Why seal the fate of 8 students over one childish mistake?

A couple of weeks ago a video surfaced online of some female students using vile and unprintable language to address the President of Ghana. The video was largely greeted with frowns by the public. While many people outrightly condemned the video, others were sympathetic towards the students, arguing the “hardship” in the country justified whatever the students said against the president. 

 

The Ghana Education Service immediately suspended the students. Today, the students are reportedly dismissed from school. I find this particularly worrying for a number reasons. Worrying because these students used language that was way beyond the pale to address their president. Besides, in the Ghanaian culture the young are taught to respect and always address the elderly with a strong sense of decorum. So if the president failed as a president, one would expect that he would be accorded the elderly respect.

 

And again worrying because the Ghana Education Service settled on dismissal as the best form of handling 8 wayward students. That too is beyond the pale. The students were simply misguided and dismissing them would certainly not give them the kind of guidance they need to become responsible people. 

 

The core purpose of education is to refine people to become useful to society. School is the best shaper and refiner of a person. If a number of teenagers, who apparently do not know any better, have put up a behavior that is out of keeping with the provisions of GES are dismissed from school, what will become of them when they are out of guidance. Judging from past trends, this will not be the last time students will use explicit language against leaders in the country. Are we just going to keep having them dismissed from school? 

 

These students palpably needed counseling and proper help. Smacking them further down is definitely not the way to go. As a country, we cannot give up on the “wayward” ones once they exhibit extreme behaviors. There should be some form of corrective measures to help them. It’s grossly unfair to seal the fate of 8 students for a mistake that probably came from their immaturity. Is it even worth it to deny people education in a democracy for speaking against a president?

 

I hold out hope that the students will be recalled to receive the training that schools are instituted to instill in students. They sorely need this training. And it is reasonable to conclude by saying two wrongs do not make a right.