THAT the Presidential Committee on the Review of the Educational Reforms is to reconvene to discuss the issues emerging over the teaching of Religious and Moral Education (RME) as a subject by itself at the basic level of education is refreshing and welcome.
This is because it shows that the government is ready to dialogue with interest groups on issues over which those groups have divergent views.
Moreover, it sends out the right signal that stakeholders in the various sectors of the economy do not have to use unorthodox means to draw the government’s attention to areas where they think there are shortcomings. All they need to do is use the appropriate channels of communication, such as petitions, the way the Ghana Catholic Bishops Conference went about its dissatisfaction with the removal of RME from the school curriculum.
When the Bishops, in their communiqué issued in Kumasi last month, noted that “sidelining religion and morality from education is tantamount to condemning the human person to a lack of a means to develop himself or herself fully to be a human being in the society”, they attracted other groups which were also in favour of the re-introduction of the RME.
Both Christian and Muslim groups raised their voices in agreement with the call made by the Bishops and that might have convinced the President to direct the Ministry of Education, Science and Sports to take a second look at the issue.
According to the Ghana Education Service (GES), it became necessary to take out RME as a subject and integrate it in Social Studies because there was the need to reduce the number of subjects studied at the basic school level. Before then, it claimed, there had been the clamour for the number of subjects to be reduced to lessen the burden on pupils and students at that level of education.
The DAILY GRAPHIC feels that that argument is tenable, but if we juxtapose that against the fact that in this permissive and immoral society we stand the chance of getting ALL our young ones corrupted if we do not inculcate in them the right morals, then we need to revisit the RME issue.
We also believe that the family, as the basic unit of society, should be alive to its responsibilities in bringing up the children within it. This way, children could pick up moral lessons both at home and in school, a situation which will keep them morally upright all the time.
While welcoming the reconvening of the committee to look at the RME issue, we would want to caution that should the subject be brought back to the classrooms, it should not be an avenue for the religious denominations to force their doctrines down the throats of children who may profess other faiths.
The DAILY GRAPHIC would also want to go further and ask that if it is possible, the committee should look at making RME a core examinable subject at both the basic and secondary school levels. Experience has shown that if a subject is not examinable, many students do not take it seriously and if that is what the RME will be, then the hullabaloo raised over it would not be worthwhile.
We commend the Education Ministry for its show of maturity and understanding in this instance and hope that the committee will come up with something which all stakeholders will be happy with. We also commend all the stakeholders in education who, instead of rocking the boat, rather chose the civilised path of petitioning the authorities. Their calls have been heard and it is our wish that their inputs will be incorporated into the outcome of the committee’s deliberations.
That is the spirit in which we expect religious, social, economic and all other groups to deal with state authorities which fashion out policies.
No comments:
Post a Comment