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Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts

Thursday, 3 July 2014

PMS: Ghana's World Cup and That Time of the Month

I swear I didn't make any of this stuff up. Not even the ridiculously unbelievable parts. It’s all true, I promise.

After a somewhat impressive performance by Ghana’s Black Stars at the last two World Cups, big things were expected at our third outing. If only we knew what was coming…

We lost to our usual whipping boys the USA and that wasn't even the worst thing about our tournament. There we allegations of match fixing with a video of certain football Administrators agreeing to bribe referee influence matches. In their defense, they were set up but as Micky Bricks said, "You can't con an honest man". This also wasn't the worst thing to come out.

Stories of unpaid bonuses and player agitations began to filter into the country but officials kept on denying them. I understand that a man is due his wages and no one would be happy if they weren't paid. What I didn't understand was why on the biggest stage players were more concerned about money than about playing. Forget about patriotism, it died long ago. Why not play for personal glory? Think of all the money you could make if you put up a great performance. Kevin-Prince Boateng moved from lowly Portsmouth to AC off the back of his 2010 performance.

I’m not sure what happened but the next thing we knew, there were rumors that our president had made available a chartered flight from Ghana to Brazil carrying in excess of $3 million (US not Zimbabwean). My first reaction was, “this is too ridiculous to be true”.

Turns out it was true. The news spread like wild fire on social media and foreign news outlets. Every news channel made time to mock the ridiculousness of the story. In this age of technology? The president confirmed he had sanctioned this transfer and some members of his cabinet didn't seem to see the big deal.

John Boye kissing his share of the booty

By this act, they had managed to caricature the whole nation till not one drop of respect was left to save face. One TV station, Globo, in Brazil managed to broadcast live the landing of the money plane by planting secret cameras somewhere. Apparently, the Brazilian government also insisted on counting the money so it could be taxed properly so the counting was also shown live on TV.  The sharing of the money was also shown live on TV. One player was shown kissing his share of the booty as he came out of the money room. The next day Ghanaians were the butt of all jokes on social media. The money plane saga was so incredulous that a Hollywood director is think of making a movie out of it. We lost to Portugal in our last game completing our disgraceful outing. There was still time for a bonus act as there was some controversy even about them coming home. It’s not like we didn't see all this coming before the tournament.
Meanwhile, back in Ghana, everyone was going on strike (or threatening to) due to unpaid wages. Polytechnic Lecturers at the time this post is being written have been on strike for 7 weeks. Not a single f*$k has been given about their strike. I’m not even sure the Government knows they are on strike because no serious attempt has been made to address their concerns. We can fly $3 million in 2 days to Brazil to satisfy under-performing footballers but can’t pay whatever pittance lecturers are asking for?

Then it was announced that on the first of July, Electricity tariffs would be increased by 12%, water by 6% and fuel prices were also expected to go up. This prompted a movement of social media #OccupyFlagStaffHouse which led to a demonstration. Police armed to the teeth tried to prevent this peaceful demonstration but failed. While the demonstration was going on, members of the president’s cabinet (Hannah Tetteh and Joseph Yammin) found time to mock the protesters further proving how far removed politicians are from the suffering of regular folks.

But this isn't my most ridiculous story of the past two weeks. Government has managed to secure a loan of $156 million to help support the educational sector. Part of the loan would be used for scholarships, new building and… wait for it… providing sanitary pads for female high school students. I swear I didn't make that up! This news sparked some hilarious comment and memes on social media to cap off a ridiculous couple weeks in Ghana. Given the way so many other government interventions have gone, you don't need too much of a stretch of the imagination to picture how this program will end.


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Thursday, 3 October 2013

It's Tradition, the Ghanaian Way

An Anlo man fell in love with and married a Fanti woman. Since they both hailed from coastal towns, they liked to eat fish, especially fried fish. The lady was a really good cook and her husband was always more than satisfied with her food. However, the man had one complaint. Before frying, his wife would cut the fish into small portions and he preferred his fish fried whole.

After being quiet about this oddity in her fish frying method for a while, he finally decided to ask about it. According to his wife, cutting fish into smaller portions was the right way to fry fish. It made the fish taste better and besides, it was Fanti tradition. He wasn't too convinced about this explanation. In his opinion, the cut fried fish didn't taste any better than fried whole but when he pointed that out, his wife became unhappy. Not too keen to offend her he decided to let it be.

His mother-in-law came to visit one weekend and asked her about the fish cutting. His mother-in-law gave him an almost similar answer to his wife. Still he wasn't satisfied with explanation but decided to let it go for a while.

Somewhere around Christmas, the family decided to visit the wife's grandmother and he took the opportunity to ask his usual questions. According to Grandma, when she got married, the frying pan her husband bought was quite small and most times, the fish was too big to fit into it. She therefore decided to be cutting the fish before frying just so the fish could fit into the frying pan. Her daughter who learnt to cook from her picked it up and in turn taught his wife.


Granda said no one ever asked her why she always cut fish before frying and she hadn't really given much thought to telling anyone why she did so. It wasn't tradition, it was just done for convenience.


I grew up in a family where asking questions was encouraged. Even when we didn't have questions to ask Dad would ask why we thought something was the way it was. The answer didn't have to be right but you had to give your honest opinion no matter how outlandish it was. If we were wrong, Dad would tell us the right answer or give us a book to read.

Unfortunately, this isn't a very acceptable thing in the Ghanaian community. Most adults found it disrespectful when I asked questions. I got in trouble quite often for asking questions that were perfectly acceptable at home. It's not socially accepted for a child to know more than an adult or question adults in anyway.
Most things have perfectly logical explanations but the Ghanaian way it to credit it to some supernatural force or simply say it's tradition. Questioning the status quo often leads being branded a heretic or disrespectful.  Sadly, most people can't be bothered to find out for themselves the reason things are the way they are. "It's tradition" is a perfectly acceptable answer.

(Loosely based on a popular children's story)


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Tuesday, 26 March 2013

Flawed Educators and Educated Fools

I hate chemistry. I would like to thank my first chemistry teacher, Mr. Anyigbah for instilling in me this incurable dislike for the subject.

We had just arrived in Secondary School with a lot of enthusiasm, too much confidence in our intelligence and the desire to stamp our authority on the class. Everyone was the most intelligent student from his previous school, or at least that's what they'd have us believe. There was one particular stubborn guy called Frank, everyone called him Fire (even the teachers). Right from the first day he established himself as a noise maker and trouble causer. While some students were learning 'non-sylla'*, Fire would be creating a scene and fall asleep the moment a teacher came in.

First Chemistry class and Mr Anyigbah was racing through the text books faster than our young minds could absorb. When we complained that he was going too fast, he laughed and just went on. Somewhere along the line he noticed Fire sleeping. He woke him up and asked him the most difficult question he could find for a first year. The half asleep Fire woke up, asked for the question to be repeated and uttered a bunch of what appeared to be gibberish and to our surprised, Mr. Anyigbah said, “Correct”. Wow! We those who were awake didn't even understand the question. This sleep and answer question session between Fire and Mr Anyigbah went on for a few week and it became obvious who was the most intelligent person in the class.

After that first class, Mr Anyigbah only asked Fire and no one else question. He would say something like, “If Fire understands, then the whole class understands”. If Fire didn't get the answer correct he would call Fire a stupid boy for intentionally getting the answer wrong and go on without explaining. Mr Anyigbah also took delight in caning us. He would set a test and say anyone one who scored below 70% would be caned. That usually meant 80% of the class. By the time we were through with first year, I absolutely loathed chemistry. 

I remember Mr. Anyigbah came to class one day and told us that the best students in the class will get a C in the SSCE then he started laughing hysterically. 

I later found out that in almost every public secondary school had their own version of Mr. Anyigbah, some 'qualified' teacher who took too much delight in frustrating students.

There are somethings no one is going to teach you in class. For example, if you are a computer Engineering student, no lecturer would teach you how to format a Hard-disk but everyone in the world expects you to know that. When you go for a job interview, the panel would ask you things you didn't learn in class but are expected to know. You somehow have to manage to find a balance with these thing. What I came to realize was, “the things that matter mostly don't count in the exams, and the things that count in the exam don't matter in life”.

In the university, I knew a third year computer Engineering student who couldn't partition her hard-disk and had to take it to a social science student to get it done. This said lady was one of the most intelligent student in her class. She wasn't peculiar in this predicament. She didn't seem bothered by this ignorance and didn't seem eager to learn how to.

While waiting for my turn for my job interview, I managed to get a sneak peek of the certificates of almost everyone who was there. My heart sunk. Not that I was a dumb guy but people had really impressive certificates and mine wasn't that great. When it was my turn to face the panel I placed my certificate on the table and the panel didn't bother looking at it. They just started firing questions. “What would you do in so so and so situation”. I got the job!! There was this particular guy who I was sure would get the job, he didn't. I was later told he performed so poorly that they didn't ask him the full range of questions before letting him go.

Our Education system, flawed educators and educated fools


*non-sylla - Topics that are not included in the syllabus but are studied by students to impress other students 

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