NATIONAL SCHOOL FEEDING PROGRAM: A MISPLACED PRIORITY.

“The key educational task is to give students an understanding of the fundamental structure” –Bruner (Harvard psychologist). The education sector has experienced cosmetic development from successive governments after the overthrown of the Nkrumah's regime. One of such cosmetic programs which have been instituted in recent years which according to the originators sought to boost the enrollment in the educational system which in my opinion would rather lead to its collapse is the National School Feeding Program.

The Ghanaian Times on Monday, January 12, 2009, page 15 reports that “The Yeniama L/A Junior High School in the Asuagyamang District recorded Zero percent in the 2008 Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE).” In 2007, it was also reported in the February 8, edition of the Chronicle that 15 Gomoa Schools score Zero percent. These are the few instances for which one is convince that the National school feeding program is a drain on scarce national resource which sought for nothing of value but of sympathetic votes.

Education is meant to acquire knowledge, shape ones mental and social environment as well as integrate one into the human world. This definitely cannot be done without having access to materials and resources which has a direct bearing on education. The availability of reference materials such as reading text books, a sizeable teaching class, and a competent teacher are the prerequisite for any effective and efficient educational system. The text books form the basis of knowledge impartation for which the teacher is only an administrator. It is therefore intellectually ignorant for one to blame teachers for the non performance of students, especially where there are no or in adequate books to aid them in their teaching.

From observation, most pupils in the public schools are from poor homes, single parenting homes, and finally those categorized as “good for nothing” children. In brief, they are those the society have giving up on and if successive governments will also abandoned and sentenced them to failure by way of such cosmetic policies as the National school feeding program at the expense of knowledge acquisition, then we must prepare for the worst in the near future. The continuation of the feeding program if allowed to stand the test of time will lead to the collapse of the public education system since no parent would like their ward's to be associated with failure and their inability to continue to the next level in the educational ladder.

Political leaders, one believes are voted into governance not to act only as executive administrators of the nation's resources but also as transformational administrators. They are to act with quality and result-orient consciousness in decision making and not quantity. For that cause one will like to suggest that the National school feeding program (which in actual fact is not national and adds no value to the educational structure) should be stopped and instead its finances be channeled to the buying and provision of reference materials such as text books in reasonable quantities to all public schools.

One is of the view that the allocation of inflows to the current feeding program should not be stopped but be used to improve on the availability of teaching materials. On the part that pupils may be malnourish, government should through the district assemblies provide farm inputs at really subsidized prices to enable parents who are farmers have enough food to feed their children and the surplus sold to earn some income. The rationale here is to make food less costly even to those parents who are not farmers so that they can retain some surplus funds to keep life going from their incomes.

Again, one is of the view that, it is detrimental to the use of scarce resources for effective and efficient gains should one strike out the cost benefit analysis of providing feeding at the expense of reading text books and teaching materials at the elementary educational level. Interestingly, our opinion leaders look on unconcerned while a section of the schooling youth are fed with food at the detriment of reading text books and teaching materials. If this continues one then may wonder the kind of future leaders the educational system is breeding to take up the mantle of our dear country. Sometimes, it is a disgrace to hear prominent scholars in our society recount how they had government scholarships almost throughout their educational life which otherwise they would have being 'nobody'. Can we say that of the current educational system and even if scholarships are available, are they accessible to the poor of the poorest living in the remotest village in the country or even in Accra? I guess not! I wish to state quickly that the free school fees policy should be sustained and implemented to the latter. This alone is enough incentive to boost enrollment.

As Socrates points out; he believed that all men are equally endowed with innate ideas and the equal ability to lead a good life. Knowledge, he said; was virtue and thus innate. And that in fact, learning is only a way of remembering what was already engraved upon the individual soul. According to him, all men are originally equally endowed and that it is only education that creates the difference. He further held that; the original inequality of men is quickly revealed through an unrelenting educational system.

One would like to admonish that, let us as a nation be guided by such few revealing words of Socrates, in order not to create a divided class of citizens especially by way of educational policies which has no direct bearing and improvement on the educational structure. Let us confront the future with an education system that will be better placed to produce well qualified and knowledge-based human resource for the changing sophisticated computerized global economy.

One may say, after all my children attendant the best of private school and thus will not be affected. It is evident that, in a society where the poor perceive that their rights in reference to equality and level playing grounds are denied, they adapt other means possible to bridge the gap. Which, unfortunately the target may be your children.

If the reports as quoted above(zero percent in BECE) is anything to go by, then the National school feeding program should be stopped and its finances geared towards the provision of reading text books and libraries so that the public and private pupils can evenly compete on level grounds for the BECE.

In addition, monitoring and supervision in the public education sector should be intensified. If possible, as a way of suggestion, tertiary students on vacation should be temporally engaged by the Education sector or Ministry to aid in the monitoring and supervision processes; which will culminate into effective teaching and learning thereby producing quality student to the next educational level. Yes! It is an undeniable fact that there are differences in men. However, true as it may be, let's allow those differences to be evidence only at their functional level and not through clear educational policies that discriminate outright.

Let us as a nation move above petty political and electoral sympathetic gains, and dispassionately debate and agree on re channeling the feeding program cost allocation to the provision and enhancement of educational materials to public schools. Civil society and those who agree to this effect should boldly make their voice heard. The time is now!

Thank you.

Yours faithfully,

Signed:
Aaron Lordstone.
(Student, Pentecost University College)
0242 548430.

Development / Ghana / Africa / Modernghana.com