Any time I walk around and hear with my ears, conceiving with my heart the very mindsets of the average Ghanaian, even from our “patriotic citizens”, I become both distressed and perturbed, but more optimistic.

Clearly, a majority of Ghanaian citizens now do not think and cannot see any hope of a better country and a transformed Ghana. The fraction of those who also do believe that Ghana can one day change are also oblivious of how this change will come about.

And this is where I believe my vision comes in.

As I stated emphatically in the previous episode, the change we believe we are looking for ought to begin right from our educational institutions.

Our educational system needs an overhaul!

Our educational system needs a complete change!

This is because the educational system in every nation is the ONLY means of building every stakeholder to contribute their quota towards national development. It is our educational institutions that are responsible for raising professionals, entrepreneurs, and academicians to steer the direction of the country.

What do you think would happen with the direction of the country when these major stakeholders haven’t been educated rightly?

If we are not too happy with the status quo, we must begin the change right from restructuring our educational system.

What majority of people have not yet understood is that the Educational system of every nation is the organ or the tool that forms and shapes the sons and daughters of the nation to fulfill its national vision. What we need is a well- defined national vision so that the Educational system shapes and feeds the people to fulfill that particular national vision.

This means that the educational system ought not to work separately from the national vision.

Our problem is the fact that we do not have a clear-cut  national vision, and even if we do, the average citizen is totally ignorant of it.

The educational system for now is producing students  just to do anything with their lives, and that anything is producing nothing in the nation.

And so if the national vision we have  in our hearts seems completely opposite from our reality, we must without delay resort to the curriculum and syllabi that teach our prospective leaders who now find themselves in our educational institutions, and find out from the content of the educational system where exactly we got it wrong.

Education comes from the Latin word, "EDUCO" which means;

▪To develop from within: thus education and school was meant to help you discover your hidden potentials within you.

▪To Grow in Mind: education is meant to develop your mental powers.

▪To have Power: Education was meant to empower you to create your own future and life.

That is to say, the purpose of school and the reason for our education is to bring us to a place where the knowledge we are being given will be channeled to help us discover the us in us, and the unlimited potential God has endowed us with to the end that we will be able to create the desired future we want.

The Life Strategist was right when he said that, “The purpose of education is to develop our mental powers, so that we can lay hold on our hidden potentials and empower us to create our own future and life”

The goal of education then is to Empower us ethically and intellectually to solve relevant human and societal problems we face in our environment to end that we create wealth and improve upon the quality of life in our nation.

Thus, any form of education that is not structured to build us ethically, intellectually, and economically(ability to create wealth instead of employment or job hunting) is only giving us information that would in the end cripple us.

This is where I believe we have gotten it wrong as a country and as a continent.

Over here in Ghana, the goal of education and learning has been substituted and reduced to the acquisition of a “paper” called certificate, which authorizes us to get employed in a job and not to create the future we hold in our hearts. And so, the average student is motivated to go to school with the promise of an employment after completion. However , since the jobs they are working tirelessly all their lives to secure do not exist, it seems a lot of students are gradually losing the interest in schooling and learning.

Right from our beginnings, we were told that we should go to school and acquire skills in order to work in already established firms and industries provided by the government and a few business elites in the private sector. Over a period of time, this governmental initiative seemed to work, since the number of graduates were only a handful as well as the insurgence of many firms who were even begging these graduates to work for them.

The situation however, is different now!

Most of those firms have collapsed, and there are more and more people graduating each and every year.

According to data from the Institute of Statistics, Social and Economic Research[ISSER] of the University of Ghana, only about 10% of the students who complete tertiary education every year find jobs after their first years of completion.  Another statistics also clearly shows how it takes the average person in Ghana 10 years after graduating to secure a job.

This is not to substantiate the fact that what we need is the creation of more jobs! Far from it, what we need as a country is a reformed educational curriculum and syllabi, which would teach students how to lay hold on the creative powers in them, and how they can channel their gifts, talents, and skills to solve the relevant problems and challenges that confront us as a people, in an ethical way.

Let me reiterate: We do not need more jobs!

The promise of more jobs from our politicians is only a stepping stone to laziness and a bunch of young people whose creative and innovative powers can never be materialized!

What we need is a set of syllabi that would teach our young people how to become world class ethical General thinkers, Creators,  Philosophers, Inventors, Designers, and composers who are ALL problem solvers, using their respective fields of study and profession to make our societies a better place to live in.

Watch out for episode 3 of Africa, Ghana, and our Transformation soon!!!

I am eternally doomed to be highly optimistic about the total and complete transformation of our educational system- The Coach Finney

Finney Gyan Danso Baffo

President, Edukos Consults Africa

Authors of the award-winning book, Wassce Success Blueprint, B.E.C.E Success Blueprint, and How To Survive and Thrive In the Emerging Future Trends of Work

Email: gyanfinney@gmail.com