ACCRA — How good were the good old days? The days of our fathers seem good because they invested so much hope in the future–with the expectation that our present will be better than their past. Soon the future was here, but it didn’t taste good enough to fulfill our expectations of the prosperous moments we had been waiting for. Hoping against hope, we kept wondering whether time had hurried too quickly into a difficult present or we have simply failed to build upon the good beginnings of our fathers. How do we bring back the good old days?
Last September, Hackman Owusu-Agyemang, an astute politician and a respected statesman, gave us a peep into the good old days when he appeared on Joy New’s Personality Profile programme. An accomplished professional with stellar academic qualities, Hackman recounted his eventful days at the University of Science and Technology, where the university system prepared students well for academic scholarship and professional competence. Candidates were required to write a competitive examination to be admitted to university, after passing the O’ and A’ levels. University students enjoyed superior accommodation services, including free regular meals every day.
In those days, university students exhibited the intellectual curiosity necessary for a well-rounded education. The system was designed to deploy the creative energies of students to contribute effectively to the growth and productivity of the nation. Hackman reports that his colleagues at UST (it was during Hackman’s time as a student that the institution acquired university status) excelled so well at their examinations that the British supervisors who graded their papers doubted the intellectual aptitude of the students. The students had performed beyond the expectation of the white professors. The British academics flew to Ghana to arrange another set of examinations for the Africans, where they supervised the students to write the new test.
The students, Hackman reports, did even better in the second examination than the extremely good grades they had made in the original test. The British examiners went back with a few good thoughts about university education in Ghana. This was the caliber of the people who attended university in those days. They were sought after to work on industrial attachment during vacation. There was closer collaboration and partnership between the university and the world of work. Students were not only taught well to pass semester examinations; they were prepared to solve problems at the workplace.
After university, employment was not difficult because employers valued the skills of the university graduate and were convinced of their employability. Well, the student numbers in the days of Hackman were very small compared with the population who pour onto our streets today in search of non-existent jobs.
Hackman had an illustrious career as an agricultural economist at the Ministry of Agriculture, where he began his long professional journey, and later at the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations. In eight years, Hackman was promoted six times to fill various positions in a competitive international working environment where he was mostly a minority, an African.
“You will be lucky to have him”, a prospective employer had been reassured by a referencing organisation when Hackman tried changing jobs. They were very lucky to have a seasoned professional whose hard work and diplomatic skills would see him visit every African country as a representative of the United Nations. Later as Minister of Foreign Affairs in the NPP administration under President J.A Kufour, those skills would prove very useful during negotiations in troubled regions in Africa. He recounts that he worked directly with the presidents of every African country when he was with the UN. This is how good the old talents worked–in a pre-twitter age.
Today, the university student wears his ‘swag’ on his sleeves, professing superfluous knowledge of new apps on the smartphone and boasting better ways of connecting with friends on social media. How many Hackmans has the University of Science and Technology (now Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology) produced after the NPP statesman graduated in the early 1960s? How far has KNUST improved academic research and enriched scholarship after Hackman? Are the graduates of today’s universities adequately resourced–intellectually and professionally –to plan, design and build anything better than what we found when Hackman was a young man? The young graduate of today may be headhunted for a few roles and positions in new occupational callings, but the quality of performance is not the same.
Things are not the same. At my age, I feel very old and too feeble to catch up with the speed of technology and the fast pace of modern life. My assistants at work often tease that I have no swag because I don’t know ‘what’s up.’ They find me a very boring person with a poor appreciation of fun and social pleasure. The other day, one of them commented that I am ageing faster than my natural years because of my boring old school ways. She recommended a fun-packed regimen of activities that did not include reading a book or news magazine. Her list of activities included a visit to the gym, body massage in a beauty parlour and a relaxation moment in a movie house.
Perhaps the problem is the word ‘swag’, which is often used wrongly by people who think they are smart. According to one dictionary, to ‘swag’ is to sway or lurch in movement; to hang loosely, sag or sway. As a noun, a swag is a “suspended wreath, drapery or flowers fastened up near each end and hanging down”. So when we say a young man has swag, to mean that he is fashionable, exotic or as my assistant puts it “knows what’s up,” the English dictionary is not our source of reference. In radio and TV adverts, we are told to swag up. What does it mean? Are they asking us to sway unsteadily to the left or right? As a slang, ‘swag’ also means ‘money’ or ‘valuables,’ neither of which communicates our intended meanings when we use the term. Swag is an acronym for ‘secretly we are gay’ or ‘Sex with a guy.’ A property obtained by theft or illicit means is a swag. So a swag is a thief. Well, it also means stylish.
With so much swag, today’s university graduate is lurching towards opportunistic quick-fixes and swaying to greedy pastures to make use of their degrees. Like Thomas Friedman, they believe that “In today’s world, anything that can be done will be done. The only question is will it be done by you or to you?” Well, it seems the Hackmans chose to do things while the swags of today are happy to have things done to them. See why the good old days were damn good?
How good were the good old days? Kwesi Tawiah-Benjamin is asking an important question in an exciting piece. Have we disappointed the older generation? Have we disappointed our elders? Are we finally living in a benighted era – one that our forebears feared? Or has the beguiling charm of today’s technology left us all aloof in the moment, with a fatuous swag that goes nowhere? Good friends of mine have argued that I can be hidebound when pontificating on the virtues of the Traditional African era – not necesarrily the Hackman Owusu-Agyemang era at UST – versus the conditions of today. But I largely do it to fumigate the insanity of today’s materialism. Is this what Ghana’s students, Africa’s students, are also buying into? Does Kwesi have a point here?
Kwesi has a point and it hold water on the grounds that the higher Institution itself has also failed to transform it tradition with respect to the development of the society with time; this has led to huge vacuum between education and industries.
And as the old proverb says when two elephants fight the grounds sufferers; depict that graduate of today are paying for the repercussions.
Tweneboah, so you think that the universities started well – educating Ghanaians in some real sense, at least better than what we have today. But if it did, my question is, Why are we still here, moving backwards? Ghana has been ruled and managed by people who attended these schools? If the university of yester-years was any different from today’s, at least we would have seen some real strides in sustainable developmental goals at some point. Or wouldn’t we?
I do agree that the students now are more concerned with their cell phones and whatever other gadgets and that if these things were nonexistent, there would be a greater focus on learning. Too many distractions these days. They prevent us from getting what we need out of our educations. We want the lesson to be over so we can get back to texting.
Perhaps it is time to get off the high horses and scientifically assess the quality of our education. We must begin to understand fully what we are impacting to kids and whether that is of any practical importance. Then we must track progress and re-assess at every juncture the quality of education our citizenry have entrusted us to deliver to them. That will put a whole lot around this discussion in the much needed perspective.
Thank you for reading those books and news magazines, otherwise we all would be getting massages and movie going and nobody would be writing timely and much-needed articles!
Some where within kwesi written lines; if my mind serves me well, indicated that their British Professor saw the intelligence aptitude of the student to be higher than what he has anticipated and expected to recieve from the result. Therefore Requested for resit.
Hahahaha who set up the University for Great Britain for it student to learn to the higher level to attain such grade?
That is the difference here, it was ovious that, the master will teach in a manner to deepen the slavery mentality, de-facto our style of thinking have not been such surprise. We have people who travel to report EC-of Ghana to British Prime Minister this are the root cause.
But my initial analysis was defined not in wholistic perspective to have taken into consideration the content of our knowledge studies.
My earlier assertion limited it self to the conducive atmosphere of higher learning institution as at that time to create enviroment of happiness for student to perform extraordinary such could have been the case as a sine qua non to build administrators to support British system knowing how they wanted us to continue being a raw material for their industry which Ghana by then was still not too far away from colonisation then.
I see Tweneboah. Definitely, the conditions in our public universities are much worse than they were under Nkrumah. And you are probably right when you say, the education was still, even under Nkrumah, geared towards buffering the primary sector in Ghana and the secondary, tertiary and quaternary sectors in Britain. Even more, Nkrumah did something many people do not credit him enough for – the free education for the North. This quickened the speed of education in the North to catch up with the South. This way, the man prevent many civil wars. The generation after Nkrumah did absolutely nothing. Just a bunch of failure really. Now is our time to turn it around and make it better so that our children do not have to run to Ashesi and into the open arms of Corporate America!
The greatest downfall of Nkrumah vision was that his enemy was just at his backyard enslaving the mind of his people for the name of universal grading point.
Narmer Amenuti you used the word let get the “high horses” off, wonderful your masters have never left you because the success of their system was built to depend on our labour and sweat.
So their CIA is always skimming for new ways to continually using us while we are best skimming for the stealing of money. No CIA for Africa to dicepher the codes of imperialism always individual affairs as we are here doing.
The new tool used now is Propaganda; hyping the people they had direct hand in training to build the confidence of the masses in them, such that they become the big horses.
They are not there ordinary, even though they are unproductive, they are puppet to work in favour of the master and against the masses. So to uproot them is to understand the regimental force behind.