Comprehensive Education Reform: Medicine for Poverty and Corruption

More recently, the leaders of the major parties have had an epiphany on corruption. As usual, the focus is all wrong. Instead of educating the public on how pervasive corruption is denying the nation of its

development goals, it is being used as a political weapon for personal attacks.

It is estimated that the central government is losing $5bn US annually in unrealized revenues while we go cap in hand to "donors" begging for $2bn every year. Does this make sense? Finding ways to end this loss of revenue is the single most important development programme every leader should be committed to.

It is truly time for the electorate to consider what role smaller parties can play in moving the national agenda in the right direction. Of the smaller parties, Dr. Nduom, the leader of the PPP has been the most strident about offering incorruptible leadership as core platform issue. The two increasingly inept, major parties are belatedly awakening from their collective slumber on this issue.

Comprehensive and long term policy changes on ending large scale corruption are closely tied to educational reform. Education is the best antidote to poverty and holds the key to solutions for major obstacles to coherent and orderly development for the true benefit of our citizens.

What are the main goals of our current education system? This is not clearly stated anywhere in a manner that is easily understood or readily accessible to national consciousness. The acquisition of rote knowledge in a contextual vacuum is our current approach. Yes, the basics are important but to what end? What larger purpose does the education system in its entirety serve?

The system that served the “children of independence” so well, grew out of a stable and largely undisturbed colonial world, based on ensuring that learners at all levels met international standards but did not focus on skills aligned with our development needs.

By the time AFRC/PNDC was done with us, the human resources and infrastructure for education had been completely gutted. The quality of graduates at all levels had diminished greatly and a degree from

our tertiary institutions was not the passport to a career anywhere in the world, as it was in the 1970s.

We must consider an approach in which health and education policies are completely integrated from the bottom up. Here is why.

First, prenatal care of expectant mothers is the first educational task. This results in as many healthy educable children to start with and reduces maternal mortality.

Next, all preschool children must have uninterrupted public health nursing follow up, to ensure adequate nutrition and the attainment of all developmental tasks for school readiness. Those needing extra attention for various reasons will be identified very early, and as a result, appropriate interventions can be implemented for them.

Now, let us examine some aspects of formal education. All institutions should continue to have Public Health input involved, continuing a curriculum on creating healthy citizens with healthy and productive habits. In the earliest years of formal education, in addition to learning the basics of mathematics, reading and writing, the curriculum should be rooted in the community and our national values for citizenship. School projects on sanitation, agriculture, environmental sciences, and civics should form the lens through which knowledge is acquired. All of these must benefit from the application of the appropriate use of information technology to achieve the desired results. Early self - directed group projects with heavy community involvement will help very young children with the early acquisition of management skills along with the basic didactics of which we are so fond. If students do not learn to become managers early in the education process, they will never be prepared or oriented towards the values of achieving set goals, accountability that are so crucial in the progress of our nation.

In the elementary school years, technical subjects such as wood and metal work should enter the curriculum, again with community involvement and early apprenticeships. During this period, student led projects in organized sports, music and the arts should be emphasized again, with community practitioners supporting trained teachers.

On the concurrent health front, screening for vision problems, hearing, subtle musculoskeletal problems, and other intellectual problems should occur. Psychologists should be stationed in schools to help identify behavioral, cognitive, emotional, family and social issues that can interfere with learning. By the time a child is at the JSS level, they should be a healthy citizen with nascent management skills and a sense of commitment to using their education to finding solutions to community problems. They should by this time, based on their strengths and interests, be able to use career counseling to chart a course for their future.

Community businesses and civic organizations should be engaged to take on students in manageable roles to consolidate good citizenship and a proper work ethic. Educational institutions should actively be seeking these community partnerships for their students. These efforts should be supported materially by funding mechanisms involving both central and local governments.

After school hours must be used for structured programs in sports and recreational activities. Those needing remedial assistance should be supported through organized community based programs. Additionally, lessons in public safety, injury prevention, mental health promotion, prevention of smoking and illicit drug use and healthy nutrition should occur with community collaboration. The central government can provide funding to support communities that organize themselves to provide these activities. There is a role here for nurses, psychologists, social workers and trained lay community volunteers. The cost savings to the society overtime will be immense. There will be fewer youth unprepared for the workplace and less crime with the attendant social and material costs. The cost to the healthcare system will also be greatly reduced because of the broad scale investment in preventative health through its integration with the school system.

All of this should happen long before SSS, which in my opinion should be free only for qualified students who are in financial need. The provision of wholesale free services does nothing to inculcate the development of a sense of value for services by the public purse. It is only in Ghana that the concept of “free money” exists. At this level of education, apprenticeships offered by the civil service, corporations, businesses, NGOs and others, supported by government incentives will offer more value for money and contribute to better educated citizens, ready for the workplace. This is sadly not the case now. Many SSS graduates are barely literate and do not meet minimum requirements even for our own universities. These problems will not be solved simply by offering free education at this level. There must be a better foundation laid in pre-SSS years. This greater investment in the earlier years of the system, followed by a consolidation of education in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, in conjunction with a solid curriculum in the humanities in SSS will produce better prepared graduates for a rapidly developing nation like ours. Those with demonstrated vocational interests and skills should do their SSS in schools with an academic and technical focus and should begin their tertiary education in a vastly improved Polytechnic College system. These are the builders of tomorrow's infrastructure.

The investment in a sustainable and relevant education system should occur much earlier in the development of children and must be strongly rooted in communities with the involvement of health care professionals who can partner with a well-trained, well-resourced and well paid and

motivated cadre of educators to produce healthy citizens whose contribution to society will be long lasting.

The issue of costly and pervasive corruption, with which I started this piece, will only be eliminated in the long-term by the growth of a well-educated and properly oriented citizenry over time. In the short

term, as we approach the December polls, we need a leader with the political will to enforce the laws already on the books, who will render a detailed and transparent analysis of what

segments of the economy are most responsible for the revenue shortfall from corruption. We can immediately incorporate technological solutions that eliminate the human interface as much as possible, in revenue generating transactions for all levels of government. As long as crime reporting is about people who are jailed for stealing goats, while bribe takers and white collar criminals at the highest levels of society roam free, we will not be able to afford the educational reforms I have outlined above. The leader who leads a true national discourse on this problem will guide our decisions for the upcoming elections.

Prof. T.P. Manus Ulzen
tulzen@yahoo.com
October 8, 2012

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