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Senior High Schools and morality

The degeneration of morality in Senior High Schools (SHS) in recent times is disturbing.

The situation is giving teachers a difficult task.

In recent times, the situation has heightened and if care is not taken, our SHS will continue to experience these bad behaviours.

The recent is the Akwatia Technical Institute where a student stabbed a teacher with a pair of scissors.

Many of these deviant behaviours could be traced back to numerous reasons.

Importantly, the home plays a very important role in the development of the child.

Many parents are no longer interested in child upbringing.

Whether a child sleeps at home has never been the concern of many parents.

These children are seen at drinking spots, funerals, beach resorts and many other places of entertainment.

They come back home late without any reprimand.

As these parents are fed up with their children, the only dumping place is the school.

Behaviours from the home are carried to the school.

Any attempt by the teacher to correct these deviant behaviours is met with resentment.

The situation needs urgent attention and must be addressed.

Notwithstanding, the type of music our students listen to in recent times is nothing that promotes their lifestyles.

Most importantly, these types of music are only rich in rhythm, but weak in giving a moral direction to our future leaders.

Music in Ghana now has no moral direction.

Who evaluates these songs before they are released into the Ghanaian market?

One needs not to be told what happens if one of your legs is moving ahead of you on a slippery ground.

We all pretend all is well with our music in this country.

Listen to most of them; they are ordinary noise rather than music.

How were our schools then when we listened to song such as “Wo nyame som mpo ni” by Dr Paa Bobo, Obra by Nana Ampadu, “Woyɛ papa, a woyɛ fa” by Kwasi Ampofo Adjei only to mention a few.

These songs direct morally.

We need to go an extra mile with the type of songs our students of today listen to. They are one of the contributing factors of moral degeneration in senior high schools.

Senior high school also contend with occultism.

In the past, shrines were hidden in bushes or the outskirt of communities.

Today, shrines are showed directly on our televisions where duplication of ill gotten or “blood money” is common.

Our children have grown to become money-loving children. They spend their school fees and squander their registration fees given to them by their parents.

The resultant effect is that, many students drop out of school because their parents are not ready to pay another exam fee or school fees.

Where on earth will a student tell a teacher that “Even if I fail my exam, I will engage in Sakawa and get money?”

If a nation breeds wise children, the nation develops but if a nation breeds foolish students, crime and many deviant behaviours are the resultant outcome.

Let us direct our students so that they may not be only a burden but a liability to the nation through what they watch on television and other social media platforms.

I am always in a fix when I hear of the term: human rights activist.

Their activist, especially those who openly defend students after they are punished by teachers, really astound me. If a teacher is assaulted, these so-called human right activists go silent.

Are teachers not having rights?

These defences make students think that the teacher is always wrong.

The very people who went through strict training and have become good materials for the nation are destroying the morality in our schools.

Any human rights activist should raise hands telling the whole nation their role in defending the teacher in the recent teacher attacks, especially at the Akwatia Technical Institute.

Their activities have made these students more deviant against teachers.

The core mandate of a senior high schools is to train students morally and academically to become useful citizens.

Let us not marry morality to civilisation thinking that the past is uncivilised. What has civilisation and modernity achieved for Ghana?

It is rather breeding deviant students than useful citizens.

Let us all join hands to kick against things that are increasing deviancies in our senior high schools to make our senior high schools and Ghana a better place.  


The writer is social commentator                                                                                                              
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Somanya  

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