TEACHERS, 'AYEKOO' (OCT 6, 2010)

YESTERDAY, 84 teachers were presented awards in 17 categories under the National Best Teacher Awards scheme instituted by the government in 1994.
Two things are worthy of note here — the magnitude of the awards and the theme for this year’s awards, which is: “Recovery Begins with Teachers”.
Generally, awards recognise best performance and spur on both the awardees and others in a certain profession or any other group to do more.
On this score, we commend the government for improving on the Best Teacher Awards scheme to the point of giving the overall best teacher, since 2005, a handsome amount of money to put up a house at a place of his or her choice. It started from GH¢30,000 and within a relatively short period it has been raised to GH¢60,000. This is really significant and a worthy gesture from the government.
Looking at the theme, it is obvious that the “driving” word is “recovery”. Dictionaries will give you more than one definition for “recovery”, but the one which will fit any debate or discussion on the theme is “retrieve or make up for a loss, setback, etc”. (The Concise Oxford Dictionary)
If those who adopted the theme agree with us, then we can say that “recovery” implies formal education which can take place only when teachers are available, willing and ready to teach.
Every society depends on education for progress because in today’s global village where knowledge explodes or increases every now and then, many of us would lose track of most of the things happening around us. This way, we lose a lot that must be retrieved or made up for.
We cannot help losing some of the things happening now to retrieve them later. Our ability to read and write and to make meaning out of figures is the only skill that helps us to retrieve.
And the ability to retrieve calls for an educational system that has all the basic facilities that stand teachers in a good stead to do the “recovery”.
The DAILY GRAPHIC, therefore, wishes to appeal to the Ministry of Education and the Ghana Education Service, the two main government bodies which are in charge of education in the country, teacher organisations such as GNAT, NAGRAT and CHASS, student bodies, churches and parents, as well as individual teachers and students, to play their respective roles to improve education in the country.
The current situation where a greater percentage of the products of basic education, particularly those from the public schools, can neither read nor construct even single sentences, whether in speech or writing, should prick the conscience of teachers to assess their own performance.
A good, dedicated and caring teacher must be the one who helps his students to acquire the skills with which they can also recover and even go beyond to discover. We should remember that the untrained mind is a great disaster to any nation and most of the blame for the inability of school leavers to express knowledge should be borne by teachers.
But it is only when all stakeholders in education play their roles as is expected of them that we can say with all the confidence that, indeed, “recovery begins with teachers”.
That, we dare say, is the bottom line and we must all be ready and willing to play our respective roles with distinction to move education in the country forward.