Please allow me to sound a little paradoxical here.

In my days in PRESEC- Legon, there was religious tolerance and respect. Muslims did not necessarily participate in all Christian religious ceremonies. Don’t know what has happened today. Tolerance is key and must be woven in to ensure no one is disadvantaged educationally because of religion.

Essentially, you can't go to a faith based school and expect them to bend to your religious demands....it's unheard of. What I know is, when you go to Rome, you do what the Romans do. Knowing the rules before hand, you don't go there later and ask for the rules to be changed to favour you. That is absurd! In every game we play by the rules. Simple!

May be we should take the history of how these schools even became public schools in the first place. The churches have always been against their schools being co-opted by the government as public schools because they feel they can manage their schools by themselves (after all they built them). It is the government who needs these schools as part of the public education system. Even in recent times, the mission schools have been calling on government to return their schools to them so that they would be in a better position to nurture and train the students in the fear of the Lord and Allah. Muslims who decide to attend mission schools do so not because they don't have options, but it is because they want to experience a certain educational tradition. How can you love the mission training which includes morning service and question why you must attend the morning service? If mission schools do not insist on the attendance of church service by all, it will rather encourage the students to be truant and disobedient. When you go to a mission school, do what they do and if you don't want to be part, you advice yourself. We must stop the hypocrisy in Ghana. In any case, when Government took over the mission schools, did they alter the mission and vision of these schools? Absolutely not!

I am a staunch Christian and wouldn't mind attending a mosque when invited and might even attend a shrine if an event is happening there and I'm invited. Let's learn to tolerate that which would not harm us. This is not the biggest problem confronting mankind.
Whether mission, Islamic or government schools, we are all Ghanaians and should be allowed to seek knowledge anywhere provided we qualify.

Divine Nkrumah
pipiromedia@yahoo.com
5th March, 2015