Don’t impose communal worship on every student
The Dean of the Law School of the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), Mr Kofi Abotsi, says the imposition of mandatory communal worship on every student within a public school owned by the government is a flagrant violation of the law.
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Such imposition, he said, amounted to an abuse of the religious rights of the students affected.Rather, he said, schools could shift the focus on mandatory communal worship to an intensification of the moral educational component of the training and target building the moral character of students by incorporating moral education in the syllabi.
"Permitting students of different faith callings to practise their religion and to stay away from communal worship sessions will enhance respect for their rights on an issue as difficult as religion," he stated.
Uphold rights
Speaking at a lecture in commemoration of the St Augustine Feast Day, Mr Abotsi said, "While the promotion of communal worship within the school context can continue to be fostered as a respected tradition within erstwhile mission schools, permitting other faiths and denominations to express their orientations simultaneously is the right way to upholding their constitutional rights.
"In the end, religion is a matter of private choice on the part of the individual and the role of the school can and should at best be supportive where this election coincides with the denomination or faith of the school," he stated. The lecture was organised by the St Augustine's Old Students Union (APSU) on the topic: "Religious tolerance in educational institutions: A legal perspective."
Incumbent obligation
Mr Abotsi, an old student of St Augustine’s, said allowing students to freely express their religious orientation was a constitutional obligation incumbent on schools and the government.
"Given the reality, these schools should be helped in the new phase of adapting to the expression of constitutional rights such as religion within school communal events, so that the balance of harmony and institutional values can ultimately be restored and promoted," he said
He stated that like all other rights guaranteed under the Constitution, the provision of religious freedom implied that adherents to various religious callings had the right to manifest those expressions without the fear of punishment or suppression by anyone or authority.
He added that unlike other rights whose boundaries remained unclear or unascertainable, the right to religious tolerance could not be left undefined, given its propensity to cause havoc when left unchecked.
Multi-cultural environments
Ordinarily, he said, schools provided public spaces for the training of pupils and students and the inculcation of societal values.
"As such public spaces, schools represent multi-cultural environments, in respect of which the permissible social mores must reflect that diversity of the prevailing cultures.
"Where schools are state-owned and public, they are public utility and cannot become the instrument for the nurturing and perpetuation of private ideology or religion," Mr Abotsi said. According to him, when schools were publicly owned, their administration must reflect the independence stance of the government from matters deemed private and in respect of which the state had assumed a disinterested posture.
Steep decline
Mr Abotsi argued that the flawed transitional process in former mission schools had contributed to the current challenges being encountered.
According to him, following the seeming takeover of mission schools by the government from the mid-80s, mission schools began to be administered as public schools, resulting in the removal of the administrative control of missions over those schools.
"With that has come the challenge of de-Christianising the schools and truly making them public facilities, as opposed to the private assets of the missions as they had hitherto been.
"The key issue lies in the mode by which these institutions were acquired and converted to public facilities," Mr Abotsi asked.
National debate
A former Member of Parliament for New Juaben North and former Minister of State, Mr Hackman Owusu-Agyemang, who chaired the lecture, said public debate on religious tolerance was crucial for the nation to thoroughly discuss how best to reach a solution satisfactory to all sections of society.