The State of our schools

It’s the aftermath of the annual edition of the JoyFm’s old skul reunion which is also touted as the biggest outdoor program in West Africa and I want to use this opportunity to pat the back of JoyFm who is ostensibly the poster child of the multimedia group of companies based in Accra, for instituting and achieving this feat and to also wade into the national debate of the estranged relationship between Religion and education.

I do not intend to bore you with the history of Schools but once upon a time, Missionaries with all

The Main Gate of Presec boys that leads to a citadel of Knowledge

intents and purpose set foot on our land to evangelize the word of God but decided over time to set up schools to educate the inhabitants of the land to facilitate easy preaching and conversion, then came the government to take over from the Churches, thus rendering them a pale shadows of themselves without a bearing.

Education, as one of the building blocks of society has lately been in the news for all the wrong reasons such as yearly examination malpractices, decline in discipline and excellence - resulting in weaker institutions, inconsistent curricula, devaluing of our certificates outside the shores of the land, unwilling and unqualified tutors due to inadequacy and unattractiveness of the teaching profession and now a political tool in the hands of the Politicians which often results in unbridled strike actions, probably due to neglect from the very people it has helped nurtured into positions of repute and also because the government has decided to micromanage the schools including the very ones that were built by and through the toil of Churches.

The government then intruded the educational system as it were through regulation which eventually neutralized and accorded every player in the educational terrain an equal status to probably drive home the fact that we are all equal, before the Law and even before God. Maybe, we should be thanking the Government for whipping us into congruence. Nevertheless, I do not think we are all the same and wields equal status like they try to impress upon us simply because I see and commune with different sorts of people in my everyday walks of life and have seen enough to still frolic in the idea of all of us being the same. However, whoever thinks that we are all equal can revel in their delusion.

In every society, continuity is of essence - to preserve their cultural orientations and beliefs, to at least give them a false sense of permanence.  This permanence or any effort at instilling it is not hewed out of frivolity but often arrived at out of practical convictions have become one of the very reasons why humans will procreate to continue their race. I also believe it is in the same vein that religious entities instituted schools to indoctrinate their very owns and other affiliates who find their way to their doorsteps.

Muslims and Christians with their varied sects such as the Catholics, the Wesleyans, The Presbyterians, the Anglicans and even some latter day churches, through their mission schools have produced a chunk of excellent individuals who have metamorphosed into giant brands and sometimes, with a lot of followings. Then came in too much liberation and the equality argument without recourse to the preambles and purposes of why the mission schools were built in the first place turned up a notch higher. 

All persons, regardless of their creed were allowed anywhere but should they not be compelled to abide by the tenets of the accommodating institution?

Personally, Muslims and traditionalists who have no school anyway can attend the mission schools if they wish to be nurtured by the indoctrinating school of their choice and vice versa, but such individuals must be compelled to go the full haul to align to the spirit and letter of the Church or their schools thereof. And rightfully so, to continue breeding legions of soldiers who are without a doubt the future of the Church and an extension of its doctrines to ultimately fulfill the purpose of establishing the Church. 

But what do we see?

The St. Augustine's Administration block in its full glory

Pockets of infidels found their ways into these mission schools and have over time become cystic and protected by the law through their fundamental human rights that they can even haul a whole institution to a battle of wits at the courts of Law. The mission schools have now become pale shadows of themselves because discipline which invariably is/was a key to breeding near excellence is no more. Students are not even caned any longer or where necessary it cannot exceed six. 

Methinks, if the powers that be do not have a problem with these churches or cannot impugn on their existence and their indoctrination thereof, then these churches should be allowed to build their own schools as an appendage to train students accordingly. These Churches also have a need for permanence which requires them to spread their tentacles and by extension, their dominance. 

To think that religious and moral education have been expunged from the curricula has only made the government’s efforts at neutralizing and thwarting the objective of the mission schools too blatant. Government should both build its own school and make it free education or whatever political gains they stand to derive from their gimmick and leave the religious schools to operate since their mother churches have been allowed to fester. Better still, the government should leave the administration and its bearing in the hands of the Churches and if need be, regulate it from the fringes. We all know now what it means to say that government has taken over schools as it is so evident in how educational standards have fallen to their lowest ebb but the question is why and how does government take over all the religious schools in the first place?

Thus far, it is even convenient to say that it was imprudent of the government to take over these schools because it doesn’t seem to be making meaningful strides. At most, education is even a distraction on government’s plate, looking at how they are still toying with what a senior high school curriculum should entail and look like? If a lot was achieved through crude and not-so-smart ways of doing things in terms of storing and availing data or textbooks in the past with the Churches in charge, why can’t we mobilize, plan and execute our agendas in this day and age where schools now take pride in websites?

 Writer tweets @vilejah 

Ghana Prisons; An asset or a liability?

If you have ever used a phone with an annoying ring tone, then you would have known by now that, the most prudent thing to do under such circumstances is to usually alter the settings to vibration mode or in worst cases, put it on silence, which relieves us and everybody on our timeline, the cacophony of an aching siren which is mistaken as a tone. But do we loathe ourselves should the phone be misplaced afterwards?

The first thing we do when we misplace our phone is to reach out for an alternative phone to call the missing one, just so we can be directed to where the ringing is emanating from, and should your ring tone be set to ‘off’ or to its lowest decibels at the time of missing, then your guess is as good as mine and it is this line of thought where we take actions without recourse to what can happen in the future is what has motivated me to research into the Prison system here in Ghana so that should I find myself being gaoled by any twist of fate, I can find solace in the fact that, I didn’t lower the level of my ring tone.

Prison according to Wikipedia is a place in which people are physically confined and usually deprived of a range of personal freedoms. Other terms the Prison is referred to as is penitentiary also known as pen, correctional facility, remand centre, detention center, jail or gaol and many more as would be discussed in this write-up.

It is however worthy to note that there was a traditional system which saw to it that wrong doers were either banished or ‘cleansed’ by performing rituals and reinstated into society prior to the introduction of the Prisons Systems. The Prison system which abolished the former way of punishing and rehabilitating deviants in society was thus established to give safe custody to Prisoners, ensuring their welfare by protecting their rights to good health, clothing, bedding among other basic requirements and lastly, reforming and rehabilitating them by offering them opportunities to develop a set of skills through trade, training and moral education but the multi-million dollar question which begs to be asked is, are these functions for which these Prisons were built  being  met?

A Prison among other things should have a religious facility, educational facility such as a library, a gym or a place to exercise, a healthcare facility to offer medical care, psychiatric services, dental and a recreational facility which may contain at least a TV and I want to know how far we have gone to address all these requirements as a nation and if not, then what is government doing about it? 

There are currently 45 Prison establishments scattered all over the country with varying levels security such as the closed and open security systems for those who have passed their ‘FLED’ (Full license eligibility date) or those given the ROTL (release on temporary license) to visit home from time to time which is usually a quarter of the way through the Prison sentence but our security system is still nothing to write home about.

Do we have motion sensors to check the wrongful movements of inmates? What about sniffer dogs and roving patrols that will ensure that no stone is left unturned against those who are likely to break jail? What about defensible main gates and armed guard towers where movement from a distance can be monitored?

The Prison system as an extension of the Ministry of Justice aims at punishing and rehabilitating criminals as defined by the law but you realize that the Prison service is mostly interested in only the retributive aspect of their mandate. This is because most of the inmates come out worse than they went inside and you are tempted to ask if they are actually trained to master their acts that sent them there in the first place. 

A Prison system requires that an officer be made responsible for the welfare and supervision of three Prisoners but the ratio in Ghana has risen above six criminals to one officer and counting. Even though the Prison service has been understaffed for a very long time, it is laudable to note that, the quality in the personnel has improved over the years due to the qualification of new recruits.

The Prison service in its effort to upgrade structures to meet the ever demanding and increasing number of criminals however has institutional bottlenecks that continually make lack of funds persistent. They are not granted the right amount of money needed to upgrade facilities which is an indictment to the powers that be and this goes a long way to make the living conditions of the inmates palpable and gross.

Inmates are allowed to sleep, urinate, eat and attend to nature’s calls in their cells and this is an infringement on their rights because they are a part of society and should not be treated inhumanely, not to talk about the diseases they can contract living under such circumstances.

The Prison service in its effort as part of restructuring the rehabilitation and to give a sense of dignity to the inmates has proposed to change their name from Ghana Prisons service to Ghana correctional service since the year 2007, but is yet to be approved by an act of parliament which would in tend give the law a force. As to why the bill is yet to be promulgated into a law after six years and counting is another area we will look at some other time.

Our system has no ‘deferred sentence’ where for one reason or the other, one’s sentence can be deferred until they are ready to serve their terms. Examples can be given of pregnant women who are sentenced to jail terms and allowed to deliver and cater for their new born babies with the scanty resources that are provided to the inmates. Ill-health is also another reason why deferred sentences has to be introduced into our penal system so that inmates can be given special treatments at home until they are fit again to continue serving their terms.

Currently, there are about 14,000 inmates who are sharing resources meant for about 8000 inmates and you can tell that, the situation is purely a matter of the fittest surviving against all odds. Most people are not supposed to be there in the first place and this behooves the justice system to expedite trials on remand Prisoners who in some instances would be acquitted and discharged or imprisoned to ease the pressure off the resources and to also mitigate wrongful punishment of people because justice delayed is justice denied.

Apparently, most of these remand Prisoners mostly are there because they have not been able to afford a lawyer and that is bad. The government has to furnish these people with lawyers on pro bono basis to see to it that justice is dispensed timely, which can go a long way to boost the capacity of the justice system and to help people build confidence in the system.

We can also reduce the number of these remand Prisoners by sentencing them to undertaking community services. The government can make use of these deviants by putting them to work in their communities to help clean the communities or help contribute their quota to the community by doing diligently what they have been tasked to do and this can also go a long way to serve as a deterrent to others, because the idea of the justice system is not necessarily to be retributive but to help people change and become good citizens.

Ghana happens to be one of the destinations that still make use of archaic Prison infrastructures dating as far back as four hundred years e.g. James fort, which was built for only 200 people but now houses about 740 inmates per the data available as at the time of reviewing the available literature.

There are no proper transport systems to convey inmates to and from the field where they sometimes work. Exposing and leaving these inmates on their own can be dangerous to the Prison Guards and society at large, because some hardly reform, as they keep plotting their vengeance, especially, those who were wrongfully incarcerated.

There is no gainsaying that the food given to the inmates is of bad quality and mal-nutritional, but it is probably because, government is not giving them much. Alternatively, i do not think the tax payer’s money should be channeled into feeding Prisoners. Most of these Prisoners could be made to work and keep large acres of farm lands, especially those who are sentenced with hard labor. The state cannot be at their brunt while they were free and still spend its money on them while incarcerated and proper management of this situation can even give the nation a surplus from their produce.

Sadly, most of these inmates only come back into society as hardened criminals because there are no

adequate training and education for them. Recidivism; the act of relapsing into criminal activities, abounds in our society because there are no workshops to train these inmates and where there are, they are not operational and no one seems to care because the crime or neglect being perpetrated is not directly on our doorsteps.

Most of these deviants sifted from the public domain and named as Prisoners ended there in the first place through no fault of theirs but through system failure. A system that sentences an unemployed young man for uprooting a neighbor’s cassava without his consent and tries an employed civil servant forever for embezzling public funds meant for the collective growth of everyone is certainly a failed system. 

These Prisoners must be helped to regain their sense of worth and self-esteem to be able to be re-integrated into society without problem. It will be a step in the right direction if social and civil organizations can come out to help the government to tackle the problems and solutions herein by donating and sponsoring some of the things needed to fully rehabilitate the system and it’s dependents in a bid to making this place a better place for all of us.