“I used to attend Aburi Methodist Primary School but I had difficulty understanding anything in class. So my mum brought me to Accra to be more or less an errand boy to a relative.”
Fourteen-year-old Pascal recounts to me, his unpleasant experiences from school while writing out letters of the English alphabet on a slate. Except he is writing them backwards and from left to write.
Pascal’s friends, Razak and Kwame are seated to his right and they too have some unpleasant memories from school.
“When I was in school, I couldn’t do Maths and when I raise my hand to ask questions, the teacher will say I should sit down,” said eleven-year-old Razak.
As for Kwame, he dropped out of school because he was unable to read and write in class which earned him “merciless beatings.”
Listening to these boys reminded me of that one classmate who never quite understood anything that was taught in class, no matter who explained it and how it was explained.
And I’d bet my last penny we all had that one classmate we always considered a “problem” because they “drag the class back”, and teachers dreaded having to deal with them.
It will be nothing short of dishonesty if you do not admit that you, as did I, simply perceived such students as simply daft and lazy. So we called them names like tiwuii and shaalor among other demeaning accolades.
Our perceptions may contain a scintilla of truth but science diagnoses these children as having learning difficulties such as dyslexia (difficulty with reading and writing), dyscalculia (having difficulty working with numbers) or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
Dorcas has an 11-year-old son with learning difficulties like Pascal and his friends. Her son has been repeated twice and is in class four. In her view, this is a spiritual problem and she takes him for prayers regularly.
This is an option many parents unfortunately resort to, according to a survey conducted by the Special Attention Project (SAP) – an organization that focuses on assisting children with learning difficulties so as to successfully reintegrate them into mainstream school.
A SAP tutor assisting a dyslexic girl to read and write with specialized cards.
Richard Opoku is the Programs Manager for the organization and he tells me two out three of their students have been to one prayer camp or another. A glance at the data showed that illiterate parents or poor families who tend to have such difficulties immediately pull their wards out of school and turn them into money-making machines
“We’ve had instances where parents come to take their kids out of the centre. Because for them, we’re cutting off their source of livelihood,” Mr. Opoku noted.
This is one hurdle they are trying to overcome, one parent at a time, through regular sensitization and education.
Research shows that in every classroom, an average of three people have learning difficulties while 52 percent of teachers say they haven’t received any training for handling children with learning difficulties.
This is evident in the impatience displayed by some teachers when dealing with such students which, more often than not, translates into vocal aversion and even physical punishment.
I will not claim expertise on global educational structures but I am a Ghanaian and I will speak to what I know. Our classrooms are downright unfriendly to persons with learning difficulties; counterproductive even.
Given that persons with learning difficulties have been proven to be mostly talented and skilled in the arts, sports, technology. For instance, Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Henry Ford, founder of automobile company Ford, boxing legend Mohammed Ali and artist Pablo Picasso were all dyslexic.
More likely than not, these billionaires and legends grew up in a more enabling environment with the requisite resources that capitalized on their strengths to earn them a place in history.
With these names in mind and given our educational structure, imagine the number of talents that have been stifled and continue to be suppressed. Ghana could cultivate dozens of legends and billionaires if only the appropriate systems are instituted to cater for the needs of these children.
But as it stands, the rhetoric remains that “because of our economic circumstance we’re not being able to do it and do it well. It’s not that we don’t know,” Education minister, Matthew Opoku Prempeh tells me.
By “it,” he means the Inclusive Education Policy which was launched by government through the Ghana Education Service and the Ministry of Education in 2016 to address issues pertaining to persons with learning difficulties.
Private organizations like the Special Attention Project can try to do their bit in helping these children but their efforts will only be a drop in the ocean.
While we await an economic resurrection so that the government will have enough money for developmental projects including the adequate implementation of the Inclusive Education Policy, scores of potential talents are going untapped in our hostile educational system and scores more may perish feeling dumb and oblivious of the skills or talents they possess.
My last two pesewas…
For parents and educators who notice unusually slow-learning pace in children, do well to first seek professional help. Coupled with this, all parties should in their own way educate themselves on how best to handle persons with learning difficulties.
This will help ease their educational journey, even if it’s just a little bit. It benefits no one if such persons feel “dumb” “stupid” and “worthless” like half of the kids at SAP felt, prior to their coming to the center.
Better yet, focus more on harnessing their skills and talents!
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By: Marie-Franz Fordjoe | citinewsroom.com | Ghana