Vice President Calls On Mathematics Teachers

Vice President John Dramani Mahama on Monday appealed to Mathematics Teachers to modernise the teaching of the subject to make it attractive to students at all levels of education. He said the modernisation should include strategies that would erase the erroneous belief that Mathematics was a difficult subject and the preserve of only clever students. Vice President Mahama made the appeal when Mrs Gladys Ami Allotey, a Mathematics Teacher and Author presented 150 copies of her textbook to him at the Osu Castle. Mrs Allotey and her family were at the castle to thank the Vice President for supporting her to print more copies of the book and encouraging the Curriculum and Research Development Division of the Ghana Education Service to use it as a major Mathematics text book. He said over the years students had dreaded Mathematics partly because of the way the subject was handled and expressed the hope that with modern trends in teaching much more students would be encouraged take it up. He said government had encouraged girls to study Mathematics, Science and Technology by introducing a scholarship scheme and urged them to take advantage of the facility. "Arts and Humanities alone cannot develop a nation and that is why we are encouraging students especially girls to take up Mathematics, Science and Technology to turn out engineers, industrialists and scientists. Mrs Allotey said she was encouraged to write the Mathematics Books to demystify the perception that the subject was the sole preserve of men. She said her book has been accepted by Ghanaian, Liberian and Sierra Leonean schools who were integrating it into their school curricula. She said she had already donated 1,200 copies of the book to deprived schools throughout the country and called for financial support to enable her reach out to other needy academic institutions. Mr Rashid Pelpuo, Deputy Majority Leader in Parliament and Mr Kale Caesar, Deputy Upper West Minister who supported Mrs Allotey in her project were present at the function.