School Is The Tool To Brainwash The Youth

ON September 12, 2013, Will Smith’s 15-year-old son, Jaden, tweeted, ‘’School Is The Tool To Brainwash The Youth.’’ The young actor with a budding music career underway has caught major hell for his string of anti-school tweets.

I risk sounding ignorant here, but I totally agree with young Jaden. If you critically think about it, what does school really teach children?

1.       Truth comes from authority

2.       Intelligence is the ability to remember and repeat

3.       Accurate memory and repetition are rewarded

4.       Non-compliance is punished

5.       Conform: intellectually and socially

The aim of public education as one man once correctly observed is not to spread enlightenment at all, it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality.

Paraphrasing the words of Derrick Jensen, I’ve since come to understand the reason school lasts twelve years. It takes that long to sufficiently break a child’s will. It is not easy to disconnect children’s will, to disconnect them from their own experiences of the world in preparation for the lives of painful employment they will have to endure.

And just for the record. I’m not here to encourage youths to drop out of school. My point is, we shouldn’t yield  with perfect docility to education’s moulding hands.

Anything Can Happen In Football

WHO has never lost at home? Who has never won away? I direct these questions at the nay sayers who think just because Ghana is playing at home and has recalled all its superstars, then we can’t beat them in their own backyard.

Yes, Ghana is one of the best teams in Africa if not the world with good players all over the pitch. However, any soccer pundit worth their salt will tell you that “impossible is nothing” in a game of football.  In football and in sport as a whole, anything can happen.

We know it is not going to be an easy match. It is never an easy game when you are playing away and a win is your only option. But Ghana isn’t expecting an easy game either.
Of course Ghana has the luxury of being able to choose between great players. But if our lads can step on to the field and control these players, we can cause a major upset in Kumasi. Did we see Zambia defeat a similar Ghana team at AFCON 2012? Yes, we watched it.

Furthermore, unlike our boys who have been playing together and know each other on the field quite well, most of the big names Ghana has recalled have never played together as a team in a long while. That can play to our advantage. And when it is big names playing, some usually forget team work and concentrate of making a name.

But whilst stressing the importance of Friday’s game, our boys should remember that winning and losing start in the mind. They shouldn’t think of their last match when they step on that pitch in Kumasi.

Our boys should simply be prepared for anything. We don’t know how Ghana will approach the game, whether they will defend or attack. However, if we can score an early goal, that will put them under pressure.

Regardless of our situation, I still believe we can make it.We have to believe in our talents. I know it will be difficult, but I still believe in our boys. In such an important match with so much at stake, anything can happen.