I just heard that the government of Ghana has proposed to provide free school uniforms, shoes and menstrual pads for girls, to motivate them to go to and remain in school. It immediately reminded me of something I blogged almost two years ago. The original piece was quite long so I decided to share a section which, I believe, deals directly with this issue. I recommend reading the whole piece titled, “Just thinking about society and progress,” on my blog.
As far as I can remember, and I also know this from experience, the reason most of us (I mean children in villages) didn’t like schooling was not because we just didn’t like it. Or because we were too poor. But mostly because we felt that we had no future in education. For example, our school was ill-equipped: the school building looked like it’s going to fall on you; we had no library, very few teachers (most of whom were unqualified), and few resources for training a child.
We missed more lessons than we had. In the end, we got tired of sitting around aimlessly for hours, day after day without teachers to teach us. We even got tired of playing games all the time. We were not stupid. We knew what was going on. From not having enough teachers, to missing most of the lessons, we knew our future didn’t lie in the classroom.
Also, we had no examples of success through the educational system to look up to. Just imagine being cut off from the rest of the country and world. We had no electricity, no radio or television. Nothing. And having no one or nothing to point us to a bigger, better world out there which could be within your grasp, we became disillusioned about our prospects in education and most dropped out.
This was how life looked like for a child attending a primary and Junior High School in a village in Ghana over two decades ago. Although some progress has been made over the years the fundamental problems persist today.
With all these challenges of lack of motivation and resources, will providing free school uniforms or meals, for example, make a real dint in changing the status quo? I doubt very much! Because the problem of getting kids of disadvantaged families and communities to go to school and remain in education is quite complicated.
However, these policies aren’t bad in themselves. What I’m suggesting is that because of the complex and intractable nature of these problems, simple solutions are not sufficient. Yes! at times it might be necessary to provide school uniforms to certain poor pupils. However, we should be breaking away from wholesale one-fits-all social policies.
This alone will not address all the causes of absenteeism or low appreciation of the value of education among some sections of society. The real impact of these policies are in the end not significant. Nor are they enduring either.
It may be easy to provide school uniforms or meals than to get teachers to go to deprived rural communities to teach these pupils. What would be the gain when well-uniformed, well-fed pupils have no teachers to teach them. The reality is that this is still happening now.
What problem is the free uniform supposed to solve in the first place? Is the cost of school uniform an obstacle to parents seeking to enrol their wards? If so, what’s the best way to solve it? Can we, for instance, allow pupils to wear casuals to school? Or can we make room for a wider range of clothes which are readily and cheaply available on our markets?
We should consider and review all options carefully. So that parents would have the pride of providing for their wards, however little of means they may be. And thus free these funds for government to provide the needed motivation and support for teachers and facilities and resources for delivering quality education.
Klog Reflections 