basic skills...

BECE is done again and happy hour is here. I saw a couple of junior high school graduates dancing to 5five’s muche baya in Accra central, opposite the Kinbu Secondary Technical School. Boy, were they having a jolly good time and rightly so. I mean, they have endured 9years of conventional classroom education; assignments, home works, projects, competitions and the just ended examination. Who is to say, hey, hang on, you are not done yet, you just put yourself on flight to a world of the unknown. Whoever does that, needs sensitivity training. So let them be for now, let them celebrate.

I was glad, my heart went out to them, but then I remembered, there were others still who couldn’t read or write, do basic arithmetic or analysis. Close to the euphoric students were others who plied the streets for their daily bread. It was the sharp contrast that broke my heart. What are we doing? How are we helping them as a people? Like Kojo Oppong Nkrumah asked on Joy 99.7 fm, what can we do, just the two of us (you and i) to help these kids?

Frankly the pocket of street children I saw next to the excited graduates is just a semblance of the prevailing situation plaguing the entire country. These are the ones in the cities. There are million others in the rural areas. Some might grow to become extra ordinary farmers but mainly at the subsistence level. And how much will that contribute to the national income?

We take education away, we take healthcare away from our children and we leave them with nothing. They have no alternatives. If we gave them choices; education, healthcare, entrepreneurship, sports, arts, among others and they missed it in their decision making, we could be sure they would whip themselves back into line the moment they find that they have fallen short. But if we fail to give them room to make choices because we have not provided alternatives, we would be in a better place if we just shut up and take any contribution they can give to mother Ghana.

I guess what I am saying is, we are mighty proud of our fresh junior high school graduates, they have done us proud, but wouldn’t it better if the percentage of students who sat and passed the exam was about 80% of children of school going age in Ghana.

God bless Ghana.