I have a dream
A song to sing
To help me cope with everything
If you see the wonders of a fairy tale
You can take the future when if you fail
The above are extracts from Abba’s hit single “I have a
dream”. In this song, the duo perfectly describes the essence of dreams and
what they can do to the human development. The essence of dreams was perfectly
made clearer by Martin Luther King Jnr when he stood in America and made prophesies
that a day was going to come when there would be a black president in America.
True to his words, about 2 decades down the lane this dream of his came true. I
also have a dream that one day I can look at our educational system and feel
proud that I am a Ghanaian.
Unfortunately, Ghana as a nation doesn’t have the glamorous
kind of education that we all should expect. In this article I would restrict
myself to our Senior High School. For parents it is a dream comes true whenever
their wards attend “first class schools.” The question I would also ask again
is “how first class are these first class schools? One time, I remember that I
was going to my friend’s house and on my way going I was this posture
advertising one of the Senior High School in Kumasi and I know for a fact that
it is a first class school but when I saw the thing of tribulations that
students had to go through just to get access to the library and certain
facilities I began to have serious reservations as to whether it was really a
first class school.
The dining hall food was just bad, sanitation was a proper,
classrooms were congested and as for the dormitories, the least said about them
the better. The unfortunate thing is that the other “2nd and the 3rd
class schools are much worse. I know of a school and believe me or not, it’s a
living hell! The school has no dining hall so the food has to be prepared in a
nearby house in an extremely poor and unhygienic condition and actually pushed
to the school with the aid of truck. As curious as I was, I pushed near to see
the content of the food and I nearly puked. The color of the food in itself
wasn’t appetizing. Immediately, the truck arrived the student began to shout
for joy. Clearly, the arrival of the truck had such so much joy in the school.
To some of the student I asked “whenever the “magic” truck appears, it brings
joy to the whole school”. At that juncture of time I couldn’t help but laugh
because I just didn’t understand why the students should go gaga about a food
which I would never eat on proviso that I had options.
Apart from the dining hall issue the environment of the
school was in bad shape. They had a small house which they called a dormitory.
I asked about the student’s population and I was told that the student’s
population was about 500 and I had to ask him again to make sure I was hearing
rightly. Looking at the room I guessed that it would hold only 20 students but
I was wrong. I asked how they slept and he confessed that some people slept on
the veranda. He also said that a bed that was supposed to be occupied by one
person was now occupied by two people. He also said that the beds were so
closed to each other that every morning they had to struggle to get dressed for
school. He also said that almost every team there is a skin infection problem
in the school.
The school had a small room which called a library and the
library was highly outdated, the books too were old and not connected to the
current syllabus. The school had no assembly hall so I asked where they went to
the church or the mosque and they replied me that they almost had their church
service in batches and also in the classrooms. Even the classrooms itself
needed serious attention. The roof was leaky and during the rainy seasons
classes were disrupted because the ambiance was just not suitable for teaching
and learning. Chairs and tables were also a problem. I combed round the school
and I couldn’t find anything that the school could boost of. Looking the
environment I guess my description of the school as a living hell is really
justifying.
To the students, dreams of going to the University is very
bleak and an achievement. To them, they are just schooling because it is a
compulsion and because they just wanted to try their luck at WASSCE. The performance
of the school during external examination is really abysmal. To most students
mathematics is simply a headache and so badly that it was not invented. They
also told me that after school, they spent huge sums of money on NOVDEC just to
polish their grades and also find their way into nursing and teacher training.
Every year the government of Ghana spends huge sums of money
on education and yet we are always battling with infrastructure in our school. Yet
where those various monies pass I can’t tell. In the SHS I completed, the
previous government began to building an assembly hall and now as it stands it
has now reached the foundation level after about three years since the sod was
cut for the project to begin. If we want the development which we always
craving for I think government should serious look at our education because it
has been bad for so long and if we want to change the system it should be now.
Our education has been bad, let’s make it good enough because if we do it is
going to help us and the generation after us.
I have a dream that one day all schools in Ghana would be
well equipped. All schools and students would not have to suffer because of
inadequacies in infrastructure. I also have a dream that our education would be
so effective that I can stand on the streets and proclaim that “I am a Ghana
and I am proud to be a Ghanaian. I would look back at our educational system
and which to be in school forever. To end I would end with the last chapter of
the song I began with “I have a dream”
You can take the future
Even if you fail
I begin in angels
Something good in everything I see
I believe in angel
When I know it’s time for me
I will cross the stream
I have a dream
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