Stone mouse – Innovation in education

Teacher Augustine Kusi of the Assin Asamankese District Assembly Primary School needs to be commended, while the District Director of Education, Shirley Coleman, has to come again!

Teacher Kusi, in an innovative way, used stones to teach pupils the mechanics of a computer mouse.

The teaching session, that went viral on social media this month, shows the teacher coaching pupils on imaginary clicks on stones in their hands shaped like computer mousses.

The interesting clip that portrayed the lack of teaching materials in rural areas was poignant with the contrasts, the teacher’s passion and the rural classroom bereft of any modern teaching material.

However, the teacher’s foresight was frowned on by officials of the District Education Directorate.

For the directorate, the development was a disgrace to the Ghana Education Service (GES), particularly as the school in question was one of the best in the district in the last Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE).

The head of the directorate showed her displeasure on a local radio station when interviewed, stressing that the information should not have gone out and wondered who the reporter got permission from to bring to light a social challenge that needed transparency and the dissemination of information for solutions.

While she was serious about her annoyance on how the information had gotten out, Madam Coleman failed to be abreast of the basic facts pertaining to the school.

Thus, a donation of computers to the school was met with the realisation by the   Ghana Investment Fund for Electronic Communications (GIFEC) that the school had no power supply.

Innovative teaching

Evidence abounds on innovative was to educate children in resource-poor areas.

Development organisations, like IBIS and partners, have shown the way through their Wing School projects in the East Gonja District of the Northern Region.

There, teachers specially trained, engage children in being literate and numerate by first using their mother tongue.

In most areas where schools are set up by the communities themselves, they make do with what they have to give their children an education.

Pebbles, sticks, in fact any local material that depicts a concept is used innovatively by teachers, and the results are documented for policy makers to know.

In the Gonja East District alone, more than 3000 children have been educated by this mode of teaching, and the schools, community-led, have now been formalised into the GES stream.

Edu-preneurial E

It is an indictment on the District Education Directorate for not even knowing that the school did not have a computer.

It is also an indictment on their supervision for not knowing that there was no power supply to the school.

If they had known, they could have liaised better with benevolent organisations such as GIFEC who immediately donated computers upon hearing the news.

Then, maybe, a solar powered computer may have been what GIFEC might have donated.

The views of the District Education Directorate of Assin Asamankese are scary, as they portray attitudes of policy makers who are not innovative or transparent.

Unable to deal with challenges, they also are unwilling to throw light on challenging situations for the mobilisation of various views and assistance.

The Assin Asamankese “stone mouse” tutorial is a lesson to educational policy makers that the resource gap is enormous.

It is a wake-up call for them to be “edu-preneurial,” that is, resourceful in their thinking through ways of offering education to the children in remote areas.

As they sit in Accra, in well-resourced offices and supervise well-resourced schools, they should bear in mind that children out there are thirsty for education, and would imbibe literacy and numeracy skills so long as delivered by resourceful teachers like Augustine Kusi.

Writer’s email: caroline.boateng@graphic.com.gh