Exposing corporal punishment in Ghana schools hits a sour note

Yesterday in my response to an article on the virtues of Ghanaian schools, (or lack thereof), I received quite an earful/screenful from Anonymous.

I took a step back, digested his/her comments (highlighted below):

"I have read the article you quoted and to be frank your posting is much more biased and highly exaggerated in comparison.

In your hasty attempt to rebutt an article which, I suppose, does not conform to your idea of "Ghanaian education", you intentionally come up with half-truths and complete falsehoods to justify your entrenched perception.

That is a shame!

I am a Ghanaian. I, like many Ghanaian children, received my elementary and secondary education in an unimaginably poor rural area of Ghana, but I had a good foundation which enabled me to gain admission into an ivy-league college in the States.
We may not have had the very best of what money could buy, but certainly we did not recieve an inferior education judging by my grades in class.
It is totally false to claim that "students are not asked to write 'in their own words' about topics they read".In fact, we were taught never to copy from others but submit our own independent work every time.
Since when has teaching children to keep their environment clean become an abuse? In America, they have the money to hire peple to take care of the schools' environment, in Ghana the children help to clean. There is nothing superior about the American approach.
At least, we are not confronted with the issues of shootings and violence in many of the schools in the west. And the reason for that, if you care to know, is:Ghanaian children are taught to respect authority and not fear them,as you claimed.
Reading your post will not help the reader, because it is not only full of exaggerations, but outright antagonistic in nature.

Have a nice day!"

And then I came to the conclusion that my experiences and observations have not been imagined or exaggerated. Nor am I the only one to observe the things I noted. I realise that exposing the harsh truths about what really goes on in Ghanaian schools is something that many Ghanaians (especially those abroad)are not happy about at all.

There is a perception among many westerners that corporal punishment is negative, despite the circumstances, and therefore the truth of it being at the core of the Ghanaian school system is something often breezed over or brushed under the carpet.

I was then alerted to another article called "Ghana's School of Hard Knocks", in the Epoch Times, dated earlier this year, which could be considered biased by my anonymous reader, as this is written by a Canadian who teaches in Ghana, with a stepson attending school here. It's worth a read. Here is an excerpt:

" From the first moment of junior kindergarten, at the tender age of four, the cane enters the life of Ghana's school children. How else can teachers manage with classes ranging from 40 (the smallest I've heard) to 62? Teachers, breathe deeply.

The environment in schools is punitory. If a class does poorly on an exam, all the students may be caned. If a child's clothes aren't neat, his nails aren't trimmed, or he comes to school without a handkerchief, he may be caned. If he is late, it's the cane for sure.

" Having taught school here, I quickly noticed that the children are addicted to the cane. Without one in your hand, they feel it unnecessary to listen to you. They are like convicts in a prison, going wild when the guards are off the range.

I have noticed that children here often lie to avoid the harsh punishment. There is no emphasis on "goodness for goodness sake," or on internalizing moral reasoning—the moral code is governed by the cane. I worry that this focus on external may be the tiny seed from which corruption springs, and the popular idea that "if you're not caught, it wasn't wrong."


The trouble is that her observations are not false - I can relate to most examples she gives.

The question becomes whether corporal punishment is truly as bad as westerners believe, whether it hampers education and self confidence in children, whether it instills fear and develops the habit of lying, whether it is wrong morally and tramples the human rights of vulnerable children ... not whether it in fact occurs daily in Ghanaian schools. That answer is a resounding YES.

Corporal punishment and lack of teacher training in Ghana not to be idealised

I read an interesting article today by an American grant consultant, called 'Ghana offers some lessons in discipline, teacher quality', where he compares Ghanaian schools with those in Iowa, USA. With children having passed through both the public and private school systems here in Ghana, I found the lighthearted and naive assumptions and conclusions of the author to be disturbingly superficial.

The intention of the article was to stress both discipline and higher educational standards for the folks back home, but to praise both of these aspects of the Ghanaian educational system, without placing them in their context, with all their pitfalls, is also a dangerous stand to take.

There is a passing comment about the paddle that is present in the corner of every classroom. This American author would be no doubt suing the school board if his children were beaten with any of the implements used commonly in Ghanaian schools for ‘discipline’. He glances over what would be considered by western standards as a culture of child abuse in the educational system across Ghana.

Children are caned on a daily basis. The acts of indiscipline warranting the caning include being part of a class of 52 children, where one or two have not completed their homework or memorized a certain passage to perfection. My own son attended a semi private Ghanaian school for five years and came home with welts, having been beaten for this very reason, despite having completed the tasks himself.

When I confronted the teacher and principle I was told his skin was too soft and hence marks were left, and they could not be blamed for that. There is no guilt or shame among educators in Ghana for beating children. It is an integral part of the curriculum and culture. Students from as young as five years old are tasked daily with chopping grass with machetes and cleaning out gutters on the school compound. This again would amount to using children for manual labour by American standards, and again, not completing these tasks to the teacher’s satisfaction also attracts stiff beatings. The respect he commended in classrooms can be rather attributed to fear. Students may call their elders ‘Sir’ and “Ma’am’ but unlike the system in the west where often teachers are close mentors, in Ghana teachers and students have a relationship closer to dictator and servant.

I also came across an interesting article on the TimesOnline site, "African cane tames unruly British pupils". A teacher is interviewed at a Ghanaian school, "Children must be taught. You don’t sit down and discuss directions with a child – you tell them where to go,” he said. "Children are beaten for misbehaving or failing to do home-work, but not for poor results".

One of the students sent from the UK by his immigrated parents, Sienam, admitted that he had been caned “many, many times” by his teachers in Ghana. “Any time you do something you know you shouldn’t do or step out of line, you get caned.” It is the reality of the system.

Secondly, with regard to curriculum, the Ghanaian standard is modeled after the British system of the 1950s and 60s. The author must have seen on his many visits to Ghanaian schools, some of these textbooks taken directly from 1950s editions from the UK. The focus is on memorization and many times regurgitation. Essays which evoke the child’s imagination are not part of curriculum, and students are not asked to write ‘in their own words’ about topics they read about. What results, as a close American friend of mine teaching at the University of Legon currently experienced, is that 50 out of 60 students will submit THE EXACT SAME PAPER. She is now at a loss as to what recourse to take. I am not sure that American schools should encourage a return to this type of learning, when the school systems in the west have intentionally moved away from these methods, after realizing children gain irreplaceable skills by applying their knowledge outside textbooks.

I have yet another concern regarding the author’s assessment of the quality of teachers in Ghanaian schools. Constantly during my son’s five years at a prominent and well respected Ghanaian elementary school, I was shocked by the lack of basic grasp of English grammar amongst the teachers. They constantly marked wrong grammar as correct or even worse, corrected proper grammar with complete mistakes. The problem was not concerning only one teacher but many, and I can guarantee it is not an isolated problem with this particular school. The average pay for an elementary school teacher in Ghana is less than $200 per month, which does not attract the most talented pool. The wages and living conditions in the rural schools are even worse, meaning these schools suffer an even worse fate in terms of their faculty.

Kofi Annan, illustrated in the article as a typical example of the products of Ghanaian education, is the child of Ghanaian Royalty, having graduated from the then highly elite boarding school ‘Mfantsipim’ back when the British system resembled the contemporary curriculum of the day in the UK, is definitely not representative of the average Ghanaian child, with comparable opportunities. Especially in today’s Ghana.

In fact, he states that education is ‘mandatory’ in Ghana, and indeed it may be, but the reality on the ground is that the streets are lined with children hawking goods during school hours, and estimated figures are closer to 60% of urban children are actually attending school on a regular and consistent basis. The rural areas are nowhere near this figure. Many villages have no schools to attend, let alone the money for the fees.



Though I do agree it’s a good idea to get people in western countries with developed economies to stand up and re-evaluate their school systems and the lack of respect among the youth of today, I don’t believe that exonerating the educational system in a poor country like Ghana, with it’s lack of infrastructure and a culture of corporal punishment, is fair in the context given.

Highschool Graduation offers more than a Diploma Paper in Ghana

I am nostalgic and emotional and basically choked up. A great song will bring me to tears today. And yesterday. And the day before.

This weekend was Graduation.

Not mine – in fact I didn’t even attend my own, way back in the 80’s from my ghetto fabulous highschool. There just wasn’t that feeling of closeness as a whole class. There were cliques and segments, and like the street gangs of L.A. we moved through the halls of the windowless day prison, carefully eyeing the enemy. The uncool, the rockers, the ‘Enriched Program’ brainiac geeks, the Punjabis with the knives in their socks. There were the mysterious smokers who hung out at the back of the school, all pencil thin in jean jackets and Farah Fawcett hair – both the guys and the girls. There were the unwritten rules of segregation in the cafeteria and the danger of being in the wrong locker bay at the wrong time. It was a rough and tough school and no one really shed a tear at leaving.

On the last day of classes we all walked down the tree lined suburban side streets to the ‘right’ or the ‘wrong ‘ side of the main road – the classist line that divided the properties and caused further divergence among the students. We never looked back. We were grateful it was over and none of us had a united future, or common goals to look forward to. We passed the grade and did our time and it was over.

This scenario could not be further from the reality of the kids we watched through their Graduation ceremonies this weekend. My tears were brought on firstly by the reality that I’ll be losing a surrogate son – surrendering an amazing child to adulthood and the big world.

But what struck me during the numerous events arranged around the Graduation, was the amazing comraderie and sense of purpose among a class of 50. All alive and vibrant and determined. All of them convinced they will be great. None of them weighed down by the soul sucking weight of reality. None of them obsessed about themselves in that negative, self loathing way that is exhibited in the attitude of so many teenagers in the west today. The class has been together like a force, a swarm, for years. The friendships developed will span their lifetimes and have etched memories into each other forever.

All of these kids are forced upon each other, all taken from the comfort zones of their own cultures and dumped into a mixing pot called an International School, while their fathers do the daily grind with infinite frustrations and their mothers try to find women’s groups for tea and oversee the servants and try not to lose their grip on reality.

They come from everywhere – Denmark, Sri Lanka, Lebanon, Korea, America, Australia, South Africa ... the world.

Still, what comes out of this experiment in education abroad is an amazing self esteem and sense of purpose the children gain. They are privileged but not spoiled, they travel the world and they are responsible. They are tolerant and open minded and they see the world far beyond country borders. They become leaders from within.
So at the graduation ceremony there are hundreds of photos and speeches and hugs and tears and the sentiment is real and the kids are all headed somewhere with purpose. But will definitely miss where they’ve been.

And the parties afterwards are shared with parents and families and everyone has fun. No one is too cool to dance with their mother, too bored to talk to their uncle, joke with their teachers, enjoy the love that surrounds them.

And the songs that serenaded the kids as they threw up their caps, and at the parties later will hold memories for all of us, and remind us that it is possible to have a positive outlook and have pride in the generation that we are raising. And years down the road I will undoubtedly be driving along and hear the song that pulsated, “My dream is to fly over the rainbow so high”, and I will see in my memory’s eye, the crowded dancefloor and the jumping bodies, all excited and hopeful and alive, and I will get all choked up and nostalgic and remember this graduation as if it were my own.