GIVE DIRECTION TO EDUCATION IN GHANA
It is true, not all readers are leaders but all leaders are readers and more so learners. Young leaders, the supposed future generation, study the lives of those who are ahead of them; what they specialized in; and what made them successful. This means each and every leader or student or trainee must find his or niche, those inherent abilities and potentials as well as the full capacity by which they can be expressed, and develop themselves along that line.
It is a painful observation, seeing many students pursuing courses at the university level that has no bearing with what they can naturally do without struggle. It is said that one's major gifts will open doors for him and his minor gifts will establish him and this cannot be over emphasized. To be broad minded is noble because one has to be fully abreast of all things, relevant and irrelevant, that exist in his or environment and how they operate. Yet, it is a default that one may know all that there is to know about his environment and yet lack the in-depth knowledge about his own natural abilities, which is in fact the only key that will make him relevant in his or her environment. For example, it will take a person with the inherent ability of structural organization to be able to plan his environment and command structures to be sited at places that are acceptable as well as friendly. It will take a person with the natural ability to fit things together to able to design a mechanism that will control the inappropriate disposal of waste in his or her environment. Therefore, once a person recognizes what he can do inherently, he must be encouraged to pursue advance studies on those things the Creator deposited in him, naturally, for the benefit of his people and not to be lured into the pursuit of other skills as his major abilities, which is a total contradiction of what he or she is inherently made up of.
We must not be deceived, humans are intelligent beings; this means humans can adapt and adjust to any circumstance the environment presents to them, hence we can create ways and means to survive within such an occurrence. A friend calls this a polymorphic nature of humans, which simply means the many forms or shapes humans can adapt to the environment depending on the situations they encounter basically for survival. But, there is what is called dominant gifts; these elicit one's full capacity of potentials and give such a thrilling fulfillment that no other thing can extinguish. These are the things that deserve the giving of our focus and development. In short, this is the reason why we must acquire education; to develop our dominant gifts and bring them to the full glare of society and also master our minor gifts so we can be established. One's minor gifts will make him or her versatile but his or her major gifts will make him or her of high demand or a necessity.
If you want to be a necessity to society let the education you acquire activate the full capacity or services of your inherently dominant gifts.
What people call hobbies and for that reason give little or no importance to may be the very things society will use to judge them should society fall into calamity because of the failure of these people to acknowledge that, what they disregard and call hobby is actually the very thing their immediate society needs to survive. Those hobbies could be major gifts that will bring peace and comfort to these people and places of their location than the jobs they are pursuing now.
I am of the opinion that everything God created is a raw material including us, humans. Hence, we must manage ourselves and get to the place where we process each and every raw talent, potential, ability, and more into value-added products that society can benefit from. The spirit of entrepreneurship begins from here. It is compulsory, in my personal conviction, that entrepreneurship should be made part of school curriculum in Ghana. The reason is that, before entrepreneurship exposes you to the financial world it will first introduce you to your inherent skills and abilities, it helps you discover what you can do best, where you can function best, and the best people to move with. I believe even if everybody should own a business because of the maximization of a dominant or inherent gift nobody will lack a thing because there will be inter-dependency of businesses for growth, development, and survival.
The education system in Ghana is rather poor; it discourages creativity and forbids the unearthing of one's inherent abilities. The curriculum is pattern in such a way that those things that are thought decades ago which still produce students, so incapable of handling national assets as well as their own projects to the standard that is well appreciated are those same ones taught today. This is not helping Ghana. I wonder if there are people who study the educational landscape of Ghana, otherwise they would have realized that many Ghanaians want to create businesses they can call their own but lacks that quality of education to translate their ideas from the realm of the psychological to world of the material simply because even in school they are taught what to think and not how to think. They are made to reason like others but not as themselves. As a result, many students in Ghana are idealists rather than realists. This means the dependency theory, that explains how the west makes life uncomfortable for the developing countries is not just economical but intellectual. Ghana is a country so stereotyped in her educational requirement such that there is no room created for those in the informal educational sector, those countless thousands who have no or little opportunity to acquire formal education, to develop further, who they are and what they can do. However, when you study the business landscape of Ghana and Africa in general you will realize that two-thirds of Ghanaians or Africans are in the informal sector running their small-scale businesses. Hence, they contribute significantly to the micro-economic stability in the country and Africa.
Why not introduce workable plans in the educational sector to help student recognize the need of developing themselves or pursuing education along the lines of what God placed in them before the foundations of this world? And see if Ghana will not be more than South Korea, China, Singapore, or Japan.
Fidel Y. Tetteh-Modernghana.com
Development / Accra / Ghana / Africa / Modernghana.com