International day of education should look beyond academic knowledge

Yesterday January 24, was marked as the International Day of Education as proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly to celebrate the role education plays in peace and development.

Across the globe, pro-education organizations issued statements to promote education as a human right, a public good and a public responsibility.

The New Publisher fully associates with this position in its entirety but would want to state in very strong terms that such occasions to celebrate education, ought to look beyond promoting only classroom education or academic knowledge for that matter.

What would be the use of educating children who would come out as outstanding academics but with zero morals, zero sense of discipline, zero sense of self-responsibility and with zero ‘home sense’ as Ghanaians would put in the local parlance?

The New Publisher is of the view that the academic education of a child is pointless unless it is linked to his sense of discipline, self responsibility and respect for humanity.

The focus on these other critical aspects of child education and self development has obviously dwindled over the years and the regrettable repercussions have become obvious.

It was not by accident that once upon a time in Ghana, and in many African countries for that matter, schools built and run by the Christian missionaries were well-regarded over the other schools run entirely by the state.
Indeed students from such ‘mission schools’ as they were called, were relatively more disciplined and knew their onions about basic courtesies required of fitting members of society.

It was the pride of parents even from non-Christian homes to say their wards attended ‘mission schools’ administered by Christian missionaries.

Today, the reverse is what we see.

The discipline in our schools is gone. The sole focus has been on academic results and passes. The schools have become factories for churning out in masses, youngsters who know nothing beyond the academia. Some after their long years of education, as though they were reared rather than trained.

This situation cannot be described as the best of education. One wonders where we lost it as a country.

One would have thought that in this era where accessing information has become much easier, education would be richer, better, more meaningful and useful and broader.

Rather, we continue to lose the import and lessons of the very essence of our existence as humans and have allow all manner of cultural impositions to erode our unique identities and ancient wisdom handed over to us as by our fore-bearers as our heritage.

These cultural impositions have been accepted by us hook line and sinker including its negative sides camouflaged as “rights” and western exposure.

Ah well…..