‘Our educational system has produced unemployed degree holders’ – Ormi Director

Madam Stella Attakpah, the Managing Director of Opportunity, and Risk Management Institute (Ormi) has stated that Ghana's educational system has only produced a population of unemployed degree holders.The critical thinking aspect of the degree holders has been lacking in the training modules and needed to be revisited.'Our educational system has tried many times but failed to produce populations that can be self-sustaining in their everyday life.'Madam Attakpah made this known at St. Paul's Senior High School in the Volta Region to climax the third edition of this year's 'Ormi Volta STEM Fair.''We at ORMI, through our corporate social responsibility programme, are trying to bridge the gap between theoretical studies and practical creative solutions for our communities.'She explained that Ghanaian students go to school 'mostly to become an employee somewhere, somehow.'Madam Attakpah further revealed that studies have shown that all children are born intelligent and about 98 per cent of their thinki ng process is in a specific way before they start going to school.'At this age, they are very creative. However, as they go through the educational system, by 25 years of age only two per cent of them keep the same creative thinking pattern, and 98 per cent lose that pattern and think only from the left hemisphere of their brain and lose or dump down their creative thinking process.''Today, we have seen that talents abound here. Creative thinking and imagination have been showcased to the fullest. It is only now left with how to market our children's inventions,' she added.This, she said, required the presence of industry players to interact with the children, mentor and prepare them for a better way to look at how to make their future a brighter one for themselves and their families.Madam Attakpah stated that through the realisation of the projects, the focus would be on how to bring to the understanding of the various communities and the youth, the main purpose of the teaching-learning process.'We at ORMI recognise that children are born with special gifts and hope that through our actions, we can make a dent in the current teaching-learning process and raise awareness that our curriculum needs an overhaul.'She also maintained that their outfit planned to continue the experiment in the region until it became engrained in the psyche within the communities.Some key objectives of the Fair according to her, are to encourage students to unearth their innate potential, to give both students and teachers a platform to leverage teaching and learning experiences, and to encourage students to identify problems in their environment and develop solutions.The rest are, contributing to the building and developing of communities' human capital in the face of the changing global market trends, encouraging the youth to become self-reliant, and providing an opportunity for both teachers and parents to identify what worked for their children.A total of 19 Schools from both Junior and Senior levels participated in the two-day event which showcased scientific and technical productions from the various teams.Some students the GNA engaged commended Ormi for the opportunity given to them to expose their talents.They added that the fair would shape their ideas further to become innovative and creative thinkers.It was on the theme 'Developing Future Engineers Today.'Source: Ghana News Agency