We need libraries in all the regions of Ghana for parents to take their children to on the weekends to go and study. We are not preparing our children to embrace life-long learning.
We need libraries in all the regions of Ghana for parents to take their children to on the weekends to go and study. We are not preparing our children to embrace life-long learning.
Nana Kwaku 9 years ago
Marcus, libraries will not do the trick. We parents have to introduce them to reading. We need to make them understand the benefits of picking a book and value its contents. I studied Greek mythology at age 12! I did not choo ... read full comment
Marcus, libraries will not do the trick. We parents have to introduce them to reading. We need to make them understand the benefits of picking a book and value its contents. I studied Greek mythology at age 12! I did not choose to do so. It was my late father who saw the need to make us easily understand terms like "to open the pandora's box." At that age, I knew what it meant when someone said "his Achilles' heels are women" and so on. There's no way any school could have achieved that. Let's be honest!
My father built a library in our house. We did not live in a mansion, it was a two bedroom flat. He got a carpenter to fix shelves on all four walls in our living room, and all he did was to go to the second hand book sellers and made his selections. I don't have my own house yet, but I sure do have plans for that.
Marcus, there are so many ways of teaching your children stuff that they will not get in school. You can take them out on excursions yourself. Most parents want the school to do that for them. All they want is to make some profit from the trip which yields very little. If you truly love your kids, a tro tro trip to Aburi will not hurt your pocket or finances. All the best.
Tekonline.org 9 years ago
Nana, your point is well taken but Marcus is very right. The single most important investment in our children's education would be the availability of well-equipped libraries for all.
It would indeed be nice if parents cou ... read full comment
Nana, your point is well taken but Marcus is very right. The single most important investment in our children's education would be the availability of well-equipped libraries for all.
It would indeed be nice if parents could create a good collection in the home but good books are expensive, especially well-written well-illustrated science books.
Even if one had the financial means, I'm not quite certain one could easily find the good books. If a teenager is very curious about how smartphones work, where in Accra can he find an easy-to-understand modern book about the device?
The American "Barnes-and-Noble" model could also be of help: bookstores that allow in-store reading without purchase. Although I wonder if that model would work in Ghana. Incidentally, even Barnes and Noble bookstores do not carry every useful book that one might desire. More often than not, one would have to order through the store.
A third option would be e-books. Unfortunately tablets and e-readers are still expensive devices and depend on electric power availability, not to mention the problem of online credit-card acceptance in Ghana.
Many of us are who we are today because of good libraries in our hometowns while growing up in Ghana.
I quite remember the colorful American science books by Nina Schneider that I could not stay away from in the Cape Coast public library.
Asiwome 9 years ago
I was disgusted when I realized that I had become English by the end of my teenage years but half way through my life I was still trying to find out what it meant to be a Christian.
I was disgusted when I realized that I had become English by the end of my teenage years but half way through my life I was still trying to find out what it meant to be a Christian.
We need libraries in all the regions of Ghana for parents to take their children to on the weekends to go and study. We are not preparing our children to embrace life-long learning.
Marcus, libraries will not do the trick. We parents have to introduce them to reading. We need to make them understand the benefits of picking a book and value its contents. I studied Greek mythology at age 12! I did not choo ...
read full comment
Nana, your point is well taken but Marcus is very right. The single most important investment in our children's education would be the availability of well-equipped libraries for all.
It would indeed be nice if parents cou ...
read full comment
I was disgusted when I realized that I had become English by the end of my teenage years but half way through my life I was still trying to find out what it meant to be a Christian.