An open letter to the nation’s graduands.Ghana needs your skills so badly
This is the season for various graduation ceremonies across the country, and it’s a pleasure to share with you some focal points in a keynote address I delivered recently.
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To begin with, the demands for quality education in Ghana will not be complete without acknowledging a thought that resonated from many of Ghana’s patriots. Though they were mostly situated in the Gold Coast era, their concerns are as sparkling today as they were radiant in the previous century. Space and time will not allow a long list but their thoughts were summarized by J.E. Kwegyir Aggrey (1875 – 1927) when he said, “Don’t tell me what you know; show me what you can do.” We ignore such insights at our own peril.
Quality education (in elementary, secondary or tertiary schools) must stimulate and provide for exploration, discovery, and most of all action. Education is at its best when it moves you mentally and physically. It must lead to unexpected discoveries. Life itself demands more than a passive stance; meaning the aloofness that comes from sitting on the fence waiting to be told what to do must cease. Your own minds are mines for exploration. Those making inroads today in the international arena hardly dig the grounds for minerals; they dig their brains.
In the underdeveloped regions of the world, the so-called “correct answers” from traditional education are weighted so heavily against creativity and innovation, even when they drop limp like wet rags in the face of new prospective challenges in the 21st century.
Useful knowledge and understanding must be constructed and acquired by you yourselves, rather than received passively through lecturing or explanations. Understanding (by its nature) is emergent, evolutionary and uncertain, and subject to periodic revisions. Your own growth starts when you connect what you learn initially with your own very thoughts and curiosities. This is achieved by deliberate efforts rather than through the effort of an instructor wielding chalks, tests and punishment.
In practical terms, your responsibility is to draw multiple meanings from what you think and do with your thinking. Call that your true freedom or independence to be who you are. That will require you to be both a critical thinker and doer; not one without the other. Critical thinking, for one, extracts multiple perspectives on themes, texts, and concepts and insists that clear reasoning support your interpretations of life itself. By considering alternate and diverse views one grows exponentially. The worse thing is to be a slave to a conviction that is either false, archaic or meaningless.
Today, Google, Wikipedia and various Internet platforms supply – free of charge – more information than one can possibly need. The essential questions then are these: How do we think anew and connect theory with applications? How do we update our attitudes to leverage our talents and the time on our hands? How do we elevate ourselves and the nation into shining examples reflecting our superior selves? How do we develop skills to use the information available to solve pressing societal problems of our time? How do we navigate from a sedentary “know-how” to the vigorous “do-how?”
It is quite clear that useful knowledge comes from experience, and experience comes from work. I’ve said often times that it is a rare person indeed who is raised to sit for 16 years in school – all the way through university – merely dangling information back and forth without any useful hands-on work, and then suddenly released, with a certificate loaded with theories to now start work in a non-sitting active posture. We are creatures of habit, and that wonderful expectation is as fruitless as it is ridiculous.
So I leave you with the following tips:
First, Your life means something so be curious to know what you were born to do; identify a Vision / Mission for yourself. In the process be a lifelong learner and add value to yourself at every given opportunity. If you don’t have clear objectives for yourself, no matter the effort, no matter how determined you are, no matter how ambitious, no matter how much money, the future will still be elusive.
Second, Decide on a particular societal challenge you want to solve for humanity and be known as a brand for the solution.
Third, Keep an open mind by being a critical thinker. Evaluate your own beliefs or conclusions often, and be prepared to change them if necessary.
Fourth, Listen more than you speak: Develop the skill to listen in between the lines for what is meant but not said openly; and conversely, what is said openly but not meant.
Fifth, Go the extra mile: Help colleagues whenever possible, and be known as the go-to-person.
Sixth, Take very good care of yourself: eat properly, exercise regularly, and sleep well. Our bodies are temples of God and they need to be kept clean and healthy all the time.
Seventh, (as famously observed by Albert Einstein) only the one who devotes himself to a cause with his whole strength and soul can be a true master. For this reason, mastery demands all of a person. The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.
Finally, This is to wish you the very best as you serve humanity: Be a great ambassador living the positive influences you got from your parents, school and teachers.
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