I am not an education expert to buttress what I’m coming to say with big terminologies, so I’d rather begin with two scenarios.
In scenario 1, there’s an engineer who started studying engineering when he was a kid. He got a solid foundation and was even fortunate to work on projects at a tender age. To top it all, he didn’t have to get himself confused with courses that weren’t related to what he wanted to be in the future.
In scenario 2, there’s another engineer who knew very well he wanted to be an engineer since he was a kid but had to study a lot of courses. Courses that had nothing to do with engineering. Since he had to spend time on different courses, he never got the time and opportunity to even work on projects, so he has no experience.
As someone who needs an engineer to build a bridge, who would you employ? No, you don’t have to answer. It’s rhetorical. Of course, you’d go for the one who is experienced and knows what he’s doing.
That’s the main message I’m trying to send across. In Ghana, our education system is such that you study everything (about 9 or 10 subjects) in primary and junior high schools. And then when you get to senior high school, you choose one particular program you want to study depending on what you want to be in the future. And there’s nothing wrong with that except why it has to start only in senior high school.
I studied general science in school and before we completed, about three people left the program to study general arts because they said it was beyond their capabilities. And I think that’s something that could have been avoided if they knew about the program in junior high school.
I totally understand if we have to study all the subjects in primary school to know which one we like most but in junior high school, they should allow students to start preparing themselves for what they want to study or become in the future.
Imagine a student who wants to study general science to become a doctor in the future studying (pre-technical skills) building as a compulsory subject in junior high school. Why don’t you just remove it and give more space for the ones the student needs? Or just don’t replace it with anything at all to give more room for the student to feed his/her intellectual abilities.
I actually thought it was impossible to revise our education curriculum until it was done about three years ago. Hopefully they get to merge certain subjects because at this point, it’s sad to even see how tired students always are after coming back from school.
Images are mine