----- Original Message -----
From: "Andy Mensah" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, March 03, 2004 9:10 PM
Subject: [unioNews] GHANA: Science Must Quicken Development


Wednesday, March 03, 2004
<H3>Science Must Quicken Development</H3>
By Prof. F. Kwaku Addai

Science educators and practitioners need an enabling environment in
which to ply their trade effectively enough to yield palpable
dividends for society.First, science and technology requires a
certain critical mass of trained workforce with adequate funding and
working conditions in order to produce the results that benefit the
community.

Currently, there is a serious shortage of science educators at all
levels from secondary to tertiary institutions in Ghana. Only a few
secondary schools have permanent science teachers, especially for the
physical sciences (chemistry, mathematics, and physics).

The few science teachers around are in such high demand that, pushed
by low basic salaries and attracted by supplementary financial gains,
they teach in several schools and hold numerous private classes.

Not only do they shun postings to rural areas for obvious reasons,
but also the overworked science educators have little time to think
about how to make science instruction interesting, or indigenously
practical/functional.

The solution is for policy makers to introduce incentive packages to
attract and retain high calibre science educators in sufficient
numbers, so that every secondary school anywhere in the country can
have its own permanent teachers in every discipline.

<B>I myself being a product of a rural deprived school that had no
permanent teachers in chemistry, physics and mathematics at both
Ordinary and Advanced levels, I know how many scientific talents are
lost because of lack of instructors in schools.

Of course, there is the argument that government is faced with
diverse needs, and everyone thinks their speciality requires more
funding and attention than they are getting. However, we must learn
from nature (anatomy) that resources have to be unequally distributed
in favour of very important organs (segments) to ensure the survival
of the whole body.

For instance, your body supplies about 20 times more blood to your
brain than to other parts such as your ear (external), so that the
brain can co-ordinate and direct the functioning of all other parts
of the body (including the ear!).

If every part of the body were to be supplied the same amount of
blood as the ear, the whole body will collapse because the brain will
not be able to function. It is about time the right amount of
resources are channelled into the teaching and learning of science
and technology to produce the synergy necessary to accelerate
development.</B>

It is also a fact that a scientist or science educator needs a
certain degree of freedom from "bread and butter" worries to be able
to discover, develop, and deploy his/her creativity to the extent
that will highly impact on the society.

If Sir Isaac Newton, the English physicist who propounded the
groundbreaking theories of gravity and inertia, had been hungry when
he saw an apple fall from its tree, his automatic reaction would have
been to eat the fallen apple rather than asking questions as to why
it had dropped to the ground.

Similarly, it will be useless to try explaining the laws of moments
of force and trajectories to the hungry young people who daily go
from one mango tree to another throwing sticks at the fruits. And yet
there are such practical science lessons in their activity that if it
were possible to explain to them, some of them could go on to become
rocket scientists.

While the country loses countless scientific talents because of
inadequate exposure to the subject in a functional way in our
schools, the more distressing fact is that lack of commensurate
remuneration is a disincentive for bright young people to pursue
careers in science education or research.

Last year a young lady who got a first class in one of the science
disciplines at the University of Ghana, Legon, spurned her
professors' invitation to pursue a career in the department.
The `smart' young lady simply said she did not want to end up
overworked and underpaid as her professors.

She has since left the country to pursue an MBA course in the UK.
Time was, when every science student who obtained a first or upper
second class honours degree gleefully joined his/her faculty.
Nowadays, most of the best honours graduates in science go into
business or other careers that give more remuneration for less taxing
responsibilities.

This is a situation that requires a national policy decision to
change for the better.

Another point that Prof. Ewurama Addy made (in the presentation that
prompted your editorial comment of February 24) concerns the mode of
examination in science in this country that hampers efforts to change
the way science is taught.

There is need for round-table discussions with all stakeholders
including WAEC to plot ways to redesign the syllabus for teaching
science in our schools, polytechnics, and universities. The Science
unit of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences (GAAS) may want to
create a forum for such discussions.

In reality, redesigning the science syllabus is a very involving
enterprise that requires very wide consultations, and takes time. An
example that comes to mind is the project 2061 of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), that has been co-
ordinating discussions and plans to re-design Science syllabus in the
USA from the year 2061!

In other words, the way science will be taught from 2061 has been
under discussion for the past few years and will continue to be
modified and fine-tuned until it is ready to be implemented. It
amounts to over-simplifying the problem if it is made to appear that
once science educators agree to change the way they teach the
subject, then the problem is solved.

A bane of science and technology in Ghana is the woeful lack (or
failure) of co-operation among the various stakeholders and
governmental units. For instance, the Ghana Association of Science
Teachers (GAST) whose commendable celebration of Science and
Technology Education Week provided the platform for the speech by
Prof. Ewurama Addy, has been struggling to infuse excitement in the
teaching of science in schools.

The Ghana Science Association (GSA), a multidisciplinary voluntary
group, offers refresher courses to selected science teachers in peri-
urban schools to help improve the teaching and learning of science.
The University College of Winneba has a programme going on to make
teaching and learning of science and technology interesting and
locally applicable.

Other institutions are making various efforts towards the same goal.
What is needed is co-ordination of all these efforts to produce a
concerted effort that can positively impact on the way science is
taught and learnt in Ghana.

<B>There is also the issue of lack of sponsorship for scientific
events, and efforts by scientists.

The GAST celebration of Science and Technology Education Week could
only be done in Accra because of funding problems. Given the right
sponsorship, such an event should be truly national, and replicated
in every district of the country. Can science fairs for example, be
given the publicity and endorsements given beauty pageants in Ghana
today?</B>

Ten years ago, my own scientific research on chewing stick usage
succeeded only because an American NGO in the country provided the
funding. My own University could not fund the research, although it
is one of my responsibilities as a faculty member to do research.

<B>We are at a point in our history where academic and research
institutions are given no more funding than is adequate to pay
salaries. Funding for research and pursuit of science (conferences,
seminars, colloquiums) has been lacking for a long time, but science
cannot make progress under such conditions.

As a people, our government and we ourselves must realise that
funding for science and technology is not a cost but an investment.
And the most fundamental and profitable investment in science is in
training high calibre science educators who are sufficiently excited
and motivated about the subject to spawn the next generation of
inventors and experts whose efforts would quicken our nation's
development.</B>

***
<i>Prof. F. Kwaku Addai is a Human Anatomy Educator and Career
Scientist and President of Ghana Science Association.</i>


Copyright © 2000/2001 Graphic Communications Group Limited




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