Getting First Class Is Overrated In Ghana: A Reply To Mr Kafui Dei

On March 9, 2019, I read a news item (published by mypeacefm.online) that quoted Mr. Kafui Dei, a media person, as saying that First Class is overrated in Ghana. He maintained that First Class does not guarantee success in life in the real world. I find his comment unfortunate and very misleading and will provide a bio sketch of my life as a response.

Before then, let me point out a few flaws in his narrow thinking. First, his understanding of ‘the real world’ is based on a faulty understanding of the connection between the gown (university) and the town (the world of work). He naively bifurcates the world into two: academia and world of work. Indeed, superficially, there appears to be a disjoint between the academic world and the world of work. But fundamentally, the two worlds are conjoined. The basic philosophical foundation of the modern university was to connect the gown and the town. That explains why most students, who go through the university, do research as a requirement for graduation. The essence of the research is to identify a challenge in society and offer a solution.

Second, networking is best established when one is an achiever. A few years ago, we were rightly told that a ‘fool and his money is soon rejected’. Sadly, in a neo-liberal world, a fool with money is praised and accepted over a person with cerebral capacity. It is for this reason that Mr. Kafui Dei will cheapen First Class.

Before going to the University of Cape Coast (hereafter, UCC) in 2004 for my undergraduate studies, some of my schoolmates who had gone there before I did, told me all the terrible things about UCC. They drummed into my ears about the near impossibility involved in working for First Class. For others, they told me that it does not matter the class you get; once you establish the right connections and networks, you will be fine in life. The commonest slogan on campus was that Second Class Upper was a gentleman's class. The aspiration of many students was, therefore, not directed at getting First Class.

In the spiritual realm, there were those who had inscribed and vested spirituality into First Class. For these religious fanatics, First Class students become the target of demonic forces, particularly witchcraft. There were stories about First Class aspirants who died mysteriously, either a few days to completion of their education or graduation. In fact, when I was going for my graduation after getting unprecedented First Class in B.A. Africa Studies, a former graduate of UCC, told me all the reasons (including possible fatal accident) why I should not go for the graduation ceremony.

Of course, I trashed his unsolicited counsel. Stories about occultism were widespread. In the end, every open space was converted to a prayer field. Most students prioritized prayer over studies. Demons were being exorcized at the expense of books. In the cacophony of cultic noise, my ‘twin brother’, Kofi Semanu Atsu Adzei, wrote a very provocative journalistic article, ‘Divine Madness or Sheer Hypocrisy?’ that incurred the wrath of religious obsessives.

In view of the low esteem students had about First Class, many students became content with mediocre thinking. They became comfortable with making grade B and C. They hardly worked hard enough to push the frontiers of knowledge. The corollary of this was that the academic ambiance at UCC revolved around getting all or one of three things: First Class, ‘grabbing’ (getting a potential spouse), or traveling abroad (burger - coined from early Ghanaian migrants to Hamburg in German). But getting First Class was hardly the desire of most students. Instead, the other two were the preoccupation.

In the end, students who worked hard and had an aspiration for First Class were pigeonholed with all manner of names. They were often tagged at anti-so. The worse was for girls. They were considered boring and unromantic. The general understanding was that it was not exciting to court a UCC lady who aspired towards First Class. This kind of thinking, surreptitiously embedded in male-centrism, assumed that those female students who had the penchant for working hard to get First Class were not good cooks.

In fact, there was also a popular (il)logical thinking that females who worked for First Class had low aesthetic qualities. They were said to lack all the sexualized feminine assets. In 2008, when Prof. Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang became the first female Vice-Chancellor of UCC, she indicated in an interview she granted the hall magazine of Adehye Hall (the wives of Casfordians) in response to a question of how she rose to a professorial level that most of her male colleagues thought she was not beautiful enough to attract their attention. Prof. Opoku-Agyemang said that because of the disposition of some male students towards her, she had all the time in the world to learn. In the end, she emerged very successful in her studies and proceeded to attain a terminal degree. I met one of her colleagues in Birmingham, United Kingdom, who testified to her story.

If you are tempted to think that the universities have hyped or overrated First Class, I want you to rethink. A First Class degree in any discipline takes people VERY far. It is a truism that the best universities in the world give scholarship offers first to First Class holders. In fact, in Cambridge and Oxford (abbreviated as Oxbridge), it is clearly indicated in the application qualification that priority is given to First Class holders. This makes a lot of sense because there is a misunderstanding among non-Africans that postcolonial education in Africa has taken a nosedive. In the end, First Class provides enough assurance to these topnotch universities that a student could be trusted for brainwork. Also, scholarship offers are a huge investment, and no reasonable institution would want to invest in a mediocre student.

Regardless of the babble that First Class does not determine intelligence, I challenge all students to desire for First Class. When I went to UCC to read a bachelor's degree in African Studies, the programme had just been introduced a year before I was admitted (2003). Consequently, I was part of the 'guinea pigs' who had to read virtually everything under the humanities. Our professors prepared us for academic presentation while we were in our first year. More importantly, since the programme needed to be accredited and routinized, no efforts were spared in pushing us to work hard.

The pressure that was mounted on us paid off. While none of those who first began the programme got First Class, the few who proceeded to the Institute of African Studies (IAS), University of Ghana, were the pride of IAS. Fortunately, three of us, who formed the second batch of the programme got First Class. Those of us who got First Class, Kofi Semanu Atsu Adzei, Latif Tahiru, and I, really worked hard. We were very determined to set the African Studies Department, UCC, on a different tapestry.

The three of us moved to the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, for our MPhil programme. There, too, we worked very hard, and in the end, I was given the prestigious Agyemang Duah Award for academic excellence. Later in 2014, when I got a scholarship to begin an Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Social Studies at Makerere University (where I was reading not less than 200 pages for a week, for two years), I recorded 9As and 3B+s out of the 12 courses I read. My brother Atsu in the first year on the same programme recorded 5As and 1B+ out of six courses! It was no mean achievement.

The reason people demonize and even poke jokes at First Class is simply that it is not easy to attain it. Every First Class student will inform you that getting First Class is not achieved on a silver platter. It takes hard work, diligence, perseverance, self-denial, investing in books, reading broadly, prioritizing knowledge, prayers, and determination. Sometimes, you have to study against your will and odds. Those of us from Maamobi (an urban slum in Accra), who had had a stint with poverty had to work as though First Class was our eternal hope. Since none of my nuclear family members had made it to the university, I called myself 'Abusuakrakyi', working hard to set an example for my younger siblings. More so, I wanted to rewrite the Zongo script, arguing that it was possible for a Zongo child to excel academically.

If you are a student, trash the frivolousness of Mr. Kafui Dei’s statement. Aim at First Class. This is simply because you are in the university to primarily excel academically. In other words, marriage, social networks, connections, spouses, and traveling come secondary to your academic excellence. This is also simply because aside academic excellence (which is usually, but not always attained in school), you could get all the others in a non-academic environment. Once you are in university, do all you can to get First Class.

As a voluble devotee of books, my conviction is that life is best lived when one is knowledgeable. In Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, Yuval Noah Harari, reiterated the argument that in the scheme of the contemporary world, we have moved from material resources to knowledge resources. Nations that rule the world are not those with material resources (if it were the case, Africa would have taken a leadership position in education), but nations that control knowledge. Incidentally, the height of knowledge acquisition is the university.

Non-literate businessmen and women belong to their own world. After they have schemed their business ideas, it is the graduate who puts those ideas into practice. We must also note that the joy of life is not the acquisition of material things - cars, houses, and money. The joy of life is to have knowledge. That is why all the religious leaders were avid propagators of education. In Hinduism, sin, which traps human beings in Karma and Samsara, is as a result of ignorance: Hence, the need for Jnana Yoga (also known as Jnanamarga, the path of wisdom and knowledge or path of self-realization). In Buddhism, moksha is attained through enlightenment (Buddha – knowledge). In Islam, the first century before Islam is called Jahiliyyah (ignorance), because ignorance had obliterated the true knowledge of God among the Arabs. In Europe, the enlightenment was perched against the Dark Ages, because during the Dark Ages, ignorance had masked and obstructed progress. Jesus Christ, the accredited savior of the world came to save, by showing us the right way to God the Father. He provided esoteric knowledge that led to eternal salvation. He did not necessarily come to save us from poverty, as He did with spiritual ignorance!

First Class is first class, regardless of the discipline. Whether in the natural sciences or humanities/social sciences, work for First Class. Whether in technical education or literary education, work for First Class. Let no dimwit convince you that getting First Class in the Arts is inferior to acquiring practical skills in mechanics, carpentry, or mason. It is the mediocre thinking that practical skills are better than literary skills that compelled some African leaders to starve the Arts Department of funding. A typical example is Uganda where the president, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, is killing the Arts discipline. The student in the Arts philosophizes; the student in the practical field, implements the philosophy. If you care to know the relationship between the arts and the practical sciences, read the history of the modern university. Also, read about how philosophy/arts provides the linchpin for technological development. The material and immaterial dialectics should cause any reasonable person to rethink the degrading of the humanities and First Class.

In conclusion, I regret in saying that we should treat the comment of Mr. Kafui Dei with contempt. It was made out of ignorance.

Satyagraha

Charles Prempeh ([email protected]),

African University College of Communications, Accra