Parents Urged To Devote Time For The Education Of Their Children

James Adu Opare, Professor in Sociology of Education, University of Cape Coast (UCC), has said there was the need for parents to establish warm relations and discuss the benefit of schooling with their children to enable them became educational successes. While agreeing that it was the wish of every parent to see their children aspire to the highest level in the educational system and become influential people in the society, this he said could only be attained if parents provided an educogenic environment in the home. Prof Opare said this during his inaugural Lecture in Cape Coast on the Topic �Elite Cloning and Queue Jumping: Schooling as the Mixing Bowl�. The lecture chaired by Professor Domwini Dabire Kuupole, the Vice Chancellor of UCC, was attended by chiefs and queens, professors, deans, heads of departments, students and a cross section of the public. Prof Opare, who is also the chief of Akuapem Ahwerase and Kyidomhene of the Adonten Division of the Akuapem state, said there was meritocracy in Ghana�s educational system and that it was therefore imperative for parents to give their children the needed support to enable them become successful and influential people in the society. He said except for the few who got selected through ethnic, religious, and political nepotism, all others were selected on merit, because they qualified in terms of education, intelligence, skills and the essentials attributes deemed desirable. Prof Opare stressed that it was also important for parents to be available either personally or vicariously to monitor and assist in their children learning outside of the school, noting that without these parents� higher learning, riches, power and talents would be irrelevant because they did not use such attributes to support their children. He said parent should devote some time for their children�s education and added that some parents were workaholics and hardly spent time with their children to find out their needs Prof Opare who focused his lecture on the social history of education in Ghana up to the end of the colonial era, as well as education in the contemporary post�independence era said Ghanaian parents, right from the earliest times, embraced western formal education for several reasons which included enabling their children to write and read their letters for them, gain prestige as they spoke European languages and also made them acquired lower middle class lifestyle and values and thereby became upward mobile. Education, Prof Opare, said also enabled people to gain modern sector jobs, earned good salaries and then came back home to help other relatives. Prof Opare said fee-free education that was introduced in the post-independence era brought in its wake expansion of the middle class and that this middle class decided to educate their children to jump the queue of upward social mobility.