An Orphan in an Assumed Academic Home of Excellence: A Story of the West

In the faculty of life, every individual becomes ecstatic when after school, he or she secures an employment. There are economic crisis here and there. A decent job is a perpetual scar of happiness for the jobless.

This called for celebration because after toils in school, a newly trained teacher has secured a permanent job as a classroom teacher in a school in the Western Region of Ghana. This young energetic teacher with all his expertise and academic qualifications, has prepared himself to serve. It took several hours for him to settle in his new working environment.

Life at the new school and community was terrible. I wonder how those days in senior high you meet a number of people from outside your region with good grades in your school but unable to perform. It’s never a dream, but a reality. In every community, there is a local dialect that people communicate in. I did not understand nor even talk about communicating in it. A stranger on an alien land.

In every institution, there is an official introduction and orientation for new members. Mine was not different. In the school setting, the headteacher has the duty to assign you a class. I discovered that I was an orphan when I decided to familiarize with my learners as a new teacher. I asked them simple questions in English Language since I couldn’t speak their local dialect. They starred at me and couldn’t give me a reply. The feeling was a bad one. I termed it as my welcome address.

As a young teacher, you could imagine the zeal and energy I intended to exert in my new school. In an attemt to teach, I have to turn myself into a comedian with several gymnastics. My actions only turn on their mockery hormones. It is an indisputable fact that when the fundamentals are weak, the results will expose you. During an end-of-term examination, no teacher is expected to read out questions to candidates but mine was a different issue. After reading out the questions, they demanded for an interpretation in their local dialect which I couldn’t. Imagine the disaster…

The last stroke that broke the carmel’s back was in a different learning session, I incidentally asked my learners to recite the poem, “A Lion”. To my deepest surprise, they couldn’t. It was a pity! In a mock examination which supposed to prepare candidates for their final year examination, just imagine answers to likely examination questions. One of which I quoted below in an ICT exam:
Question: ” what is data back up?”
Answer, ” For give me and Mark me correct”

There are some legitimate questions that I need answers to. How do these candidates pass their final exams? How do they perform in their senior high schools after getting good grades from the basic level? How is life after senior high school for these assumed gurus of academic excellence? What is their impact on the nation?
Until I get answers to those questions, I’m still an orphan in an assumed home of academic excellence. You should be worried if you are a parent, an educationist or a citizen. This is a threat to our national security, a threat to our future generation.

I therefore, call on all mean citizens to rise up and address this canker of orphans in assumed homes of academic excellence, for God and country Ghana.
Thank you

By Jay Deladem