Education

So far in my blogs I have tried to avoid anything remotely close to an intellectual topic.  However, part of the enjoyment of writing these blogs is that I do not have to see anyone's reaction.  So I am going to climb atop my soapbox for a minute and talk about education here in Ghana, specifically Helekpe.  I should preface my opinions by saying I attended The Park School of Baltimore, few more liberal K-12 schools exist that I know of, followed by Drew University, a liberal arts college.

Education is Ghana, at least the schools in the villages I live in, tends to consist of three steps.  Step one is the teacher telling the students what he or she needs to know.  Generally this is a definition of a word or term.  Step two consists of the student writing that definition down verbatim.  Step three is that student memorizing that definition again verbatim.  The problem I see here should be readily apparent: there is no thinking involved!

I could give you many examples of this but my favorite comes from my good friend Nelson.  Nelson is five years old and a wonderfully cheerful boy.  He runs absolutely everywhere and he absolutely cracks me up.  A few weeks ago Nelson learned to add at school.  If I asked Nelson 3+2 he would count three fingers on one hand, two on the other, look down, then up at me showing me five fingers, and would yell, "Five!"  The system worked great, and despite some struggle he could even do 6+4.  However, if I asked Nelson 4+7 that garnered much more confusion.  As I am sure you know one hand is limited to five fingers.  So Nelson would count out four on one hand, five on the other, and then get confused.  The trusty system he had learned had failed him.

Obviously Nelson is only five so perhaps the struggle to learn addition is an international problem, so let's look at another boy.  Stephen is 15 years old and comes over every night to talk to me and ask me questions.  Stephen dreams of attending senior high in Kpando, a nearby town, that has a very good senior high school.  He works very diligently studying for two hours a day.  He recently got a book that he learned the government often takes questions from for the BEC (the high school entrance exam) from and has been carrying it around religiously.  Last week Stephen brought over his government exams and while flipping through science I noticed he had gotten one wrong.  The question was which planet has the largest orbit.  Stephen had selected Jupiter.  When I asked Stephen why Jupiter he said it was because he knew it was the largest planet.  When I asked him what about the question saying something about orbit he said he had not learned what orbit meant.  I said ok well let's put orbit in context and try and figure out what it means.  As I walked through this with Stephen it was apparent he had absolutely no idea how to use context clues.  This is really the heart of the problem.  If your education relies solely on being told things you better make sure you are told absolutely every single fact that mankind knows because you lack the ability to figure anything out yourself.

I also want to be clear that this problem is not nationwide.  I know this because while working at this local high school I have talked to some of the other teachers.  A lot of the other teachers are doing there national year of service and come from other parts of Ghana.  They share my frustration that the students never ask questions.  That problem stems from the same issue as if you are told everything you need to know there is never a need to ask anything.  You simply write things down and wait to write the next tidbit of information down.

I could extend this blog onto how this dependence on being given things extends to some of the larger problems I see in the village but I wish to climb down from my soapbox for now.  If you made it this far thanks for reading and for those of you who are teachers or interested in education please let me know your thoughts.