Another Sad Day for Ghanaian Education

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

In any situation of significant human interaction, either professional or casual, there are bound to erupt conflicts and misunderstandings. What matters is how problems are resolved. Tackled constructively, both parties to a conflict are apt to mature emotionally and develop intellectually. Where matters are allowed to degenerate into resentment and enmity, the resulting damage can be physically irreparable and psychologically and emotionally devastating.

This appears to have been the case of 22-year-old Ms. Charity Nyarko, a kindergarten teacher at the St. Joseph's Anglican Preparatory School at Asuafo, near Nsuta, in the Asante Region (See "Female Teacher 'Beaten' To Death In Ashanti Region" Modernghana.com/ MyJoyOnline.com 11/26/13). In the main, Ms. Nyarko is reported to have excessively disciplined one of her young charges which resulted in an unspecified bodily injury to the child. Naturally riled by the situation, some relatives of the injured child decided to literally take the law into their own hands by assaulting Ms. Nyarko.

At least one of the injured child's relatives is reported to have retaliated by hurling a nondescript chair at the "offending" teacher who, in a self-defensive attempt to fleeing her livid assailant, fell into an open gutter - or sewage system - and severely injured herself, resulting in her tragic death later at the hospital. We are further informed that a remorse-stricken Ms. Nyarko, accompanied by the unnamed headteacher of her school, had gone to the home of her injured pupil to apologize for her apparently inappropriate disciplinary measure when she was met with the depraved hostility resulting in her death.

This is not the kind of Ghana I want to be chest-out proud of. I am sick to my stomach and heavy-hearted with anger and disconsolate grief. As yet, we have not been afforded the full details of the exact nature of both the kindergartner's offense and Ms. Nyarko's disciplinary response. Whatever be the case, an unpardonable crime has been committed; a young talented and promising life has been needlessly wasted where adequate professional, and even legal, sanctioning would have amicably restored the faith of both parties in the most modern acculturation system that we have known to date.

By way of remedy, I would like to see three forward-looking measures promptly instituted in order to forestall the apparently inappropriate punishment that resulted in the bodily injury to the child, and the consequently tragic demise of a young teacher, at the dawn of a promising career, who evidently believed that she was just about the age-old rotuine pedagogical process of not sparing the rod in order not to spoil the child, in Biblical parlance.

One, strict and clear guidelines for pupil discipline (perhaps in the form of a slim volumed handbook) must be codified, published and freely distributed throughout the country by the Ministry of Education. Two, a professional code of conduct for all elementary and secondary school teachers must also be clearly articulated in print and made available to all public educational institutions and be widely publicized in the national media. And finally, a codified behavioral guide for the parents and guardians of schoolchildren must be published and distributed across the country by the Ministry of Education. The monetary and/or capital resources invested in such a perennial public-service project is likely to positively pay off in the form of the creation of a healthy environment for all stakeholders in the academic and cultural development of our children, as well as the future well-being of the country at large.

It is almost certain that the assailants of Ms. Nyarko had a troubled upbringing. Which, of course, is in no way to imply that they ought to be spared the most commensurately punitive measures allowed by the law.

___________________________________________________________
*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Department of English
Nassau Community College of SUNY
Garden City, New York
Nov. 26, 2013
E-mail: [email protected]
###