Ghana needs a scientific education policy

The Akans refer to it as ‘Kaakyire’, the Ewes ‘Dorsusu3’, in the Hausa language, it is called ’Awuta’, 'Kaluɣu' in Dagbani, but in my Gurune tribe (among the Frafra group) we refer to it as the ‘Yibi-ka’, all implying, ‘the last born’ of the family.

Well, whatever nomenclature your tribe ascribed to it, many are those who can easily relate to this enviable family ‘accolade’ that was enjoyed at infancy, at one point in time, usually, by the last born.

Even in a hurry, one could readily recollect the special privileges that came with it and stocked squabbles among siblings. One of such being the general family rule that enabled the ‘Yibi-ka’ to remain the last person standing, each time diminishing returns set in during meals. This was a moral value every indigenous Ghanaian parent enforced to the latter, and it still prevails in most indigenous communal homes.

My late grandmother (Aleyagle of great memory) would either shout at or hit the knuckles of the senior sibling to retire earlier, during meals, for the younger one (the Yibi-ka) to finish up the remaining little food; whilst insinuating it was a taboo.

The real logic has always been that the elderly sibling eats at a much faster pace and with a more hunger-enduring capacity, hence, necessitating this natural family policy, to bridge the inequality gap during feeding.

In other words, it could conveniently be described as the feeding inequality ‘coefficient’ (#Lol). This policy ensured that the ‘Yibi-ka’ always got, somehow, compensated, even if not fully satisfied at the end of every meal.

One unique characteristic about this entitlement was that it was lost the very day the family welcomes a newborn child.

On a rather hilarious dimension, my experience was quite unique.
Unfortunately for me, the very day my parents uncovered I was rather the ‘Undertaker’ during meals, as compared to my elderly brother, was the very day I got dethroned as the ‘Yibi-ka’.

Well, whatever diverse experience we all had, it remains undeniable that there exist pure Ghanaian values that were imbibed in us whilst we were growing up. It taught us how to protect and sacrifice for the much younger, infantile, and vulnerable group in society in the advent of shortages, dangers, and adversities, which, to some extent, succeeded and got sustained as a habit. As indigenous as those values may seem, it survived the test of time, largely, because it was rooted in scientific logic and in simple terms, “It made common sense”.

In every organised human society, one would expect such deliberate and rational policies, in an attempt at bridging inequalities in its development spheres.

This is what distinguishes humans from the animal kingdom, which reigns purely on the “survival of the fittest” philosophy.

However, for any intended social policy to live up to its optimum expectation, there are some fundamental principles and attributes that it must meet. This explains why some policies succeed whilst others fail miserably upon inception.

Since the inception of the 4th Republic of Ghana, successive government regimes have instituted some policies aimed at rationalizing the educational system, basically, to improve access and quality.

The Reverberating Chaos in Ghana’s Education Policies

The very day we smuggled politics into our educational system, many of us concluded that we were heading in for a disaster. We knew, ‘common logic’, was always going to be sacrificed on the altar of winning votes and fulfilling campaign promises in a quest to hold unto political power in perpetuity.

This is not the right path for a nation that is poised at nurturing the next generation of high-quality human resource potentials to compete in the ever-fast-growing global and sophisticated world.

The journey of paradox in our educational system all commenced in 2008 when the then regime changed the SHS duration from 3 to 4 years.

Many arguments were raised on the need to bridge the infrastructural deficit to ensure a successful transition into the 4-year system, all of which fell on ears that pretended to be deaf.

We don’t need to re-echo the chaos that this drastic migration invited into the educational system and how it was subsequently reverted to 3-years again, following a change in another political regime afterward.

It took close to half a decade, for educational stakeholders, to re-adjust to gradually absorb the imposed stress invented unto the school curriculum at the Senior High School, because of the back-and-forth.

Since 2008, the issue of free education dominated every other election, where the campaign on the implementation of free education, as stipulated in the 1992 constitution, gained momentum progressively.

In 2016, the polarized debate was between a progressively free implementation of the policy and drastic implementation of the policy. I am not sure it is worth repeating all the reasons that were tabled by each party, but in a summary, whilst the former argued their policy direction was a guarantee for quality education, the latter proponents were emphatic that access was of paramountcy.

For over a decade now, it appears the emphasis has now shifted completely to delivering the free SHS and little or no attention seems to be paid to the basic level of education.

The missing scientific logic

When the debate about Free SHS emerged, many raised the question, “how free is even the implemented free basic education, and hence, warranting the implementation of the Free SHS?”.

Expectations were that, first, stakeholders would have invested more resources at addressing the identified challenges, bordering on; limited coverage of the school feeding programme, inadequate supply of teaching and learning materials, and the numerous infrastructural deficit that still denied a chunk of Ghanaian children from accessing the Free Compulsory Basic Education (FCUBE) envisioned by the county’s education policy.

The ‘Rambo-styled’ implementation of the Free SHS much to the neglect of the glaring challenges at the basic level, can be likened to a Ghanaian parent who, in the advent of famine, would deny the ‘Yibi-ka’ the required food, and rather feed the elderly sibling in excess.

This practice, if it exists anywhere on this planet at all, is not only non-Ghanaian but unscientific as well.

Unscientific, because, if you do not feed a child well, whose brainpower develops mostly at the early ages of life, how well can they process education at the SHS level when they grow?

We definitely cannot be surprised when we finally produce; doctors, whose avoidable errors lead to the loss of precious lives; drivers, whose miss-judgment leads to fatal road accidents killing dozens as a result; engineers, whose designs cannot stand the test of time; architects, under whose roof we cannot sleep in safety; accountants, whose miscalculations lead to the collapse of companies and wasting away people’s life-time investment; politicians, whose leadership cannot inspire the desired social change, etc.

The time has elapsed to debate the implementation of the Free SHS policy, but there is the need to call for its rationalization and to drive home the need for some equal attention to be paid to the basic level education that is equally saddled with numerous challenges.

Let me conclude by re-echoing the popular saying that, “a huge mansion that is erected on a weak foundation, definitely risk collapsing at some point in time”.

Let's not ignore building a strong foundation at the basic education level.

The “Yibi-ka” deserves a bite of the last cake.

My ultimate inspiration to write is to strive for social change