There’s Chemistry Between Us
on Anthony Lovat in Bolgatanga (Ghana), 23/Feb/2011 18:50, 34 days ago
The region’s elective chemistry results are embarrassingly low. During the most recent WASSCE examinations in 2009, the equivalent of A Levels, only 16.5% of students in the Upper East Region achieved A-C grades. 63% of students failed. In several schools, only one or two students did not fail. In one school, every single student failed.There are only nine schools in the entire region that offer elective chemistry. I chose to organise a workshop for all chemistry teachers at Navrongo Senior High School.Navrongo, despite not being the region’s capital, fancies itself, with some justification, as the most developed town in the Upper East. The area was chosen as the centre for Catholic missionaries in the north of Ghana. In the early twentieth century they built a cathedral, a clinic and a school and went about serving and converting the local population. The ‘white fathers’ are still active in the area and, strangely, many white fathers are in fact black. Father Patrick was an Irish ‘white father’ who set himself up in 1960s Bolgatanga. He died several years ago but is remembered enormously fondly for correcting local children on Fra Fra pronunciation and dishing out toffees. Navrongo now boasts, as well as the Catholic cathedral, a University for Development Studies and a teacher training college as well as the best senior high schools in the region.Navrongo Senior High School is a rare example of a well managed school and a well managed science department. The school has the same problems every other large school in the region encounters: lack of good trained teachers, overcrowded classes and shortages of equipment. Being honest though, these are the same problems encountered in many London schools and schools all over the world. The barrier to good education in Ghana is not usually the resources schools have but how the resources are managed at every level of management.Navrongo science department is headed by Mr Oscar, a confidently serious man in his early forties with the coolness and pride to speak his mind. His missing front teeth lend him the determined look of a thug. He commands the absolute respect of his department, his headmaster and the educational civil servants. They fear his high standards. He is incorruptible– probably the most passionate science teacher in the Upper East Region.Mr Gilbert is the laboratory technician at Navrongo Senior High. One year away from retirement, this hobbity man takes a quiet, smug pride in the organisation of the laboratories. Equipment is cleaned and maintained regularly, chemicals are made up accurately and methodically and his polite and professional manners are an example to all around him.Daniel Akansake is a delightful young man without an ounce of cynicism in his bright, eager eyes. Totally unaware of his own blossoming capabilities, Daniel follows like a well-trained puppy, hanging on every action, soaking up knowledge like a sponge. Oscar used to teach Daniel when he was a student in Navasco just five years ago. Having completed tertiary education, Oscar now mentors Daniel, encouraging him without a hint of the jealousy-of-the-young so common in older Ghanaians. Daniel physically glows whenever Oscar or I praise him. Oscar doesn’t praise anything lightly.It has been the smoothest and, I believe, the most successful workshop conducted so far during my eighteen months in Ghana– in no small thanks to Oscar and the Navrongo science department. In just one day, we were able to cover simple titrations, back titrations and qualitative analysis of cations – the main examinable practical subjects in elective chemistry. They are not easy topics to cover. Attendance was good– 24 of the expected 27 teachers arrived, most within an hour of the official starting time of 9am. I had come to the school on the previous week and had prepared the practical activities with the support of Mr Gilbert. Arriving at the chemistry lab on the morning of the workshop, I found twenty sets of equipment neatly arranged on the desks and Mr Gilbert fussing over a beaker of sodium carbonate. Daniel was practicing a back titration, as he had been over the weekend, trying to work out the best concentration of acid to use. When he saw me, he rushed over with his molarity calculations, eager to have me check them over. Mr Oscar emerged from the adjoining room, nodded a businesslike greeting, and asked if I wanted him to print an attendance register.When confronted by the raw statistics, detailing how badly students were performing in elective chemistry, the responses from the region’s chemistry teachers were predictable – lack of ‘motivation’ for teachers, lack of resources and headmasters’ / students’ / parents’ / government’s unsupportive attitude towards chemistry education.This is all true. Ghana churns out hundreds of chemistry graduates every year– many of whom are unable to use a burette and most unable to find the well-paid government work they want. Teaching is the last resort, the final shame, the resignation to a life of servitude. Chemistry teaching is not taken seriously by the chemistry teachers themselves. Many aren’t even chemistry graduates. One chemistry teacher from Navrongo Senior High did not even attend the workshop because he was working on his second ‘business’ job. Oscar promised that he would be made to pay for the uneaten lunch and the unused chemicals. I believe him.A sample of evaluation comments taken at the end of the workshop:“More motivation should be given to science teachers.”“Risk allowances should be paid to chemistry teachers.”“Heads should take science more seriously.”I noted the complaints and promised to forward the concerns to the regional director. I’m sure she is well aware of their sentiments already.Mr Fred is the chemistry teacher at Zamstech Senior High Technical School. A jolly giant with a rolling laugh, Fred looked pained as the conversation moved to chemistry education.“We do not have a strong history of chemistry education in this country. My lecturers at university were the first chemistry graduates in all of Ghana. They had been taught by the whites, the British, in the new universities set up in colonial times. That generation was the first to have chemistryknowledge in the whole country. How can we expect chemistry teaching to be good if it has only existed in Ghana for two generations? Especially when the government only wants to support people who will make money. They encourage and motivate business and enterprise schools but long term developmentcomes through science and technology. Without the great scientific discoveries of history, where would we be? Would we have cars or medicines or plastics? All the great chemists from history have been European. They have created wonderful chemistry in a European context. What we need for the development of Africa is science in an African context. That will need politicians to take science education seriously, but they just look at money money money.”I thought of how the present British government have just cut funding to scientific research that is not proven to be“economically profitable” – something that even Margaret Thatcher, a chemistry graduate herself (she helped develop ‘Mr Whippy’ ice cream), would not have agreed with. I thought of all the chemistry departments closing across dozens of British universities in the past decade, unable to recruit students to study a difficult subject with shrinking prospects.I accept that the challenges to chemistry education are endemic, rooted in history and culture and then reflected in funding. I also agree with Mr Fred that science is the key to long term development, both in Ghana and the UK.To change a foreign culture is difficult. My work here compels me to change cultural attitudes to science. As an outsider here for two years, I must swim against the storm of challenges and attitudes demonstrated by these chemistry teachers. It can be disheartening and, as I have met countless teacher after teacher, administrator after administrator, each one less animated than the last, I have felt my optimism drain over the past few months. I have been constantly reminding myself, as if to justify my predicament: if there were no problems in this area of Ghana, VSO would not have sent me here.This chemistry workshop was my test case. Having worked so hard to organise a good workshop on topics that I know will make a real difference to a challenging subject with terrible regional results, if I’d met with apathy, I may well have sunk into a final few months of despair and hopelessness at my situation. To work with Navrongo Senior High School has, thankfully, buoyed me up enormously. Teaching is always a vocational profession, something that must be done for more than financial motivation if it is to be done well. In Mr Gilbert, Mr Oscar and Daniel Akansake, I see the flame of good past, present and future science teaching in the Upper East still flickering. I am indebted to them.All three were embarrassingly profuse in their thanks to me, unaware of how difficult it was for me to articulate my gratefulness to them. The workshop has encouraged the department, they all told me. It has demonstrated to the headmaster what they can achieve. It has taught them so much. It has“added to knowledge”. It will demonstrate to the students how serious chemistry is taken. It has shown chemistry teachers how to do the practical exam. It will, they believe, improve the chemistry results.A sample of evaluation comments taken at the end of the workshop:“Participants were actively involved in both discussions and practical activities.”“It has been very good and useful. At least it has helped improved upon our skills and knowledge in chemistry practical.”“Very educative and straightforward. I learnt a lot of things I honestly did not know before. Good work... and thank you for your time. Hope you’ll come again someday.”Most tellingly, I overheard a comment from a young teacher called Augustine as he sat practicing his titration during the workshop. Augustine leaned over and spoke quietly to his head of department, unaware that I was behind him.“This is a good workshop actually,” he said.To change a foreign culture is difficult but, perhaps, with the support of a few flickering beacons of native hope, not impossible. I wonder what those early white fathers in their new cathedral and those early white chemistry lecturers in their new university would say about it all.