Compared to “the American, the British child, we are different,” in our concepts and methods of discipline, Dr Clement Abas Apaak has asserted.

The Ghanaian lawmaker representing Builsa South spoke to Kwame Dwomoh-Agyemang on the Class Morning Show (Class 91.3 FM), Wednesday, September 4, 2024.

“We have our culture, traditions, norms, beliefs, we have our codes of conduct,” he stressed.

He was reacting to the recent stabbing of a student by a fellow at O’Reilly Senior High School, Greater Accra Region, due to a reported argument about whose father was richer.  

He also cited an incident in Adisadel College, Cape Coast, Central Region, where a student “nearly strangled the life out of another student”.

In addition, he recalled students who left a teacher “bleeding” after assaulting him, in the Volta Region.

“These are stories we should be hearing in a ghetto not in secondary schools, not on campus,” he charged.

Dr Apaak argued: “When they [Western countries] support us and as part of that support they impose conditions on us as to what is acceptable and what is not, with regards to disciplining errant and deviant students, and we accept that and swallow it hook, line and sinker, these are the consequences.”

He said he wanted “the reinstatement of discipline” in Ghanaian schools; the brand of discipline that “molded us into worthy, respectable Ghanaian citizens, in spite of our [childhood] deviance, notoriety and disobedience”.

“We have done it before, we know it works,” unlike “this current laissez-faire regime – you cannot touch or punish a student, it’s against international best practices,” the Deputy Ranking Member on the Education Committee of Parliament noted.

He suggested laws must be “customised to meet the needs and challenges” of a people, no matter their local or international source.  

Dr Apaak remembered times in “a rural school” when he was “disciplined” and “made to cut” and “convey a reasonable amount of firewood” when he “misconducted” himself.

He mentioned other forms of punishment being “scrubbing the washroom for some days” and being asked “to kneel down”.

“I was not an easy teenager,” the son of a disciplinarian confessed, testifying, also, “But the system corrected me.”

Dr Apaak underlined how crucial parents’ participation in the enforcement of discipline in schools was, averring the need to restore Parents & Teachers Associations (PTAs) in schools.

The MP, however, decried parents confronting and “mobilising people to attack” school authority for disciplining their wards, also, as contributing to the “deterioration of discipline” in schools, “particularly on the campuses of our secondary schools”.