doctors are being turned away because they did not make the aggregate 6 or 7 needed to enter medical school. Prof. Akosah said he entered Medical school with grades which would not have allowed him into medical school today.

I think he said he entered with aggregate 10 which was equivalent to something like one B, two Cs and a D in 'A' levels. Those were similar to the grades I entered KNUST SMS with.

Yet today a science student who makes aggregate 10 may not even get his second choice course in the university unless he has powerful connections.

Prof. Attafuah's statement was being made in the context of the social factors which contribute to an individual becoming an armed robber.

He said on page 282 of his book “I have long been concerned about the continued over concentration of funding and development attention on the class of children described as “clever” or “brilliant”… we must be careful not to isolate and demoralise a large number of innocent children as “non-academic” “dumb” “useless” or “less valuable” and to consign them to the dustbin of irrelevance” .

I have a relative who is a teacher and I happened to be sitting with her whilst she was marking scripts from the most recent BECE exam.

Perhaps, I shouldn't have done so, but I looked through some of the scripts from a rural school in the Brong-Ahafo Region.

They were appalling. The English, the grammar and the spelling were by and large horrendous and as for the content…

It was clear for example, that many of the children had copied, had put the answers under the wrong question and thus the answers bore no relationship to the question under which they were written.

She told me that last year she had marked scripts from a very posh school in Accra and the difference was glaring.

Do we think that we can concentrate our efforts on a few “brilliant” children and expect the country to move forward?

In the Medical Schools, for example, we pick the children who have aggregate 6 and 7.

A casual look at the background of many of these kids show that they grew up in the big cities, went to a few select primary and secondary schools mainly in Accra, Kumasi and Cape Coast.

Yet, when they finish school we expect them to stay around and even accept rural postings!

We pick kids whose social background programmes them from day one to desire to live the good life outside the country and then we are surprised and complain when they finish school and leave.

Are they really “brilliant” or have they just had well resourced educational backgrounds with books, internet access, extra classes, home teachers etc easily at their disposal?

One of the most tired phrases one often hears in the news is “brilliant but needy”. It's usually used in the context of some community or philanthropist making provisions for children who do well in school but cannot afford to pay fees.

I am sure many of these children have above average academic performance. I suspect very few of them are really “brilliant”.

On a more serious note, however, the question, is what happens to the children who are not “brilliant”?

With the exception of children with severe learning disabilities or children who are mentally challenged and who may need special help in their education, the child of average intelligence (which includes most of us!!) should be able to get decent grades and if our children are failing to do so, then the failure is one of the system and not of the children.

In KNUST School of Medical Sciences, many students who came to complete medical school from UDS and who entered with aggregates far below 7 competed favorably with their friends who initially got admission into SMS.

If an educational system begins to almost literally throw children away as early as 14 or 15 years, right after the BECE, making no provision for second chances for children who may be late starters but who given a second chance would shine like stars later on, then we have a big problem.

If an educational system focuses so much on academics and pays only lip service to other aspects of human development, it should be a matter of great concern to those in charge of education.

We have National Awards for children who make eight As in the Senior High School exam, which appears on national television every year.

Are there similar awards for children who are excelling in technical or vocational skills?

A very popular Bible verse is Pro 22:6 which says “Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from it” We often take this to mean that we should take our children to church and teach them to pray etc, so that such things will become habits which will remain with them when they grow up.

 I'm sure it does mean that and more but there is flip side of this verse which is this. Teach a child to believe that he is not worth much to society, that he is not “brilliant”;

Beat him when he performs badly in school so that he comes to understand that violence is the solution to every problem.

In the words of Professor Ken Attafuah, “consign him to the dustbin of irrelevance” and indeed when he grows he will not depart from it…

If as a nation we get education right, if we decide, like President Bush that “no child should be left behind” and we take advantage of the wealth of evidence based knowledge available on how to educate children to help them identify and achieve their potential, we will swim as a nation.

If we continue focusing only on the so called “brilliant” ones, and fail to come to the realisation that each of them matters, then we will sink.

Of course there will always be children who due to certain circumstances do not do well but they should be the exceptions rather than the rule.

By Dr Gyikua Plange-Rhule

• The writer is a Paediatrician in the Dept. of Child Health, KATH and a Lecturer in the School of Medical Sciences, KNUST.