Farming? Fishing? Agriculture? Welding? Blockwork? Masonry? Is there anything that the school does not think it can provide? Is there anything that the METHA believes the school cannot provide? The Mis-Educated Than His Ancestors, the METHA, is obsessed with the colonial missionary classroom, i.e. school. He demands that school should teach his children English Literature, Ga, Twi, Dagbani, History, Economics, Life Skills, all the way up to subjects like Dressmaking, Welding, Brickwork, Cement Mixing, up to and including how to wipe their own buttocks after pooing, how to pee, how to wash dishes, how to cook Waakye and how to make their own beds at night.
Never mind that the school should also be responsible for teaching children how to say “please” and “goodnight”.
The school should do everything! Why? The METHA is lazy, and so he outsources his parental duties to the school. He has convinced himself that he works to earn a paycheck, which he calls a living, and that this very saintly activity in money-making precludes him from parenting his own children. He did not help his baby breastfeed (the baby was at Grandma’s and then dropped off at Daycare at just two months old), he did not help his baby crawl (the baby learned to crawl at Daycare or Grandma’s), he did not help the baby walk (the baby learned walking at Grandma’s or Daycare), he did not change a single diaper (yet he believes it is his child), he did not drop off or pick up from Grandma’s or Daycare (the maid or houseboy did it), he did not enroll the child in school (the Grandpa did this in his absence). The METHA is a formidable species that can shirk these responsibilities and still feel authority over his own baby.
Why? He makes money.
Provision has become merely about money. The METHA culture disdains the METHA who has little to no money. A METHA without money will be ostracized and stamped under foot. Some METHA are served divorce papers and prevented from seeing their own children. The METHA’s money supply is his end game. That he has not doubt. His money-making will last, but not his relationships. He surrenders everything else to someone else. Which is dangerous. He submits his own children’s legacy into the hands of people less qualified than himself to train and educate them. Therefore, he relinquishes the training and education of his children to the school, that colonial missionary classroom that is full of colonial, imperial texts and books.
The schools become dictatorial as the METHA transfers his inalienable parental authority, more and more to the school. The school becomes the parent and it even becomes much worse. Not only is the school demanding on the children, but the school also becomes the parents of the child’s parents, and the parents to the child’s grandparents. The school’s decision about a child is now unchallenged and final. The school decides how the child must be fed, how it must grow and how and what it must learn! This is dangerous. It is particularly treacherous because the school is filled up with less trained, less educated METHA! Since the METHA does not teach his children how to grow tomatoes, the school claims that it does. Since the METHA does not teach and train his children how to wipe their own buttocks after pooing, how to pee, how to cook, and how to make their beds, the school claims that it does.
Yet, the school barely has a playground for its over-sized pupil population. It barely has enough classrooms to enroll all the METHA’s children. The school does not have enough colonial textbooks for every child; it does not have enough qualified teachers; it does not have enough cleaning staff or lawn care workers. The school can barely boast of a single sporting facility, usually a dirt field; whole universities like the University of Ghana can barely provide sanitary washrooms for its students and visitors. The president of Ghana, for example, has to beg Singapore to provide dormitories to students of the University of Ghana (UG). The school has no parks for students and the public, and where a plan exists to establish one, the field is established with weeds, wild plants and newer and newer species of rats unknown and unrecognized by the very students in it. A swimming pool or water fountain, in front of the Commonwealth Hall or dorm at UG has been invaded by green algae for close to three whole decades!
The school is a failure. It has not produced leaders and citizens worth writing home to the Ancestors about. Look at the country they claim to be building? Our ancestors built better villages than the dusty Accra the METHA has assembled. Without the significant assistance of another country—which Ghana predates in acquiring its independence from the British— like Singapore, the METHA leadership cannot even build dorms for their own children!
What’s worse, the METHA’s home is also a failure. The METHA abandoned the home long ago. If he manages to put together a home in some neoliberal fashion, material shape or religious form, he can barely be expected to be actually found living in the home. The METHA is at work, or wherever, the children are in school, the grandparents are at work or traveling from one village to the next, and the METHA holds onto the singular belief that the meager money he earns by avoiding the home is the means to the end. The METHA is lost, and so he has submitted his children to the final authority of the school, which now claims to provide Agriculture lessons without having to first acquire the fertile land for such an endeavor. The show continues.
