Focus on Education in Schools, Not Punishment

SCHOOLS are meant to be a place of learning, not fear. With incidents of child abuse in schools coming to light, it is becoming clear that this flagrant exploitation of power must be addressed and eliminated.

RECENTLY, a teacher in the Madina-Abokobi Constituency in the Greater Accra region allegedly locked pupils in a room for over three hours for disturbing the class. The students are said to have been confined well past the end of school without their parents’ knowledge. Supposedly, only once some of them had escaped through a window and reported what was happening to their parents were they released.

THE Member of Parliament and the Headmaster of the school have both given the assurance that these claims will be investigated and, if found true, the teacher will be dealt with appropriately.

TODAY in its last Thursday, October 28, 2009, edition reported of Mr Robert Koomson, the Headmaster of Ghana National College who went berserk, slapped a final year student and forced him to drink a fly-infested porridge. The action of the Headmaster according to our report was that the student had failed to empty his bowl of food served him at the dinning hall.

BUT this does not change the fact that these abuses are happening in the first place. This is not an isolated incident; it is not the first time that a teacher has stretched discipline into harm.

IT is time to firmly monitor and regulate discipline in schools so that students do not have to be afraid to go to school.

WHILE headmasters and teachers turn to physical abuse under the guise of instilling discipline in students, their actions only ever have negative effects. Not only is the abuse clearly physically harmful, but it also carries long-term repercussions on both the individual and the country.

STUDENTS constantly under the threat of physical discipline will begin to associate education with this fear. Even if they themselves have not been abused by educators, they will have heard stories or seen their friends punished.

ALTHOUGH this may seem to some as an effective way to have students sit in the classroom, it automatically eliminates any interest in learning that the child may have had.

EDUCATION is crucial both for individuals and the country. Ghana needs to nurture the excitement of learning so that all of the students with the resources to continue their education will.

THOUGH much is said about the development of Ghana, it is clear that the best way forward is through an active and educated populace—the best source to be able to support and rebuild their country.

THE Ghana Education Service, then, has to take action in order to ensure that teachers do not have the means to perpetrate these sorts of flagrant abuses.

STUDENTS need to be educated. If more focus was paid to engaging the students’ interest in learning rather than beating them into submission, they would graduate from school with a crucial eagerness to continue learning.

EDUCATORS can no longer hide behind the excuse of disciplining children. The sorts of abuses that have been perpetrated on students are horrific and can only be properly dealt with by the law.