I walked into a primary class one day and asked the kids what they wanted to be in future and their response were just as I expected, “astronaut, lawyer, doctor, nurse, etc,” but no one mentioned a farmer, and I didn’t have to spend much time wondering why.
Throughout my childhood I cannot recall any mate of mine wanting to be a farmer.
Every parent wants their child to be a doctor, lawyer, engineer and any other fancy job that may require a uniform, suit and tie or accord them the highest respect in society, anything but a farmer.
Parents will use family members who are into farming as an advice lesson for kids saying, “learn hard so you don’t end up like Uncle A or B, who farms to make a living in the village and even the farmer, wouldn’t want their own children to become like them.
The lack of interest may have started at home with our parents, and continued in our schools as students who misbehaved were often given plots of land or the school farm to weed as forms of punishment. These kids passed out seeing farming and agriculture as a punishment or a degrading job rather than a profession.
In addition, the Ghana Education Service has recently changed the syllabus of the basic school yet agriculture, which used to be studied several years ago was not reintroduced.
Gone were the days when almost every secondary school had a school farm and even poultry farms where kids worked on as part of the curriculum and the produce was used to prepare food for students with the excess sold outside.
Recently, the subject is not taught in schools for students to appreciate the profession, know it’s importance or to even pique their interest in the field. Children are not taught where the food they eat comes from or how to even grow them, and it’s the same in second cycle institutions as only a handful still teach Agric-science or have school farms.
Also, agricultural issues are not sensitive to young individuals in the country. This in the sense that, as the country’s population continue to increase, more and more individuals need lands to build among other things, so what happens when there aren’t enough for everyone?
Casting our minds back to the very beginning of man, farming, was the very first profession given man by God, in Genesis 2:15. As such, as kids are the future generation, we as Ghanaians need to end the cycle of according certain jobs more respect than others in the society so as to not carry on such perceptions to our young ones. Also, reintroducing agriculture into our basic and secondary school systems will incorporate the importance of agriculture into our future leaders.
Comments are closed.