Mother: Hello, my son wrote the resit, but the result hasn’t appeared on his portal. What can we do about it?
Me: I have uploaded the results. It’s out of my hands now.
Mother: He says it hasn’t reflected.
Me: If the result has not reflected, he should contact the HoD or the Department. It is not your place to call.
Mother: Okay
I had that conversation two weekends ago. It is an example of the stress that teachers currently go through. This parent was reasonable; some parents can be disagreeable to the point of vulgarity.
A colleague received a call from parents in France. After the mother had attempted in vain to cajole the colleague to pass her child, the father called and angrily demanded the reason the teacher refused to pass his child, who had a job waiting in France. His words were harsh. The harassment is not limited to parents.
Teachers are hemmed in from all angles about passes and grades. Ironically, the same focus is not directed to teaching/learning, coursework, and the general attitude towards learning. The root cause is the superficiality that has become the hallmark of Ghanaian society. The majority
of Ghanaians are obsessed with appearances, the rot underneath completely ignored.
In the tertiary classroom, admission policies might be waived to enrol learners who are ill-prepared for tertiary work. Such students feel entitled to pass without effort. They do not value classroom interaction, oblivious of the reality that “little drops of water make mighty ocean.”
Every lecture missed implies a knowledge gap. Every task ignored by a learner implies the learner’s lost opportunity to test her/his grasp of taught material. Every assignment neglected implies a dent in continuous assessment – loss of marks.
Many learners parade a lackadaisical attitude throughout the term, so they find emptiness in their brains during the final examination.
Naturally, such fail. Diligent students do not fail.
Students might strongly disagree with a teacher’s classroom approach, but diligent ones who focus on taught information instead of the speaker’s demerits garner valuable knowledge from the classroom for skill and expertise.
This article in no way endorses teacher laziness, patronage or other reprehensible behaviour. It merely makes the point that diligence among learners is greatly rewarding.
Compounding the woes of the teacher is high student numbers. Somehow, school administrators in this country consistently, conveniently forget that the teacher: learner ratio for effective classroom interaction is 1:15 or a maximum of 1:25. Over here, it’s in large tens or hundreds.
The numbers across classrooms are simply overwhelming. Logically, the high numbers adversely impact the classroom environment.
Yet, overnight bodies eye the numbers to allow the commercialisation of education. Numbers imply funds for management, though teaching/learning facilities might be grossly inadequate. Investment in technological infrastructure is pathetically miserly in many situations, despite students being charged annually for such user facilities.
Hence, the technological impact of education in the country tends to be low, sometimes completely missing.
Amidst such academic hollowness, a teacher is expected to produce miracles.
Oversight bodies nibble at monitoring to scrutinise numbers between enrolment and graduation, glossing quality. Institutional CEOs are happy to stress “churning” numbers.
Learners busily chase certificates. Superficial ones are satisfied, so conduct a thanksgiving service to close the learning journey.
Yet there is a heavy price to pay for the national superficiality regarding education. The ultimate price being paid is missing the standards of 21st-century education.
Large numbers of graduates who turn out to be industrial misfits provide the starkest proof of the poor standards of our education.
Graduates’ unemployment rate is worryingly high. Those who are engaged by industry consistently fail to bring the requisite knowledge and skills to achieve the desired productivity.
The frightening reality is that, due to low productivity, the economy can just about support salaries.
Every time a new cohort of employees is added to the payroll, it further weakens the economy because productivity is unaligned. Yet salary negotiations continue unabated. Indeed, we pride ourselves on superficiality.
It is paradoxical that citizens flock the classrooms, especially at the tertiary level, yet knowledge apparently eludes us. Education is not just about certification and titles.
Each certificate, each title should impact the community by improving the quality of life. That is why successive governments are obliged to invest in education, by implication, to raise productive human capital. In principle, that is being targeted.
A most cursory glance at various curricular content and syllabi reveals that the educational system targets humanity, rightly so.
However, running the content fails to get us to the right destination – autonomy, mentality of changing for the better, designing sustainable solutions to problems, exploring vast resources and abounding technology to lend quality to life.
Again, over here, we destroy resources to compound humanity’s woes. We negate our humanity.
Clearly, we need a holistic approach to simultaneously tackle our numerous challenges and effect solutions. The two must go hand-in-hand.
Starting from kindergarten, we must shift focus from fancy school names, commercialisation and the parading of certificates and titles to nurturing hearts and minds to unleash potential.
The nation needs human capital that perceives success through human sophistication – enthusiasm, dignity, diligence, excellence, moderation, a sense of shame for wrongdoing and a quest for autonomy – to mention these. Those values effectively oppose superficiality.
The writer is a Sr Lecturer, Language and Communication Skills, Takoradi Technical University. Takoradi.
Email: disafab@gmail.com
Source:
www.graphic.com.gh
