Ban the lectures and focus on the world of work: Appropriate education for developing Ghana
At a recent presentation on relevant education in the 21st century for some graduate students at a leading public university, each person was asked the courses they offered for their first degree. After that I asked, “What can you do with it?” That very simple question caused uneasiness among the group where they could not clearly say what they could do after all those years of schooling.
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Having realised that there was not much they could do in the real world, they had returned for some more schooling in the graduate arena. But will there be hope for these youngsters even after graduate school?
The traditional academic type education being hoisted on the nation’s youth needs to be thought through to see if that is what Ghana needs at this point in her history. Frankly, it has long outlived its usefulness, and has really become part of the problem considering the nation’s continuous underdevelopment. If, as they say, technical universities should be problem-solving-oriented, then what must the traditional universities be? All educational institutions must be problem solving to see both the people and the nation prosper.
Teaching methods
The days of sitting and copying are long gone. The days of sitting to be lectured at, talked at, taught at, thought at and tested at must all be revisited by our university dons. That mode does not work anymore; it is archaic. Some serious retooling are in order. There has to be a better way for quality useful education to happen for the sake of the teeming youth, many of whom have great expectations. Every subject must be seen as useful in clearly visible ways. And that is why the mode of instruction itself must change.
As a teaching method, lecturing tends to be a monotonous activity. Too much of it breeds boredom and passivity. Applications are the key to the real enlightenment towards one’s practical future and self-fulfilment. In an earlier column, “Work and happiness: Productive memories from Class one,” I noted that the work ethic was a hefty part of the curriculum; we were expected to produce tangible results, and we did: “A solid, lasting foundation depends on the learning process itself: promoting interaction between doing, thinking, reflecting and doing again.”
A “Gifted And Talented Education” (or “Gifts And Talents of Everybody”) works on the figurative premise that the rain does not fall on only one roof, and that everybody is good for something in their own way, and they must be given that opportunity to showcase their ability. That something is what skilled conscientious educators must look for in the people they teach by spreading out the instructional “tasks” time where instruction is not a one-man show with the instructor glued onto the “stage” lecturing.
Students’ apathy, unemployment and poverty do not happen by themselves; they are caused. The more people are given the opportunity to demonstrate who they really are, and how their natural inclinations can be identified and tapped with skills to support the larger purposes of life, the more the nation itself progresses.
Different people with different talents
In essence, any group of people consists of individuals who are endowed in different ways reflecting on how they perceive and act on knowledge. Steve Jobs famously advised: Let every brain in the game. In Ghana, we tend to view education as mostly sitting in classrooms or lecture halls reproducing the same notes for all manner of certificates: BECE, WASSCE and degrees. Hence, the culture that perpetuates poverty through a most narrow perspective of examination based only on the academic type linguistic/logical mathematical ability. Many other people desire to work with their hands, and realise their own potential that way.
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The role of educators is changing so rapidly that the exit certificates must mean something of value; something much more than a summation of indolent theories stacked sky high; something with skills that supports a lifetime of productivity and fulfilment; something that engages the head, heart and hands for lifelong learning and doing.
The notion of “talking at” or “thinking at” learners is a cheap debilitating method of instruction. The question really is for learners to be supported to act on knowledge to improve on their situation by becoming problem solvers in their own right. Poorer nations tend to give the youth a false hope, a misleading education which can be ruinous in both the short and long terms.
Imagine a person sitting for three years in lower primary, three years in upper primary, three years in junior high; three years in high school, four years in the university, and after a mostly sitting and listening posture of 16 solid years being released with a certificate and expected to perform creditably in a gruelling competitive world. This is what we need to understand about human nature. The lack of productivity even in the highest places may easily have been caused by an institutionalised habit of sloth and apathy.
Habits are strange things. Good habits are spot on, but where bad habits exist and do block the progress of a most potentially rich country like Ghana, they have to be recognised and nipped in the bud. The right habits are crucial; they make the difference between failure and success; poverty and fruitfulness.
[Email: anishaffar@gmail.com]