The Sacred Cow Must Be Slain

Before we start, I want you to promise that you’re not going to get tired of coming across the phrase “educational system “in this article. Nevertheless, in the end, I guarantee that hearing the word even 1000 times in this piece would not be as boring and serious like the situation I’m about discussing. My grandfather told me half a decade ago that the best way to tackle a problem is to first fight it from the root of it rather than dwelling on its outward manifestations. Let’s get started.

According to an American Philosopher, Roscoe Pound, law must be used as a tool for engineering change in the society. Society should not be behind the law and vice-versa. After writing what I believe is my final exam in UG, I began to ask myself whether our education system trained me and others enough to harness and get a profession with our talent, gift and ingenuity. By educational system, I mean the journey from nursery through to tertiary level. In all ramifications, an educational system that cannot identify, shape and contribute to the development of talent is a failed one. By extension, any state with a failed educational system projects a bleak and seemingly hopeless future for its younger generation. Let us drive the point home with these 3 analogies.

Analogy 1 -Mathematics and Reading was Selikem’s enemy at age 2 but whenever they were asked to draw, she produced one of, if not the best piece of art. Her teacher never spotted her talent. She managed to complete J.H.S some 13 years later and because she could not make A’s in the other courses aside creative arts and drawing, she gained admission to a secondary school that does not even offer visual arts. She could not also change it because unlike others, she could not pay her way through.

Analogy 2-Let us now assume that she gained admission to a second cycle school that offers visual arts. Her WASSCE results was released and because she failed the core courses, she could not proceed to any tertiary institution seeing as her dad would not let her write NOVDEC and almost all tertiary institutions require a pass in at least two core courses to gain admission. Here again, she passed all the elective courses relating to her talent.

Analogy 3- Now she gains admission to a tertiary institution after having managed to get some Cs in the core courses. She is given a course in drawing but attached to it is philosophy and psychology. She is forced to memorize, cram and reproduce whatever she is taught in exam. Something she equated to torture. After rolling with punches and fighting her way through, she graduated with a pass. Vision thwarted, talent undeveloped and a national asset wasted. Selikem must eat and survive therefore she joins a gang of robbers to make a living.

This analogy is not exhaustive of the series of analogies that can be given. Instead of training our human resource to solve emerging societal challenges in our society, it is augmenting its woes. Every single individual is born with a talent or gift and it is the duty of the system to nurture these potentials to serve our collective national benefit. I must concede that our educational system despite its profound expeditions has yielded minimum outcomes. At least in law and medicine. Final year students undertake several projects each year in our tertiary institutions but what happens afterwards? How about those who excel in sports? Clearly a talent -oriented education builds a strong sense of self-actualization, hypothesizes and creates lasting solutions to existing social challenges, reduce unemployment and launches students into a higher-level career accomplishment. This holds for the varied fields in which they excel be it sports, academic, interpersonal or artistic prowess. It is trite that we are tested not based on our ability to identify and solve problems, but our ability to cram, memorize and reproduce huge volumes of slides and notes. The best way to test an engineering student (one indeed), for example is not giving him an exam for 100 marks but rating his invention, ideas and creating an enduring basis for him to also address upcoming challenges. The bitter truth is that there are many courses in our tertiary institutions that are irrelevant for the purposes of setting individuals up to be useful in our country presently. When that happens, it becomes clear that it is the educational system(law) that creates unemployment but not the government since the government cannot respond to the wishes of all citizens. Gradually, we are advancing towards a system where if you do not offer law, medicine or nursing, you will have slim chances of securing a job after years of educational training. Why do we keep on doing this to ourselves?

We have individuals who can develop and exploit our oil, mine precious minerals, draw plans and see to the construction of good roads, stadia, hospitals just to mention but a few. Some others can outline comprehensive policy frameworks that can translate into major national developments but due to our poorly structured system we pay huge sums of money to expatriates to undertake these fundamental national imperatives. Our education system is a myth, fantasy, a joke, inept, bereft of any value except to train criminals and half-baked graduates. Just recently a story was told of nurses whose negligence contributed to the death of three newly born babies. Perhaps their passion was not in being a nurse but because of our education system it became their last resort. Lives are being lost, constant frustration is causing people to commit suicide, monies are being wasted, the country is stagnated due to our educational system.

What must we do to this effect? Remember what Pound told us in the beginning. Our education system is behind our society. Let us restore the equilibrium and there would be fewer unemployment. Let us redirect the focus to talent-oriented education by setting up institutions that one can apply to base on his talent, creating awareness to primary level teachers and parents, testing students based on their projects and contribution to knowledge and society. More so, government should provide a scheme whereby persons with special talents, inventions would be trained by well-paid lecturers and trainers. To wit, let us abandon our old ways of going about education in this country. Ways which have clearly not proven to be helpful but suicidal. Apparently, the sacred cow must be slain.

If we do not train and educate people to solve problems and harness their talents, we will train criminals and create a world of people who have not added value to themselves and would be better off if they had never gone to school. If we do not change our educational system, I perceive a society that is far more worse than we have now in the next ten years. As usual let me end with my best quote. Niccolo Machiavelli said “it must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carryout, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of doing things. For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order.

I am not sure you got tired of the phrase” educational system”

This article was written by Kenneth A. Appiah. Ken just completed his LLB at University of Ghana School of Law and is a former President of the University of Ghana Law Students’ Union (2017-2018). You can email him at [email protected]