She described them as a symbol of the country’s broken educational system and an indication that the schools were not competent enough to perform their core duties.

[contextly_sidebar id=”uYx3efS7m21vLZq4fh61pNEDHyYezfyf”]”Those extra and vacation classes which are run off school premises are bad enough. When they are organized by the schools themselves, they become almost evil: a confession of the schools’ inadequacy at handling their core mandate,” Ama Ata Aidoo said in a Facebook post.

According to her, the schools take advantage of the parents’ eagerness to see their children perform well by putting these classes in place and setting increasingly exorbitant fees.

Ama Ata Aidoo, who served as Education Minister in the Rawlings administration, added that the huge costs incurred by parents who have to pay for these classes in and out of school did not match the output of the students.

“The damage [extra and vacation classes] do to the young people whose parents can’t afford them is so big that it is frightening….Sometimes, with excursions and other recreational activities thrown in, on-campus vacation classes are a thinly-veiled blackmail. To get anxious parents to pay huge sums to have their youngsters return to school to play with their friends!”

‘Rise in Extra classes worrying’ 

In 2015, then Minister of Education, Professor Naana Jane Opoku Agyeman, expressed concerns about the rise in the number of extra classes organised for pupils by teachers and head teachers in the country, saying the pupils did not need those classes.

She noted that the time table for each term had been structured to cover the entire academic calendar and as such the pupils did not need the extra classes

 Below is Ama Ata Aidoo’s full post

SUMMER CLASSES & SUMMER CAMPS?

The Ministry of Education (MINED) & Ghana Education Service (GES), SUMMER classes? Whose summer? Where is Ghana on the map? Please, stop the confusion creeping into the Ghana education system. Already, the system as it is currently run provides little real education & too much miseducation anyway. Ghana’s children deserve better.

Besides some of us are convinced that the emergence of the extra and vacation classes phenomenon is a symbol of a broken education system. The damage they do to the young people whose parents can’t afford them is so big that it is frightening. Those extra and vacation classes which are run off school premises are bad enough. When they are organized by the schools themselves, they become almost evil: a confession of the schools’ inadequacy at handling their core mandate. Sometimes, with excursions and other recreational activities thrown in, on-campus vacation classes are a thinly-veiled blackmail. To get anxious parents to pay huge sums to have their youngsters return to school to play with their friends!

Then recently, we learned of a SUMMER camp at Wesley Girls High School, to which they invited the Chief Justice to speak?! I fear this is beyond comment.

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By: Edwin Kwakofi/citifmonline.com/Ghana

The post Ama Ata Aidoo criticises ‘Summer’ Camp, extra classes appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

The Ama Ata Aidoo Centre for creative writing which will be opened on Thursday, March 16, 2017, is one of the six (6) learning centers of the school which will be dedicated to training creative writers.

The Director of the Centre, Nii Ayekwei Parkes, expressed joy about the Centre and the decision to name it after Ama Ata Aidoo, saying: “I am very proud to be the founding director of a centre named after Ama Ata Aidoo. Ama Ata Aidoo is an extraordinary writer. Extraordinary not just because of the work per se, but because the work is never safe – and risk taking is what produces remarkable work. Her novel, Changes, is a tour de force in feminist activism, Our Sister Killjoy, is a work of unfettered experimentation with form. Ama Ata Aidoo’s legacy of risk-taking is part of what I hope that the Aidoo Centre will inherit.”

Ama Ata Aidoo, a Ghanaian from Abeadze Kyeakor in the Central Region, is one of Ghana’s notable writers – whose poetry, plays and books are widely read in Ghana and across the world.

She received the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book (Africa) for her novel titled ‘Changes’ in 1992. Her books, Our Sister Killjoy and Anowa are some of her popular works.

Ama Ata Aidoo is also a known feminist who centres women’s experiences in her books.

Ayikwei Parkes also praised AUCC for the initiative, which he said will boost the standards of writing and cultural production on the continent, as well as shape the ways African stories are told.

“I am particularly encouraged by the support that the management of AUCC have given to the founding of this centre because I believe that competent creative writing and expression is central to the proper development of a society. Better written reviews of cultural production will help raise the standards of cultural production; more clearly articulated policies will improve our engagement with the institutions of government. Creative writing has impacts beyond the obvious and we intend to show that.”

Ayikwei Parkes added that: “If we are going to produce poets, filmmakers, novelists who (because of the way we ‘Africans’ are routinely lumped together) might be the voices of the continent, then we need to make sure that they are as grounded in the histories, legacies and possibilities of Africa, and the global south as possible. Part of our mission is to feed our students a more rounded literary canon, with more representative inclusion from the global south. We believe that by doing so, we are feeding the roots of the future global canon..”

Ama Ata Aidoo was once the Minister of Education in Ghana under the Jerry Rawlings administration.

AUCC is a private tertiary institution established in 2002 by Kojo Yankah, a former member of Parliament and editor of the Daily Graphic.

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By: citifmonline.com/Ghana

The post AUCC to launch Ama Ata Aidoo Creative Writing Centre appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.