Get The Big Picture

Introduction
Ever heard the saying “Get the big picture?” Have you noticed how your senses are heightened when you are in a challenging situation? It’s like having an adrenalin rush that gives you abnormal energy. This is one of the obvious experiences of being an illiterate. References to reports from Ghana Statistical Service indicate that 38.3% of Ghanaians cannot read and write. That is pathetic to account for as a country that holds education as the heart of its development.

Pythagoras once said “The beginning of every government starts with education of its youth”. It makes sense, he was a philosopher and a mathematician, and he knows the importance of learning. As I was thinking through this, I began to think deeper into the FREE SHS policy initiative by the government. A lot of scholars and political expertsin the country have had a fair bite of the national issue; most of the popular concerns raised about the policy are in relation to the funding and its sustainability.

Sometimes we are so zealous to quickly give our views and opinions about national issues that we forget about what is significant. I was listening to a debate among my friends once and they seemed so passionately to dispute the policy for free SHS because they believed the country has poor financial grounds and most importantly the education sector needs restructuring before the government can think about making education free. Then it gave me a reason to think about what they said and relates to the current state of education in the country, and I realized in many cases they were right. Of course, the education ministry needs restructuring and the vision and objective of the ministry must be redefined.

In the government policy manifestoon education, the government stated that it will redefine basic education to include Senior High School (SHS), covering vocational, agricultural and technical schools, and make it existing free on a universal basis to all Ghanaians. We’ve all heard the saying that “education is the key to success”.

Education has being the process of acquiring knowledge, skills, values, beliefs and habits so if the government fails to educate its citizenry, it blunts the knowledge and skills of the people and grinds down the development of the nation as a whole. The growth of the nation continues wallows as majority of Ghanaians are not able to exploit the abundant natural resources. Why is it highly essential for every Ghanaian to have free access to SHS education? Carl Jung once said “to ask the right question is already half the solution of a problem”.

History of Education
If we want to understand why regular schools are what they are, we have to do away with the impression that they are products of theoretical necessity or scientific insight. They are, instead, products of history. Schooling, as it exists today, only makes sense if we view it from a historical perspective. From the beginning of humankind for hundreds of thousands of years ago, children educated themselves through self-directed play and exploration.In the generations of inter alia the Great Socrates, Aristotle, Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Galileo Galilei, Charles Darwin, Leonardo Da Vinci, Nicolas Copernicus, Archimedes, Niccolo Machiavelli,Pythagoras, Brahmagupta, average children become educated through their own play and exploration, without adult direction or prodding, and go on to be fulfilled, effective adults in the larger culture. Instead of providing direction and prodding, schools provided rich setting within which to play, explore, and experience democracy at first hand; and it does that at lower expense and with less trouble for all involved than is required to operate standard schools. So why aren’t schools like that in our generation?

Evolution of Education
In relative to the biological history of our species, schools are very contemporary institutions. For hundreds of thousands of years, before the advent of agriculture, we lived as hunter-gatherers. In evidence from anthropology, children in hunter-gatherer cultures learned what they needed to know to become effective adults through their own play and exploration. The strong innovative initiatives in children to play and explore apparently came about, during our evolution as hunter-gatherers. Adults in hunter-gatherer cultures allowed children almost unrestricted freedom to play and explore on their own because they acknowledged that those activities are children's natural ways of learning.

With therise of agriculture age, and later of industrial age, children became forced laborers. Play and exploration were gaged. Willfulness, which had been a virtue, became a vice that had to be beaten out of children. In sum, for several thousand years after the advent of agriculture and industrial age the education of children was, to a substantial degree, a matter squashing their willfulness in order to make them good laborers. A good child was an obedient child, who stifles his or her urge to play and explore and ingloriously carried out the orders of adult masters. Such education, unfortunately, was never fully successful. The human drives to play and explore are so powerful that they can never be fully beaten out of a child.

For innumerable reasons, some religious and secular leaders advocated and promoted the idea of universal, compulsory education, education was understood as inculcation. Much of the push for universal education came from the emerging Protestant religions. Notable among, Martin Luther declared that salvation depends on each person's own reading of the Scriptures, a corollary not lost on Luther, was that each person must learn to read and must also learn that the Scriptures represent absolute truths and that salvation depends on understanding those truths. In America, in the mid-17th century, Massachusetts became the first colony to mandate schooling, the clearly stated purpose was to turn children into good Puritans; apersonwhoadherestostrictmoralorreligiousprinciples.As nations gelled and became more centralized, national leaders saw schooling as means of creating good patriots and future soldiers.

Overview of Education in Ghana
In Ghana, there are2,6,3,3,4 system of education; Kindergarten – 2 years, Primary – 6 years, Junior High School - 3 years, Senior High School - 3 years and tertiary institution - 4 years. The medium of instruction in Kindergarten and Primary is the Ghanaian language and English. At the basic level, much emphasis is on Literacy, Numeracy, Creative Arts and Problem Solving Skills.

At the JHS, emphasis is placed on English Language, Mathematics, Social Studies, and Integrated Science including Agricultural Science, a Ghanaian language, Technical, Vocational, Information and Communication Technology.After Junior High level, students choose to further in different streams at Senior High level, admission to the over 500 Senior High School is competitive.

In the public schools, all students take a Core curriculum consisting of English Language, Integrated Science, Mathematics, and Social Studies. Each student is required also to take three or four Elective subjects, chosen from one of seven groups: Sciences, “Arts” (social sciences and humanities), Vocational (visual arts or home economics), Technical, Business, or Agriculture. Once student complete Senior High School, it is expected of them to advance their knowledge in the tertiary institutions (universal universities, technical universities or vocational universities). Admission to the tertiary institution is extremely competitive, especially in fields such as medicine, engineering, law, and pharmacy. Ghana’s tertiary institutions enroll over 100,000 students in undergraduate, certificate and diploma programs in a full range of academic and professional fields.

Problems identified in the Ghana education sector

Over-politicization is the root of the menace facing education in Ghana. It is conjoint knowledge that the art of governance is multifarious and uneasy. The task often becomes unproductive mainly because political leaders and public officials over-politicize initiatives of incumbent governments on education. When this happens, governments allow political considerations to blur the nationalistic vision of education. In the process, unfortunately, governments resign and resort to distractive coping educational policies. Governments thereby leave office without resolving the fundamentally critical issues bedeviling the improvement of education in Ghana. It is mystifying for governments to have spent time, money and the resource of educational experts, and the general public on an educational forum chiefly to determine whether duration of education should be 3 years or 4 years, basic education to be changed to junior high school, O’level to be changed to senior secondary school to senior high school, polytechnics to technical universities, and teacher training Colleges to Colleges of education. Is it not simply ridiculous that governments waste the scarce resources on unproductive investments?

Outmoded“chew and pour” method of teaching and learning throughout the 5 systems of educational cycle, particularly in the tertiary institutions in Ghana need to be diversified. Ghana educational curricula are so outmoded to the point that teachers and lecturers do not have the enabling space to challenge the minds of students to be innovative. Syllable used in 5 decades ago is still used today even though the world is fast evolving. Why must teachersassess students with past questions of 1970s and 1990s? Is it the reason that teachers themselves do “chew and pour” or there are regulations that restrict them to set questions that address present day problems we face in our societies? We must understand that teaching is to coach or indoctrinate innovative skills to students. Education in our present competitive generation has gone past merely reading and writing, you cannot be successful if ones acquired skills is to read a textbook and summarize the context into another writing. In my sincere understanding, that is legalized plagiarism. That system must scrub if we are serious as a country that prides on education for national development.Today, the Ministry of Education spends less than 10 percent of its annual budget on research; this is totally misplaced of priority and waste of State resources. Ghana Education Service is failing to realize its potential partly because of underinvestment and structural barriers.

Mindful of this plea for caution, it is imperative to recognize that, despite the unquestionable approval of loans by governments to improve facilities in the education sector, one undisputable challenge of education in Ghana has been inadequate infrastructure to accommodate the rapid high rate of students who are made to believe that classroom education is the ultimate and guaranteed approach for one to be successful in future. To equip Ghanaian students to succeed in the global economy, we must provide a high-quality education that fosters the creativity, innovation, and analytical rigor necessary to keep Ghana at the frontier of the development. A more promising approach to keep Ghana at the frontier of its development is putting in place adequate and necessary environment for students to explore their innovative ideas. This mechanism must not be emphasized on only some selected fields but rather new reformed educational curricula that meet the inherent potentials of students’ in the lower level.

In spite of the challenges highlighted, it is worth noting that one of Ghana’s crucial problems is high birth rate. Statistic indicates that the youth contributes to the largest percentage of the age distribution in Ghana. This means that every year the percentage of Ghanaians seeking admission to schools will increase. The question then is; are governments making policies meaningful enough to meet future demands? A critical analysisto reports of the Population Census Unit of the Ghana Statistical Serviceindicates that birth rate outweighs death rate in the country. This must give a signal to the policy makers that in the next decade there is the probability of uncontrollably pressure on the few existing educational facilities. Education improvement needs to be more of a widespread movement than an ad hoc effort. How do we join this crucial effort while staying true to our institutions' old traditions and outmoded core values? Governments must be proactive, as a country we must shed off old constraints and step outside our comfort zones.

A promising approach
One important approach that governments must focus is shifting toward a higher tuition, higher aid model. By allocating taxes to education sector, governments must implicitly subsidize education at some selected schools and tertiaries. However, this subsidy must be well-targeted to those who need it most, and in fact must go mostly to low and middle income students.

Moreover, these subsidies are often financed by regressive taxes, such as State sales taxes. By increasing tuition rates and financial aid, governments could better target this subsidy. It will be beneficial to some extend the sustainability of low cost education in the country if politicians and educational experts do not over-politicize such a policy. A thoroughly understanding of the concept of taxation will inform Political Parties, Journalists and Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) to appreciate that people who earn high incomes should pay much tuition.

I would argue that we are already in the midst of a changing higher educational model. A lot of education experts have shed different meaningful opinion on measures the country should adopt in addressing the failing educational system to at least ensure that the average Ghanaian child is not denied affordable and accessible environment to explore his or her innate ideas. In reference to a quote of Vicki Davis “In education we are not working on making copies, we are creating originals.”

Lacking this information hamstrings Governments to make effective educational policies, and as well students are not empowered to be much innovative. Education in Ghana is typically change resistant, but change is imperative to ensure that Educational Service remains relevant and desirable for the country’s developmental goals. The Government must look carefully at the current curricula and extra curricula programs to determine whether the status quo truly meets the needs of the students to explore their innovative ideas and contribute massively to national development.

Governments’ in advance countries are investing in strategic initiatives to engage and invest in students. New ways to nurture and encourage young minds to succeed throughout their lives in an increasingly competitive world is prioritized in these countries. Additional spending is certainly needed, but the biggest potential gains in education will come from improving the investments we make today. Ghana government must make better use of the complex and duplicative resources in the Educational sector. In a number of areas, there is evidence that certain policies by governments are effective, but further research is needed to determine whether they are an efficient use of the scarce resources spent on them.

It is possible that substantial restructuring of school hours to morning and evening would have a substantial impact on controlling the unending problem of inadequate facilities in the Educational sector. In majority of Ghanaian Secondary Schools, the classroom accommodation is grossly inadequate. As a result of the large enrolments in these schools, the classrooms are usually overcrowded, with up to sixty or more students receiving instructions in classrooms designed for only thirty or, forty students. As Governments consistently look for loans to increase infrastructures in this sector, a second look must be focus on whether in the next decade these secured infrastructures will be sufficient to tackle future demands.

Pearl S. Buck once said “if you want to understand today, you have to search yesterday.” In some part of the country, it is practicably effective to run education period on morning and evening sessions. I think there is the need to capitalize on this system. Government must put in place strong policy to ensure that day students are compulsorily enrolled in the morning to afternoon session and boarding students enrolled from afternoon to evening session. Duration of sessions must also be considered to ensure that time is used efficaciously in the schools. When this approach is factored to the educational system, Government will be relieved of much burden in the Educational sector. Public Universities in Ghana are enrolling students on distance education to ease the pressure on the few existing facilities. By doing so, we will ensure that education yields the great return on investment that it should.

Unemployment is one problem affecting the growth of the country; dependency rate is relatively higher than the working class. This means in the next decade, double percentage of Ghanaians will be unemployed. At this point do we need to make education freely accessible to Ghanaians although there will not be enough government job opportunities? The answer is emphatically YES! With the rising demand of education for people to manufacture their innovative ideas, the same power assertive methods that had been used to make children work in fields and factories during the 17^th century has quite naturally be transferred to the classroom. Today students are creative and inventive, and the schools and universities they attend must be creative and inventive, too. Schools and Universities administrators must embrace deep within their conscience and within the bones of the institutions that they are not doing enough to support the development of the students. They have to try new methods and support the development of the students. Students are justifiably demanding accountability for the huge fees.

Conclusion
In the past, Ghana’s innovative elites inter alia Prof. Baeta, the late Prof AduBoahen, DrAma Ata Aidoo, the late Prof KwaminaBentsi-Enchil, the late Dr J.B. Danquah, the late Dr Kwame Nkrumah, the late Philip Quarcoo, Prof Francis Kofi AmpaneyAllotey, the late Sekyi brothers from Adisadel resonates with us? I will implore you to google the names of these great men and read little about their lives if you are not privy to any information about them.

Our educational system must inspire confidence in our students to appreciate their self-worth, appreciate and understand beauty in their surroundings, and spark in them high appreciation for aesthetic splendor in art works, music, sculpture, crafts, dance, poetry, and folklore. The system must properly prepare students to become warily futuristic, optimistic, and humane in all our noble endeavors. The Pestalozzi principle of education aims at training the head, heart, and hands of our tutees so that they can think rationally, become passionate about noble and national causes, and become creative with their heads and hands contribute to the development of the nation. Can we say that our current educational system in Ghana is achieving those noble goals set by Pestalozzi more than 300 years ago? As a nation, what are the educational goals that we set for ourselves, as framed by both past and current governments’ manifesto and policies? It is, nevertheless, gratifying to note that the World Bank from 2014 to 2019 has set aside 156 million US dollars towards the improvement of Secondary Education Programme in Ghana. This is in partnership with the Government, and this move is in recognition of the falling standards of education in Ghana.

What kind of education are we giving our children in Ghana these days? Are we giving the right dose of holistic education which will make our students and pupils self-reliant, tolerant, patriotic, innovative, inquisitive, globally competitive, technologically-savvy, or altruistic?

If we hope to have another century of economic success, it is critical that we build a strong education system today. It is imperative that we make the necessary investments in education to promote more broad-based economic growth.

The author is a youth activist
Gideon Adu Buabeng
Chief Clerk of Youth Leadership Parliament