– The Parent’s Role

In my initial article detailing how sub-standard and poor quality textbooks have flooded our schools and are used to educate Ghanaian school children, I indicated that Education was a complex issue to discuss in one article. I promised to serialize the issue from a variety of perspectives to hopefully, provide a broad-ranging and objective discussion. In keeping with that promise, this article looks at the role of parents in the mis-education of Ghanaian children.

This article is in no way an attempt to tell parents how to educate their children. The responsibility for a child’s education, formally or informally, and notwithstanding the so-called Ghanaian cultural practice of “a village raising a child”, rests solely and absolutely with parents, no matter their standing in society or their personal circumstances. So let no one allege that this article is some veiled attempt at social engineering, utilizing Education to manipulate perceptions on parental values and responsibility.

Whenever a problem can be easily associated with an identifiable entity, such as an institution, especially a government institution, all of us are quick to point the finger at that institution. We heap all our faults on the institution, as if by itself the institution originated and orchestrated a scheme to create the problem. Take for example the alleged corruption that pervades at the Electricity Company of Ghana or the Ghana Police or any other public institution – none of these institutions acts alone. In the particular case of corruption, there is often a giver and a taker of a bribe. In a more technically accurate and wider definition of corruption, this immoral behaviour extends to include not just the use of public resources for private benefit but also the indirect collusion of a behaviour that subverts the public interest in any way shape or form. A legal definition of Public Interest aside, anything that stands to benefit a group of people simply because they are a recognized component of a human universal construct is considered “public”. Actions which subvert this public interest in Education, in any school, private or public, either by action or inaction, deliberately or ignorantly, are inimical to the proper education of Ghanaian children. Therefore such actions, in my view, contribute to the mis-education of Ghanaian children.

This is why the role of parents in enabling corrupt practices in educational institutions deserves scrutiny, if a truly objective and frank discussion is to take place on the Mis-Education of Ghanaian Children. Admissions processes in schools provide a good typical example. Collectively, Ghanaians are wrongly resigned to the mentality that admissions are granted not on the basis of an applicant’s qualifications and merit but on the basis of a favour, granted by school authorities to the applicant. So in the days when determination of a child’s readiness for starting school, at least at the basic level, was based solely on placing the child’s arm over the head until it touched the ear on the other side of the head, would have been inapplicable in this corruption-riddled era. Many of Ghana’s leading statesmen and renowned public servants could never have seen the corners of a classroom under current circumstances. This negative mentality has so permeated the fabric of our educational system that both school authorities and parents capitalize on it selfishly and shamelessly, subverting the process as a result and keeping it alive. The practice on the parental side, breeds and feeds fear among parents, who will do anything to get their children into school, rather than stand up for building stronger and credible institutions. If you doubt this conclusion, speak to any parent privately, and many of them will readily confess to the fact that they would rather not take a particular action against any school which they perceived might whittle the chances of their child’s access to good, quality education.

With this in mind, when I got a casual offer by a couple of acquaintances to attend a PTA meeting to be held in a Catholic School in Accra, I readily jumped at it. I wanted to find out if at least one instance could confirm or dispel this conclusion. At first glance, the school appears to be a good school. Discrete investigations indicated the teachers are generally alive to their professional responsibilities. What I found out however was a high level of parental apathy in school affairs, emanating not from an unwillingness to participate, but a general feeling that services from the school are on sale to the highest bidder, or the fear of victimization by school authorities if such a parent is black-listed due to a position they take on a matter affecting the school. It was shocking! A Catholic School? To be clear, I found no direct, physical evidence of this alleged corrupt sale to moneyed interests. However, a carefully crafted administrative and/or management policy, is at play, between top school administrators and the Parish Priest, who for example, pre-appoint parishioners to school PTA Executive positions, while simultaneously presenting a false PTA Meeting agenda item titled “Election of Executives”. When the said PTA meeting was called, instead of elections taking place, individuals were introduced to the gathering. No elections took place. The election results were fixed, by the administrators and resident clergy. Clearly, rigging elections and match-fixing it not the sole preserve of politicians and Football Associations alone; schools are also involved too.

To some extent, I can understand a desire to have parishioners hold key positions in on a school PTA. In fact, it may even be helpful to the school, bearing in mind that Catholic schools are private schools and that there is a missionary component built into the Catholic Education system. The Catholic Church should stand by and make the claim to this policy boldly and clearly if it so believes, and so long as it doesn’t use the policy to discriminate. However, to deceptively promote a policy of open, free and fair election of executives publicly, while simultaneously privately enacting a rigged and fixed election is completely immoral, of the kind that no number of visitations to the confessional will absolve. Imagine if Jesus Christ used such methods to choose his Twelve Disciples, what would the Father Almighty have done to him? Further investigations revealed that a few brave parents and parishioners resisted being co-opted into the PTA by this method. Still, the Parish Priest and his conniving school administrators pushed the measure through. If this is true (and indications are that it is indeed so), I wonder how these Catholics are able to say Mass and/or take Communion. These kinds of practices should make us pause and question our Church Leaders more closely and critically, as Pope Francis has stressed.

But to the subject of the PTA Meeting to which I was casually invited, and to which I enthusiastically jumped. The PTA Meeting took place on 13th June, 2013, at 5:30pm. Generally, the meeting progressed smoothly until the issue of corporal punishment saw a very passionate expression of discontent by some parents, one of whom endorsed “… in principle, the corporal punishment of his children…” but opposed “… in principle, the senseless corporal punishment of his children….” I found his position on the matter very enlightening. From my observations, many parents seemed to endorse the frustrations expressed by these two parents. However, there was a palpable silence, almost a deafening one, from the rest of the parents in attendance. None of them spoke up, when it was obvious that none would tolerate any physical punishment on their children. Yet they sat there, surreptitiously nodding their agreement, and doing what we Ghanaians do best – gossiping. One of the speakers was cut short, obviously because the Executives were uncomfortable about the degree of specificity of his comments, and interrupted his comments on the basis that he was taking too long in making his comments. Personally, the applauded both speakers for their courage in highlighting the problem. One other parent spoke up, rather nervously, and sheepishly suggested that instead of a long commentary, the speakers should present their comments in a Suggestion Box.

Ha! Suggestion Box? This guy must be some civil servant living on Planet Civil Service. If Ghanaians are honest we all know what happens to ideas in a Suggestion Box – they get burned or sold to the groundnut seller, without anyone reading a single line of any of the suggestions therein. In fact, we know that the Suggestion Box is just a foil for blunting objective criticism and abdicating responsible, decisive action on important matters. The “Suggestion Box” speaker is typical of the fear that has gripped many a parent into inaction. Such people make completely useless and idiotic propositions like this, in favour of a more active, constructive and critical engagement in school affairs because they are afraid. They are all afraid of their children being victimized and “punished”. Thus in a parent’s warped zeal to protect their children, they choose the cowardly and hypocritical option which exposes the entire school and all the children and parents to the wicked machinations of corrupt school officials. Those school officials who resort to such tactics of victimization and vindictiveness ought to be ashamed of themselves.

The question is, how long can you protect your child this way? How many times can you always pay a bribe to get your child what they want or out of an undesirable situation? How many times can you carry water for your child? Yes, our children come from us, but they form their character and make their own choices as they grow, and eventually live their own lives. We all know that soon enough, neither are parents able to shape their children’s choices or protect them; and because we do not formulate a habit of standing up for what is right or helping to build strong institutions which stand to benefit us all or the public interest, soon enough, our children are exposed to the very diseased social systems we help create, by your selfish and corrupt behaviour. At one point, we may feel successful because we seem to be able to pay for everything, but soon enough, we become victims as well, because at some point in one’s life, a parent will be priced out of a particular situation, a situation he/she will not have the influence and the resources to buy. At that point you reap the full benefits of your years of subverting the public interest. In my language, there is a proverb that says literally, the shade changes, meaning “no condition is permanent”.

So parents, it is not just the Ministry of Education and the GES which, incidentally, are made up of adults and/or parents, that are mis-educating our Ghanaian children. As parents, our behaviour, our actions and inactions, make us accessories to the same crime. We are sometimes like the quack writers and bribe-taking headteachers/headmistresses, and we help to lower the quality of education for our children. Ghanaians will call you “too known” and all sorts of other unsavoury Ghanaian colloquialisms. Ironically, meet a Ghanaian with a problem with a policeman on the street and the first thing the Ghanaian yells out to the policeman is “Do you know who I am?”. Well, isn’t that rich!!! “Too Known” – “Do You Know Who I Am?. It takes only a hypocrite to bestride these two vastly contradictory worlds. I will be back.


Francis Dery
Email: deryfrancis@yahoo.com
Accra, Ghana