----- 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 lllll QUOTATION: "All of us may not live to see the higher accomplishments of an African empire, so strong and powerful as to compel the respect of mankind, but we in our lifetime can so work and act as to make the dream a possibility within another generation" -<html><A HREF="http://members.aol.com/GhanaUnion/afrohero.html">Ancestor Marcus Mosiah Garvey <i>(1887 - 1940)</i></A></html> llllllllll * //\\//\\ unioNews Newsgroup //\\//\\ * * http://members.aol.com/GhanaUnion * * We're One People * * Join the Chorus * - African Union Shall Succeed - ===================================== A luta Continua! To subscribe to this group, send an eMail to: [log in to unmask] Yahoo! 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