Features
The blind leading the Blind?
I believe we all know what the situation will be when a blind leads another blind. This is what the likely scenario will be in a few years in our education sector if care is not taken by those in charge of providing quality education to the coming generations.
Only recently, some textbooks have found themselves in basic schools that have raised a lot of concerns about their contents, some bordering on what some describe as tribal or ethnic bigotry. What it means is that some ethnic groups (tribes) have been sighted for ridicule and disdain. How an author can put such stuff in writing for young minds to imbibe beats the mind completely unless that author has a personal agenda to poison these young minds.
People are known to malign others in fictional story books, biographies and autobiographies or even in poetry, but textbooks? Anyway, personal agenda or not, the thrust of my write-up today is how the stuff in some of these textbooks is packaged. Because the official language of Ghana is English, the language becomes the tool of any endeavour to educate or inform the student.
That my 13-year-old grandniece puts down a textbook and, with a red pen in hand, sets to correct the grammar of one such published material, is a clear indictment on our education system. She picks up wrong spelling, wrong punctuation and many other proofreading errors in a book that is supposed to be approved for basic education in this country. Meanwhile, the author of the textbook in question definitely is not a basic school student. But my little girl identified 39 errors of grammar, spelling and punctuation in this textbook.
I hear there is a National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NaCCA) that has the responsibility of vetting all materials meant to serve as textbooks for education purposes. The question I have for NaCCA is: do they just pass everything that a publisher puts forward into the system? Is the Council not clothed to vet grammar, content and factual presentation of content?
Meanwhile, on NaCCA’s website are a lot of rejected publications, yet these offensive textbooks met the criteria for use by schools. How come? Where are the safety nets around the release of materials for schools? Does NaCCA have competent staff to look at or vet all the areas that make a textbook appropriate for education purposes? I am referring to proofreading issues and factual presentation of texts. Or anyone is allowed to conjure their own ‘facts’ from hearsay or their own fertile minds and imagination and publish them for our school children?
We as a nation cannot allow authors of textbooks to behave like illiterate bloggers who write any trash on social media platforms for public consumption. We are discussing the future of our young generation who need guidance and decorous learning in truthfulness and correctness of the medium in which they are expressed. We cannot assume that young minds are discerning enough to determine what is right stuff or trash.
I was caned in Primary Four for daring to tell my class teacher that it was not Tetteh Quarshie who introduced cocoa to Ghana and that before he brought in the Fernando Po variety, there was cocoa in this country. There are records today that show that there was cocoa in our land long before Tetteh Quarshie was even born. Young as I was then, I knew because my late father was a cocoa farmer and knew the difference between the Tetteh Quarshie variety and what was in existence before him.
So, because people are looking to make quick money, they have no time to do proper research into the subject matter they want to produce for education purposes? Definitely, we kill the soul of a nation by this kind of shoddy exercises in the guise of textbooks. In which traditional area in Ghana, for instance, are chiefs elected? We all know that our chieftaincy institution is not clothed in an electoral process.
What is the role of the Ghana Education Service and, by extension, the Ministry of Education in all of this? Do they just flood the classrooms with these materials because NaCCA has found them good for our children? I have heard and watched the Deputy Director-General of the Ghana Education Service vigorously defending one of these offensive materials and I felt sick to my stomach.
Now, to the most intriguing part: is the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) going to examine these basic school children based on the bad grammar, punctuations and spellings? What about the blatant falsehood in the historical narrative of these authors? Can WAEC explain what its role will be in this matter of offensive textbooks serving as reference points for our school children?
It is not only the future of our young generation that is at stake here, but that of the nation as a whole. I see a future where the nation’s foundation is predicated on total falsehood accepted as the truth. If NaCCA, GES and the Ministry of Education are blind, one can foresee the abyss our education is running into.
These institutions of state must bear the vicarious responsibility for the end result that comes out of shoddy and unprofessional educational materials for our school children. They can rescue themselves by ordering a total withdrawal of all these offensive materials from our schools immediately. And the time to act is now, unless they are all blind.
Every child needs protection. They need protection from falsehood; protection from bigots with evil intent. The child needs protection from conniving officialdom today, not tomorrow.
By Dr. Akofa K. Segbefia
Writer’s email address:
akofa45@yahoo.com
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Features
Tears of Ghanaman, home and abroad
The typical native of Sikaman is by nature a hospitable creature, a social animal with a big heart, a soul full of the milk of earthly goodness, and a spirit too loving for its own comfort.
Ghanaman hosts a foreign pal and he spends a fortune to make him very happy and comfortable-good food, clean booze, excellent accommodation and a woman for the night.
Sometimes the pal leaves without saying a “thank you but Ghanaman is not offended. He’d host another idiot even more splendidly. His nature is warm, his spirit benevolent. That is the typical Ghanaian and no wonder that many African-Americans say, “If you haven’t visited Ghana. Then you’ve not come to Africa.
You can even enter the country without a passport and a visa and you’ll be welcomed with a pot of palm wine.
If Ghanaman wants to go abroad, especially to an European country or the United States, it is often after an ordeal.
He has to doze in a queue at dawn at the embassy for days and if he is lucky to get through to being interviewed, he is confronted by someone who claims he or she has the power of discerning truth from lie.
In short Ghanaman must undergo a lie-detector test and has to answer questions that are either nonsensical or have no relevance to the trip at hand. When Joseph Kwame Korkorti wanted a visa to an European country, the attache studied Korkorti’s nose for a while and pronounced judgment.
“The way I see you, you won’t return to Ghana if I allow you to go. Korkorti nearly dislocated her jaw; Kwasiasem akwaakwa. In any case what had Korkorti’s nose got to do with the trip?
If Ghanaman, after several attempts, manages to get the visa and lands in the whiteman’s land, he is seen as another monkey uptown, a new arrival of a degenerate ape coming to invade civilized society. He is sneered at, mocked at and avoided like a plague. Some landlords abroad will not hire their rooms to blacks because they feel their presence in itself is bad business.
When a Sikaman publisher landed overseas and was riding in a public bus, an urchin who had the impudence and notoriety of a dead cockroach told his colleagues he was sure the black man had a tail which he was hiding in his pair of trousers. He didn’t end there. He said he was in fact going to pull out the tail for everyone to see.
True to his word he went and put his hand into the backside of the bewildered publisher, intent on grabbing his imaginary tail and pulling it out. It took a lot of patience on the part of the publisher to avert murder. He practically pinned the white miscreant on the floor by the neck and only let go when others intervene. Next time too…
The way we treat our foreign guests in comparison with the way they treat us is polar contrasting-two disparate extremes, one totally incomparable to the other. They hound us for immigration papers, deport us for overstaying and skinheads either target homes to perpetrate mayhem or attack black immigrants to gratify their racial madness
When these same people come here we accept them even more hospitably than our own kin. They enter without visas, overstay, impregnate our women and run away.
About half of foreigners in this country do not have valid resident permits and was not a bother until recently when fire was put under the buttocks of the Immigration Service
In fact, until recently I never knew Sikaman had an Immigration Service. The problem is that although their staff look resplendent in their green outfit, you never really see them anywhere. You’d think they are hidden from the public eye.
The first time I saw a group of them walking somewhere, I nearly mistook them for some sixth-form going to the library. Their ladies are pretty though.
So after all, Sikaman has an Immigration Service which I hear is now alert 24 hours a day tracking down illegal aliens and making sure they bound the exit via Kotoka International. A pat on their shoulder.
I am glad the Interior Ministry has also realised that the country has been too slack about who goes out or comes into Sikaman.
Now the Ministry has warned foreigners not to take the country’s commitment to its obligations under the various conditions as a sign of weakness or a source for the abuse of her hospitality.
“Ghana will not tolerate any such abuse,” Nii Okaija Adamafio, the Interior Minister said, baring his teeth and twitching his little moustache. He was inaugurating the Ghana Refugee and Immigration Service Boards.
He said some foreigners come in as tourists, investors, consultants, skilled workers or refugees. Others come as ‘charlatans, adventurers or plain criminals. “
Yes, there are many criminals among them. Our courts have tried a good number of them for fraud and misconduct.
It is time we welcome only those who would come and invest or tour and go back peacefully and not those whose criminal intentions are well-hidden but get exposed in due course of time.
This article was first published on Saturday March 14, 1998
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Features
Decisions have consequences
In this world, it is always important to recognise that every action or decision taken, has consequences.
It can result in something good or bad, depending on the quality of the decision, that is, the factors that were taken into account in the decision making.
The problem with a bad decision is that, in some instances, there is no opportunity to correct the result even though you have regretted the decision, which resulted in the unpleasant outcome.
This is what a friend of mine refers to as having regretted an unregretable regret. After church last Sunday, I was watching a programme on TV and a young lady was sharing with the host, how a bad decision she took, had affected her life immensely and adversely.
She narrated how she met a Caucasian and she got married to him. The white man arranged for her to join him after the marriage and processes were initiated for her to join her husband in UK. It took a while for the requisite documentation to be procured and during this period, she took a decision that has haunted her till date.
According to her narration, she met a man, a Ghanaian, who she started dating, even though she was a married woman.
After a while her documents were ready and so she left to join her husband abroad without breaking off the unholy relationship with the man from Ghana.
After she got to UK, this man from Ghana, kept pressuring her to leave the white man and return to him in Ghana. The white man at some point became a bit suspicious and asked about who she has been talking on the phone with for long spells, and she lied to him that it was her cousin.
Then comes the shocker. After the man from Ghana had sweet talked her continuously for a while, she decided to leave her husband and return to Ghana after only three weeks abroad.
She said, she asked the guy to swear to her that he would take care of both her and her mother and the guy swore to take good care of her and her mother as well as rent a 3-bedroom flat for her. She then took the decision to leave her husband and return to Ghana.
She told her mum that she was returning to Ghana to marry the guy in Ghana. According to her, her mother vigorously disagreed with her decision and wept.
She further added that her mum told her brother and they told her that they were going to tell her husband about her intentions.
According to her, she threatened that if they called her husband to inform him, then she would commit suicide, an idea given to her by the boyfriend in Ghana.
Her mum and brother afraid of what she might do, agreed not to tell her husband. She then told her husband that she was returning to Ghana to attend her Grandmother’s funeral.
The husband could not understand why she wanted to go back to Ghana after only three weeks stay so she had to lie that in their tradition, grandchildren are required to be present when the grandmother dies and is to be buried.
She returned to Ghana; the flat turns into a chamber and hall accommodation, the promise to take care of her mother does not materialise and generally she ends up furnishing the accommodation herself. All the promises given her by her boyfriend, turned out to be just mere words.
A phone the husband gave her, she left behind in UK out of guilty conscience knowing she was never coming back to UK.
Through that phone and social media, the husband found out about his boyfriend and that was the end of her marriage.
Meanwhile, things have gone awry here in Ghana and she had regretted and at a point in her narration, was trying desperately to hold back tears. Decisions indeed have consequences.
NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT’
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