Pupil Teachers Pay The Price

What a shame! What a shame! President Mahama, stop and think for a minute.

In my past life, I worked for a private college in the United States; a college that competed with MIT for research money. At the time that I worked there, and I have no reason to think that this practice has changed, every job that they advertised listed the qualification needed for the job, and they always added to the requirement, “or equivalent”. The college recognized that what one person may have learnt in the classroom, another person may have learnt through other means.

I refuse to accept that a teacher will teach for 20 years and not know the subject he or she is teaching. I will not argue that every teacher in the classroom belongs there, but blanket firing all these experience teachers, (you may call them pupil teachers, I choose to call them experienced teachers) indicates that someone thinks that learning anything worth learning always end with a certificate in hand. Sadly this thinking is the hallmark of a learned person who sees not beyond a paper in front of him. Ghana seems to have more than a fair share of such people and they are running our country to the ground.

I am glad that the truth is starting to come out why the government wants all pupil teachers to resign. Everyone knows that IMF will always require loan recipients to reduce payroll. I was waiting to see where the payroll was going to be cut, and in a deceitful manner, President Mahama chose to put the burden on experienced teachers. He will choose to remove these experienced teachers from the classroom and ask in about 5 years’ time why students aren’t passing exams. What a leadership. And I don’t see anyone in the pipeline who demonstrates any better thinking.

Over the years, I have had published on Ghanaweb articles that suggests ways in which the government can start moving people from government payroll to private payroll and collect taxes from them as private sector workers. I haven’t seen similar thinking in government. I have seen bringing in Punjabs from India to farm and removing experienced teachers from the classroom. If we can’t think of answers to our problems, can’t we at least try other people’s ideas?

On another topic, why is it that a government that continues to have children go to school under trees provide free housing to well paid government officials? Isn’t this something to shut down the government over?

For these people who are living in government “council flats” who often have their chests out looking down on others, I would think that if they want to boast that you are rich, they will want to pay your own rent at least. Or is it that they are boasting that they can take the government for a ride and others can’t? These are the same people who turn around and blame Ghana’s problems on “Ghanafo”. Mr. John Dramani Mahama seems proud to sit at the helm of this.

I wonder if the President ever reflects on what he got in government to achieve and if he has achieved anything having been President. I know he thinks the problem with the Ghanaian economy is that Ghanaians don’t buy made-in-Ghana goods, and his solution is to take IMF loans. Expendable experienced teachers will make it possible. We are having such a party with the millennium funds that we have been getting. Sooner or later, the party will end and we will be where we started from.

My Country.

Tony Pobee-Mensah

tpmensahr@yahoo.com