Education and National Development: The Ghanaian Case

What is our understanding of what is Education? Brothers and sisters, how many of us did not think about bookish formal classroom literacy and innumeracy when we read ‘Ghanaians Lack Education!!!’? This is exactly my point. Is education necessarily the one acquired within the confines of the classroom? Is what is taught in the classroom always true, necessarily, good, and more importantly apt for the spiritual, social, commercial, scientific and technological development for a particular country, and with the special concern, Ghana? Ladies and Gentlemen, my quest here today in not to engage on any semantics on the word ‘education’, be it philosophical, linguistic, anthropological or any of such angles and perspectives, nor am I here to dispute the importance of formal education. I join you today to have a look at the structure of the Ghanaian formal education system and its true nature and focus; and its impact on national development (I must insert here that the introduction of this piece needs a sober circumspection about the questions posed, and the proposal for study today, in order to make a meaningful understanding and contribution to what is below. It will take more than the glancing-through which we do sometimes just to quickly join the forum to pass our judgments).I should say this also because we tend to be more interested in politics and tribal issues without tackling the core of such dynamics such as proper education. Proper education leads to rapid and sustained national development which kills bitter politicking and tribalism and all sort of divisive mechanisms. If you and I tummies are full, with our basic needs met, we would hardly even remember which part of the country we come from, and would wine together even though we might belong to different parties. However, it is unfortunate people hardly concern themselves when it comes to education issues, which is core to productivity and development. I believe many are here reading this piece because they wanted to come and dispute that Ghanaians do not lack education, not that they care about the education we disseminate as a nation. Whatever be the case, please read on because there is something important at stake to discuss.

Ladies and Gentlemen: I am concerned once more for our motherland, because as it has become the norm of the day (I’m not saying this thing just started recently, but just that my eyes were just opened to see what we are discussing), we Africans, and for that matter Ghanaians are easily swept by every pseudo-antidoterial Western formulated doctrine for the never-matured-but-ever-dependant gullible African. What are we swallowing and singing this time? For the past 16 years we have been singing education (I mean classroom intellectual enlightenment) for all. As far as I am concerned there was never a time that any of us lacked education, because to me, real education is the pertinent life-skills needed for one to survive in one’s unique environment. Therefore if I live in the forest belt and you teach me to fish instead of hunting you have done me a great disservice; in the same vein if I live among true Christians and you school me to be a lawyer, do not once think that you have educated me, for I would not earn a living nor contribute to my society as true Christians do not need the courts to arbitrate their differences among themselves (1 Cor 6:1-12).

What is the analogy here? Ghana for a long time has been surviving on the expertise and the hard work of the so-called uneducated like the carpenter, mason, shoe-maker, dress-maker, auto-mechanic, panel-beater, fisherman, etc and more importantly the great live-sustainer, the farmer. However, grievous as it is, Ghana has failed to recognize and respect these great men and women just because they do not hold paper accreditations of certificates and degrees, and all because they were not educated in the school structures, so they are seen as uneducated ignoramus barbarians of no dignity and life. We, the so-called educated of the classroom look at these noble-but-not-acclaimed brothers and sisters with the basest of disdain.

What have been the results? Today, parents who teach their children their trade to shape them for the realities of the Ghanaian environment are called child-abusers and child-slavery pushers by Western sponsored NGOs and stakeholders (I’m not advocating the over-working of our young ones; that must not be done). Just recently Oprah made a lot of money and fame by making a show of our cultural and special education. (She must do the so-called rescuing of all such children, put them in the Western culturing classrooms, and after their degrees provide them with white-collar jobs on Wall Street; thus I would applaud her and denounce Ghana).We let the West create for us everyday non-existing problems psychologically; and thus disorienting our whole way of life and left confused. Western people teach their young ones at very very tender age skills and trade, and yet they turn around and tell us every education in our country must happen in a western-styled classroom or it is not. The carpenters, fitters, farmers that we do not respect in Africa or Ghana are the same kind of people in the West who have developed and sustain their lot. The only difference might be that they hold paper accreditations, but more importantly, they are respected and paid accordingly.

Now, many a potential labor force of our country as found in our youth are disoriented and lost through half-baked non-pertinent classroom education. Because we lack respect for the farmer and the fitter, 99% of our youth who has tested secondary education want to only write and type. Please do not mention farming or any sort of apprenticeship outside of the office and the classroom to any SSS student. I remember when I was in the secondary school, even though I studied book agriculture and got very good mark for the GCE, I still was so disoriented with farming so much so that I feared everyday that one day every farmer was going to think like me and stop producing for us all, so I would have to at least farm for my own mouth. After my elder brother was dismissed for non-book performance and for seeking justice with school authorities, my dad, himself formal educationist, asked that he enrolled for electronics apprenticeship to a fierce resistance from him, just because as somebody who had been to secondary school (which he had not even finished) it was a shame for him to learn a trade through apprenticeship. It took a number of delegations of elders and time before my brother gave in. In no time he was enjoying the work and making some cedis for himself. Few years latter he was the first person to have opened up an electronics repair shop in our only science and technology university, KNUST, where not only did he service their electronics but joined as well in bequeathing workable technological know-how to a number of the university students. By that he has been an immense help to me to wherever I am today, even thought he might not type as I do.

What I am saying is that our current formal education system only creates already made CEOs, presidents, and type-and-write dudes, but not entrepreneurs, who look for business opportunities and set up own enterprises; not engineers who wear overalls and weld spinners, but tie cladding and pen welding dudes. Our former education is so disorienting and disillusioning that when our graduates at all levels do not get to be the CEOs and presidents (because we could only have one president in four years time), or sit in an air-conditioned office right from school are forced to go and labor for the West.

I read a piece on Ghanaweb written by a young man who has masters degree in mathematics and in other textbooks, but all he wanted to do was to type with Microsoft office 2007 for SSNIT. Unfortunately, they were enough Form Four Leavers to do the typing and filing. He is crying foul and blaming politics and nepotism after he ran out of the country telling everybody to do so. What a loss!!! See, this is the point, why shouldn’t Ghana and all Africa educate her citizens according to her special needs? After spending millions of cedis on this chap, he would rather dislodge a Form Four Leaver, who is also Ghanaian, just because he has the so-called better education with no hands on the job expertise. If that education which we all are advocating for is not just metaphysics, then the young disgruntled mathematician would rather be busying himself with metallurgy or something appropriate to his level of assumed expertise, finding ways to utilize our bauxite and other minerals to manufacturing aircrafts, electronic components and others, rather than vying for filing job. I don’t blame him, but I do those who gave him such an inapt education for Ghana, because now we lost him to America – it doesn’t really matter what he is doing there, the thing is we lost him; and he is pulling more youth out of the country to other foreign lands with his article.

I see young people flood our already congested filthy urban areas. The government can’t cope with the surge anymore. Now she is spending millions or just hot buccal cavity air advocating for the return to the land. What defeatist blindness!!! For a long time, since PNDC era, advocating for return to the land just because our cities are chocking, and our youthful graduates of all levels are demanding for white-collar jobs from the government, not because they had seen it prudent. Na who caus’am? ‘Wasn’t I cultivating my land for cocoa, plantain, yam, maize etc; wasn’t I farming my livestock and poultry, wasn’t I doing my fishing; was I not teaching all these to my children as well…, ask mother Ghana, when you came with your half-baked meta-physical innumeracy and literacy classroom thing that you call education, that in the end alienates me from the pragmatic way of leaving for brainwashing classroom intellectualism with all its associate ‘animal rights’ that is only satisfied with write-and-type jobs that gives me a big taste for poisoned canned fish instead fresh or smoked tilapia, tie instead of my Fugu or plain cloth that allows for aeration in the humid Ghanaian weather, Italian made shoes instead of apt chawchaw or ahenemma, schooling me to trade my fresh palm-wine and pitoo for expensive Guinness and ABC for the sake of the imperialist capitalist, my fufuo, aquare, kenke or tuozafi of homegrown rice for artificially engineered and deodorized rice with imported spaghetti and other poisonous accessories of bright colors which only appeals to the eye, making fun of my dark green but nutritious kontommere; and in the end you only realize that the city is chocking of wannabe people like you, now when you feel the stiff competition for the pseudo-good-but-poisonous Western products because of the people brainwashed mindset now, you cry for me to go back to the ‘village’; but I tell myself, too late buddy, I’m ‘stupid’ no more (because now with the brainwashing I believe I’m wiser), so now we all go dei here, cos I no de move’. Brothers and sisters, the saddest thing is that these defeatist stakeholders still fail to realize the cause of the rural-urban drift, and thus continue to feed the youth with the same undirected loose meta-physicals they call education. Who are the stakeholders? All of us are with those in government, but unfortunately most of us are carried away by every light wind that blows from the West, thinking everything Western or Western-advocated is good; and that all African is trash, with the results of throwing away the best we had.

What could be done then with our education system? First of all, not only in education but in all, we must tailor our education to our special needs and environment. Before this takes place, stakeholders must formulate an appropriate vision of aspirations and ambitions for the nation according to our natural and human resources. We do not have to be jack-of-all-trade nation if that would mean jack-of-all-mediocrity. We must focus strategically in order to be a global force. Though not a good exemplary, all North Korea did was to channel all its might in nuclear armament to wrangle all kinds of supplies from South Korea and America including money (I hope you get the concept). Australians mostly do not train for doctors, lawyers and such of your high profile professions, they concentrate on farming and its associate industries but with their money they poach the best of such expertise from all over the world. Taiwan has taken over computers and associate electronics; with India in the race of software and all kinds of outsourcing. Our education must be 80% industrial based with a viable research facility focused toward streamlined policies and ambitions. Our education system must be streamlined for specific expertise and skills just after the JSS level to avoid waste of time, resources and acumen, which is the direction of the present directionless education systems. Our human resources must be trained to meet our special needs as a country, in short.

Apprenticeship must be given formal recognition by government, businesses, banks and all stakeholders for technical, infrastructural and financial assistance, better remuneration, and social respect. The government must work through quality control institutions to certify and document graduates of apprenticeship by way of checking products and services given by these all-important state men and women to national development and sustenance.

All stakeholders and individuals must also unschooled our minds and that of the masses of foreign pictures of development, education and better living. The typical Ghanaian lives his life according to what people say and expect of him, without any original inner convictions, goals and aspirations. To me development is attaining contentment in one’s own unique environment, void of all sorts of pollutions that endanger good health and long life; with enough nutritious food and apt shelter and clothing for all. Not necessarily a maze of skyscrapers of crisscrossing highways with chemically fouled air and noisy environment that harbors all kind of infestations, both human and animal, where perversity of all kind is rife. Development that poses treat to social fitness and sanity and godliness is counter-productive. Thus education is the skills and knowledge that equips one to live a fulfilling life in one’s unique environment irrespective of the place of acquisition.

Conclusion Until our mindsets, attitudes and actions are renewed and directed in the vein of the above, all operating in the medium of non-hypocritical godliness, we Ghanaians and Africans as a whole, would continue to be uneducated educated wannabes, tossed here and there by Western remote-controls. If we continue with this liberalized unmanaged wholesale formal education system, we will continue to suffer the unbridled brain-drain that stakeholders just make noise about everyday. Our education must instill in us creativity and the indispensable importance of combining the head with the hands as opposed to just metaphysical intellectualism, which only creates idle wise men and masters, only ready to be served, not to serve. When our education become industrial based and relevant to our environment everybody would be busy, eliminating the situation where we all fight over the few CEO and secretarial jobs around, which results in what some term ethnic sentimentalism, cronyism and plutocracy. All those big terms revolve around one big human phenomenon: favoritism, which happens everywhere in the world (as adverse that it might be), and which could only be relegated into irrelevancy when there is enough, (at least the basics), for all. There are not many other effective workable ways, because even if it is left with only one nuclear family in Ghana, and for that matter in the whole world, and there is not enough for all, the one mother of all will favor at least one over the others – it’s just human. We must therefore spur development and productivity with our education by growing and grooming what we need to consume in our developmental efforts; and consume what we grow and groom. After that we can think of exporting the surplus. This must pertain to all sectors of national endeavor. God bless Ghana; and happy 50th anniversary to you.