Nunoo-Mensah: Ghana's education system useless

Former National Security Advisor Brigadier General Joseph Nunoo-Mensah (rtd) has bemoaned the quality of education in Ghana after 59 years of independence, a situation he said everybody including students must be blamed for.

"And when you come to education, I'm not an educationist, I’m just a mere ordinary infantry soldier, but I've got enough brains. …Our people go to university to study and they can't put anything together, not even a bicycle…and, so, we have to question the substance of our education.

“I am a soldier, but there's nothing I can't do. I can build a house, I can fix my car, I can do so many things. So, education has to be for a purpose, not just for a degree, and be on radio and insult people with your education. So, we have to look at the content of our education. What are we teaching our young people, so that our young people will be able to be creative…” he told Ekow Mensah-Shalders on the Executive Breakfast Show (EBS) on Class 91.3fm Monday March 7.

According to him, fresh graduates cannot even remember the last things they learned in school, a situation he said was due to lack of knowledge.

“People who left school just last year can’t even remember Pythagoras [Theorem]. I completed school 60 years ago and I can remember Pythagoras [Theorem] though I taught myself in school. So, what are we teaching our children…? So, everybody has a blame to carry including the children themselves; they (don’t) read,” stated the former national security advisor.

“I have been going to many schools in Ghana: O’Reilly, Winneba, Dawurampong, Nsaba, Kwanyarko, all sorts of them, I have never seen anybody (student) reading a book; they are on Facebook, they are on WhatsApp; they don’t learn, they don’t know anything.

“There is a lack of knowledge. Knowledge is not what you acquire from reading somebody’s ideas, you create your own knowledge…what school did Apostle Kwadwo Sarfo go to learn how to make a car…so, we have a lot of work to do and that work must be devoid of politics…”

“Let a committee sit down and find out where we have gone wrong…it’s not too late. …Rome has been in existence since the time of Christ when Paul was taken to Rome, so, Ghana is going to be there for a long time. We should not be in a hurry; we should sit down quietly, calmly and find out where we have gone wrong.”