Academic Elitism Is The Compromise

If it was intended as a rhetorical uppercut against the landmark Akufo-Addo fee-free Senior High School Policy Initiative, then Mr. Kwesi Pratt woefully misfired in the lame suggestion that, somehow, enabling the maximum number of Ghanaian teenagers access to basic education compromises the quality of the same. No argument of this kind could be at once more grossly ill-informed and preposterous (See “Don’t Compromise on Quality Education – Kwesi Pratt” Ghanaweb.com 1/5/18). This is the sort of farcical argument that National Democratic Congress’ movers-and-shakers like former President John Dramani Mahama and former Vice-President Kwesi BekoeAmissah-Arthur have used to deny the overwhelming majority of Ghanaian youths access to basic public education over the past decade.

The fact of the matter is that under the Cash-and-Carry elitist educational model, doggedly pursued by the operatives of the faux social democratic National Democratic Congress (NDC), the country’s educational system was neither qualitative nor progressive. It was not qualitative because in a survey of some 146 countries around the globe conducted by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), sponsored by the most advanced Western industrial nations, about five years ago, Ghana ranked 146^th out of the 146 countries surveyed. In other words, practically speaking, Ghana has the worst basic public educational system in the world. Our system of public education is also not progressive because it callously denies access to the overwhelming majority of qualified youths, that is, until September last year when President Akufo-Addo followed up on his electioneering campaign promise of making basic public education in the country a fundamental human right than a privilege restricted to the children of the rich and powerful in Ghanaian society.

The elitist public school system administered by National Democratic Congress-run governments lacked quality because the schools were inadequately supplied with such basic teaching materials as textbooks and computers and, at the elementary level, such cheap learning materials as chalk, pencils and slates. And so it was not as if the elitist educational policy under NDC regimes was one that was resource-determined; it was simply a Social Darwinian policy of existential primitivism based on the State-of-Nature Principle of survival-of-the-fittest. For leaders like Messrs. Jerry John Rawlings, John Dramani Mahama and Kwesi BekoeAmissah-Arthur, among a host of others, the concept of Social Democracy is synonymous with the Darwinian Theory of National Selection. There are no social intervention programs aimed at making life manageable for the less privileged and socioeconomically vulnerable.

This is what also betrays the faux-Nkrumaist leanings of Mr. Kwesi Pratt, Jr., the Editor-Publisher of the so-called Insight newspaper. For in terms of objectives, Nana Akufo-Addo’s fee-free Senior High School policy initiative shares the same page with that of Ghana’s first postcolonial leader, Mr. Kwame Nkrumah.

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