Empathy is the sense and the seed of the process of development and progress of a people

***Lack of empathy defeats the development and progress of a people.***

When most people in Ghana are busy about feeling only themselves and prefer to rob it in the pain of others to the point that it becomes very difficult for such people to even choose the right words in stating the case. Many Ghanaians tend to be  too selfish and lack empathy, and the only thing they know is sympathy and mourning of the dead. It is not a Ghanaian thing to be proactive and empathic to their fellow human being but for any country to develop there is the need for empathy. Empathy is defined as a the imaginative projection of a subjective state into an object so that the object appears to be infused with it. Sympathy on the other hand, is defined as a relationship between persons in which the condition of one induces a parallel or reciprocal condition in another. 


Feeling sorry for someone when they are enduring hardship is not as important is making  a contribution that solves problem before they encountered. Development occurs when the condition of the human being and their environment is consistently and positively improved to the extent that it makes them perform their duties with relative ease and also live happier lives. In a large part many technological innovations provided by talented and insightful people have contributed the most to the course of human development. Inventors are driven by their ability to properly placing themselves in the situation of others, this act then translates itself into the process of generating new ideas and commitment to converting those ideas into useful products. The products positively affect the situation of the people who first inspired the inventors idea in the first place. Empathy should be viewed as the most powerful intellectual ability that lies between an individual's creative nature and their ability  to benefit society with specific talents and products.  

I am because you are

The bus driver has a job because there is a passenger and the struggles of teachers nation-wide goes on for sake their students. It is therefore strange to even think of a situation where a teacher will be satisfied with testing students at a level which is twenty percent of their possible best. And why will students complain when the tests from their teacher makes them feel inadequately prepared all the time. The measure of a teacher's  job  should be in  their most average students  surpassing their limits because they were trained them to never stop delving deeper for more creativity and strength. The power of empathy should allow the teacher to see that these children are being prepared for a future that they are not so certain of, their lives will be measured by a measure yet unknown. And therefore in preparing them, there is the need to prevent them from settling down too quickly, prevent them from getting tired too easily. A failure to empower them but rather limit them to low standards will be an effort at programming these children for an obvious defeat.

The sense

The sense because progress  and development is all about getting a better tomorrow than we have today, simple as that. Human growth and prosperity is driven by specialisation of individuals in providing a specific solution to societal needs and to do that very well. The development ensemble cast should all be driven by integrity and empathy, so that each can identify their own talents and precisely map out how to used it to profit their fellow human being's needs. There are some whose job will be to provide clean drinking water and without feeling concerned for those receiving their product, the end result is that many will receive water that is dirtier than the untreated water. Those with responsibility of keeping and transferring our monies, which is the "coolest" but the easiest of all the jobs, will burden us with waiting in endless queues wasting precious time that we should  otherwise be spent creating more value with our skills. 


So without empathy towards one another, can there be a society in the first place? And can a society even attempt to develop? The obvious answer is that abject poverty will win, Africa ranks the lowest on the human development scale, it is because there are far more people in Africa than other places who do not care about their neighbours. Having concern (not compassion) for ones neighbour is in our own rational self interest, its not a favour at all, because time and space is not controlled individually but rather collectively.

  

The seed

The seed because empathy allows one generation to prepare the upcoming one to survive and do much better. Future challenges arise because life and living systems are constantly changing which bring with it new challenges. And so, there are innumerable frontiers for constant discovery and innovation, so preparing the incoming generation should not be seen as just making life easier but rather equipping them to survive unknown challenges. Every empathetic generation should therefore provide tools to the upcoming one to have a better chance at rising to their own occasions. 


The tools for engaging and overcoming that which has the potential to set us back will remain the same over time, namely, strength, knowledge, wisdom, smartness, insightfulness, will power, curiosity and tenacity. Poverty prevails when the fore bearing generation bury all their accomplishments, refusing to arm their upcoming generation with tools they have discovered for them to do their own battles. In Ghana the examples are many, how many herbalist haven't died with all their knowledge of medicinal herbs?

It clear to us fellows that we do ourselves a big favour when care and empathise with our neighbours. When this happen, then really progress will begin to happen. I am sure of this because worthier nations are doing that and  actually empathy prevents troubles and wars.

--
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Patrick Kobina Arthur (PhD),
parthur14@gmail.com

http://pakar1-corner.blogspot.com/

Ghana's OIL will not make any difference

  ... if there is no love and empathy.

I continue to struggle with being optimistic about this OIL and my reasons are simple. I see in many people in Ghana the lack of desire and ability  to develop. Here, it is accepted that everything perfect has to come from Europe, Japan and America. There is frustration everywhere, common decency is so hard to come by, you have to go through hell to do simple things like getting your name spelt right by student record officers and they will even insist that you travel from where ever you are to come and wait in their office. The list is endless, so how can I believe the oil will do anything different??

The people need to know the value of empathy, making life easier for their fellow human beings so that all the money will not be stolen and locked up in Swiss Banks. The whole country looks like a slam, only small areas of Accra appear slightly dignified for a Country of 53 years of self-rule. And we have been exporting gold and diamonds all these 53 years. Only love and empathy filled people can make a difference for Ghana's development and then and only then maybe the OIL will grease their elbows in pushing this country forward.

People of Ghana have to first believe and respect the power of knowledge and skills and get our young people to appreciate that, so when there is another resource to be exploited in the future our children will have the dignity of building their own FPSO and send their own drilling robots. The people of Singapore and Texas-USA are humans just like us but they have skills that have been honed for generations and advanced in their life time to be able to come over here and do all that it takes for the OIL to pour out of the belt of the ocean. Our only contribution to this OIL industry is Drumming and Dancing and composing the Jubilee OIL song.

hmmm, Ghana our motherland, land of rich resources but where is the knowledge and skill to make use of these resources to better our lives? Our children must do better.

--------------------------------------------
Patrick Kobina Arthur (PhD),

http://pakar1-corner.blogspot.com/

 parthur14@gmail.com

Ghana's OIL will not make any difference

Ghana's OIL will not make any difference!

                                                                              ... if there is no love and empathy.

 

I continue to struggle with being optimistic about this OIL and my reasons are simple. I see in many people in Ghana the lack of desire and ability  to develop. Here, it is accepted that everything perfect has to come from Europe, Japan and America. There is frustration everywhere, common decency is so hard to come by, you have to go through hell to do simple things like getting your name spelt right by student record officers and they will even insist that you travel from where ever you are to come and wait in their office. The list is endless, so how can I believe the oil will do anything different??

 

The people need to know the value of empathy, making life easier for their fellow human beings so that all the money will not be stolen and locked up in Swiss Banks. The whole country looks like a slam, only small areas of Accra appear slightly dignified for a Country of 53 years of self-rule. And we have been exporting gold and diamonds all these 53 years. Only love and empathy filled people can make a difference for Ghana's development and then and only then maybe the OIL will grease their elbows in pushing this country forward.

 

People of Ghana have to first believe and respect the power of knowledge and skills and get our young people to appreciate that, so when there is another resource to be exploited in the future our children will have the dignity of building their own FPSO and send their own drilling robots. The people of Singapore and Texas-USA are humans just like us but they have skills that have been honed for generations and advanced in their life time to be able to come over here and do all that it takes for the OIL to pour out of the belt of the ocean. Our only contribution to this OIL industry is Drumming and Dancing and composing the Jubilee OIL song.

 

hmmm, Ghana our motherland, land of rich resources but where is the knowledge and skill to make use

of these resources to better our lives? Our children must do better.


--------------------------------------------
Patrick Kobina Arthur (PhD),

 

http://pakar1-corner.blogspot.com/

 parthur14@gmail.com

Ghana's OIL will not make any difference

Ghana's OIL will not make any difference!

                                                                              ... if there is no love and empathy.

 

I continue to struggle with being optimistic about this OIL and my reasons are simple. I see in many people in Ghana the lack of desire and ability develop. Here, it is accepted that everything perfect has to come from Europe, Japan and America. There is frustration everywhere, common decency is so hard to come by, you have to go through hell to do simple things like getting your name spelt right by student record officers and they will even insist that you travel from where ever you are to come and wait in their office. The list is endless, so how can I believe the oil will do anything different??

 

The people need to know the value of empathy, making life easier for their fellow human beings so that all the money will not be stolen and locked up in Swiss Banks. The whole country looks like a slam, only small areas of Accra appear slightly dignified for a Country of 53 years of self-rule. And we have been exporting gold and diamonds all these 53 years. Only love and empathy filled people can make a difference for Ghana's development and then and only then maybe the OIL will grease their elbows in pushing this country forward.

 

People of Ghana have to first believe and respect the power of knowledge and skills and get our young people to appreciate that, so when there is another resource to be exploited in the future our children will have the dignity of building their own FPSO and send their own drilling robots. The people of Singapore and Texas-USA are humans just like us but they have skills that have been honed for generations and advanced in their life time to be able to come over here and do all that it takes for the OIL to pour out of the belt of the ocean. Our only contribution to this OIL industry is Drumming and Dancing and composing the Jubilee OIL song.

 

hmmm, Ghana our motherland, land of rich resources but where is the knowledge and skill to make use

of these resources to better our lives? Our children must do better.


--------------------------------------------
Patrick Kobina Arthur (PhD),

 

http://pakar1-corner.blogspot.com/

 parthur14@gmail.com

Rationalizing The Strategic Priorities of National Development

Why is There the Need to Rationalize the Strategic Priorities of National Development?

Human history and evolution is synonymous with the evolution of political systems and in many cases the differences in the various systems has been the cause of wars that claimed many lives. The objectives of many of these wars were to ensure the maintenance of supremacy and domination even though the inherent objective of such opposing political systems has rather been  the same. The human spirit and desire for happiness, dignity and honor is the same and preserved in all cultures and political systems be it Marxism or capitalism. It is also evident in human history that the fear of the enemy from the outside has far more power to incite a community of people to rise up than the fear of the enemy within that community. This is even more the case regardless of the net effect of both sources of threat. Contemporary history of many nations, big and small lends a considerable support to this assertion, in that, nations have gone to war over threats that was estimated to affect about a million citizens whilst a failure of leadership that lead to hunger and disease outbreaks decimating tens of millions of citizens didn't invoke any response at all. In this article we seek to point out a number of common grounds shared by some of the most bitterly opposed political systems especially in regard to the defense sector and to leverage such unlikely commonalities by advocating for a reorientation and reorganisation of thoughts and systems that operate in three critical sectors of our national life, these sectors are manpower development, health and agriculture.

 National Targets for the Various Specialties in Manpower Development.

National development should require ALL MANNER of SKILLS to make things happen, therefore the education system should be so designed based on the number of specialised skills needed and the respective quantum. Failure to establish this will lead to the situation where students drift into courses that they perceived to be 'cool' and readily employable. I have a first hand experience from my encounters with students which has left me very concerned about their preferences in terms of various specialties of skills acquisition. Apart from the fact that an overwhelming majority of each graduating year group pursue arts and business over science and technology. There is a rather disturbing trend of a large proportion of the already few science and technology students preferring to switch to the arts and business courses later in life. There is therefore the need for a national policy that clearly states the levels of the different specialties required for national development.


Also there is the need to compile a nation-wide data on students in the different study areas, so that we can compare that to the targets and see the way forward. A casual observation suggests that over 80% of each graduating year undertake arts and business (almost all students in the private universities study business). The reason why something needs to be done urgently is that majority of these science students especially are now studying science in an absent-minded mode. If indeed all manner of craftsmanships are needed for development, then this current trend needs reversing and leadership should take this up. The situation in departments for the sciences is that the level of laboratory equipment and reagents are far lower than number of students and the quality of training they deserve. To determine the number of students to be directed into different courses at the post-secondary level, I want to propose the ratios for specialty target setting  in four major categories as follows:

Proportion specialties in four major skills categories: 

Discovery and Design Specialties  - 30 %
Enterprise, Innovation and Development - 50 %
Market - 10 %
Administration - 10 %

Description of the four major categories:

Discovery and Design Specialties: Natural Sciences, Agriculture, Engineering, Mathematics, Statistics, Geography.

Enterprise, Innovation and Development Specialties: Engineering, Natural Sciences, Medical Sciences, Agriculture,  Mathematics, Statistics, Vocational Skills and Performing and Visual Arts.

Market Specialties: Business, Economics, Social and Political studies

Administration Specialties: Governance, Social and Political studies

During war time, the military academies do not watch the trainees decide the specialties they fancied but rather group them based on their assessed abilities and the needs of the army. This is really the most accurate and effective measure regardless of whether such an army is in the most capitalist USA or the most communist Russia or China. Imagine most army recruits choosing to be snipers because one is not likely to face direct fire, so there is an army of ten thousand strong men and all are snipers? There is a generation of youth in this country who only fancy working in the banks and closely related office jobs and by this drawing all the best talents into jobs that do not really need that kind of talent. This country has a shortfall of all its critical needs, such as clean water, energy supply, food supply, sanitation and health care, and yet the majority of the youth acquiring training wish to work in an office and in a Bank??? How does this solve any of these shortfalls???

Returning to Good Health and Staying Healthy

A productive population is one that is not only well trained but also healthy and grows stronger. The state of the health sector in this country is one that needs alot of work to improve. Returning people to good health, receiving the newborn into their new life, should not be an enterprise that is monetized nor be controlled by commercial interests. Society should make the health of its members a high priority that deserves a robost system which does not demand individuals to make payments to access health services. The situation where health practionationers are concentrated in the most commercially viable cities is clearly opposed to the idea of ensuring good health for all members of society.  As a country there is the need to determine the number of hospitals that will ensure every citizen can have access, not just provide health facilities where and when we can. This will only create the condition of low life expectancy and low quality of life which could have easily triggered a war if the same was caused by an external element. A country will judge an act as an aggression and readily launch a full scale war should a neighbouring country attack its city and kill hundred people. The cost of the ensuing war will easily surpass the cost of building hospitals that will save the lives of more than thousand people and yet we find this happening. What is it about leaders that make them rate external threats far higher than internal ones that are preventable and curable at a reduced cost??? The provision of good shelter is also a matter that promotes good health and it should be resetting the strategic priorities to make sure that there is shelter for every one before society spends resources to put up expensive buildings that serve only ecstatic purposes. A few beautiful buildings do not make any country great when majority of citizens put up in places similar to that for farm animals. Why should we have to use so much money to put up two towers near the airport when the same sum of money could easily have given a suburb of Accra (which is at best about 90 % a slum settlement) a significant makeover.

Putting Food on the Table and Assurance of Food Security

As a basic human need, food supply should be a first choice priority item just like training and health. In many established countries, agriculture is fully paid for with taxes so the farmers do not have to wait for harvest to earn a living. So many subsidies are pumped into agriculture, that food prices are consistently low and this arrangement is never opened for discussion even if they turn around to force other countries to stop subsidising their agriculture in the name of opened market economy. Meanwhile their economy is only opened to commodities that cannot be grown in sufficient quantities in that country. The agriculture sector should be managed with a military type set up, where a service is created that recruit an elite and talented set of people who are trained to manage the various agricultural activities. The country zoned systematically to make use of the productives of the different arable lands and develop efficient irrigation system to ensure all year round farming and production. The development of all upstream industries should be done in a way that allows the maximisation of all the primary production effort.

It is all possible? Yes!

I greatly admire the military system in every country because no matter what the political system and culture of that nation is, their army shares strong similarities to any other army in the world. They take their activities extremely seriously because their lives are involved, if a rocket squad is poorly trained and are careless with their armament, the effect will be a massive destruction of the army itself and then the larger society. On the other hand mainstream training institutions donot feel the same way because they are only required to award certificates and not to provide the assurance to society that trained persons will deliver on their set targets. A country that crucially needs development should set it priorities with a military attitude, because here too lives are at stake albeit from an internal and indirect threat. The  human spirit should soar high over poverty and not settle for easier options onlybecause it is not an obvious external threat. My message is that please wake up because the value is the same or even worse. 

And yes it all possible.

--------------------------------------------
Patrick Kobina Arthur (PhD),

parthur14@gmail.com


Kindly edited by Gloria Baaba Arkaifie

A paradiym Shift in the Election of New Leadership with Desire and Vision to Transform Ghana

Why I pray for Prof. Frimpong-Boateng to be President of Ghana

The name Frimpong-Boateng gained national and international attention not by a popularity contest but by a sacred desire by one man to serve his nation. A man who believed that his own life will be even more worth living by a devotion to a higher service for the nation. Today, Prof. Frimpong-Boateng has served this country by overcoming many seemingly impossible problems he encountered to establish a world class centre in Ghana. The reason God will answer my prayer for The-soon-to-be-sworn-in-President Frimpong-Boateng for Ghana is simple, that he more than anyone else in Ghana at this moment can inspire the nation to go back and discover and take hold of her creative birthright.

The chaotic environment in which the nation Ghana was born has caused our progress and development a great deal of harm. We should have quickly metamorphosed our desires for freedom into that of progress and development through skills and great ideas, the very moment we gained our freedom. But after gaining freedom we forgot to understand that freedom is not an end in itself, but that freedom is worth its value in blood only when it is directed properly. Freedom is like a compass, it is only useful when you know where you are going and understand how to get there and for what reason. 

Why is progress and development so fundamental? It is because progress and development brings dignity and dignity is engraved in the human spirit, to always live to see a better tomorrow. if today we drink contaminated water and for that reason average lifespan is 41 years. Then our tomorrow or the next generation should improve water quality so much that it will prolong life. Progress and development of a nation can be likened to a child starting to walk and sprint, the child has to crawl before attempting to sprint. This ability cannot be imported neither can it happen suddenly, it only takes meticulous assembly of all the right components in time and space to make it happen. Assistance from outside can only provide a little push, when we ourselves have made all the right moves first.

Ghana can go back to the teething stage and attempt one more time and the person rightly positioned by destiny to lead that charge is Prof Frimpong-Boateng or his Kind. He has done it before in his field of endeavour better that everyone else in Ghana, he knows how to start from the scratch and deplore the creative energies of Ghanaians to attempt this progress and development exercise one more time. I pray every day to the most high GOD, that for the sake of the many brilliant children gifted to this country a leader be so appointed in Frimpong-Boateng for us. The patience for mending heart of flesh will reshape the heart of a nation that has missed its birthright and to lay hold of creative thinking as a way of life and to assembly all manner of skills to build this country.

So fellow citizens it is no long "Yes we can" - there is no doubt about that. it should be: "Yes we will"

God bless our homeland Ghana

 --------------------------------------------

 Patrick Kobina Arthur (PhD),

  parthur14@gmail.com

A Purpose-Driven Educational System, Must-Have For Ghana

*All those in favor of purpose-driven education, its time to please step up!!*

I deem it necessary to step up to project the rather urgent need for a change of attitude towards education in this country. Many people educated in Ghana over the past half century have left Ghana to acquire additional knowledge and expertise becoming giants in their fields of endeavour the world over. Good examples are Kofi Annan of the UN, Dr. Peter Atadja of Novartis Pharmaceuticals, Dr. Ashitey Trebi-Ollennuand Dr. Ave Kludze of NASA and the list goes on.These clearly answer the question on whether people of Ghanaian origin and Africans for that matter are intellectually capable. A lot more evidence continues to accumulate that totally disperses any contention that Ghana and Africa owe its current state of underdevelopment to lack of creative thinking abilities.

*Purpose of education:*

The value of education to a human being resides in two important points, firstly the transformation of the human mind from crude to structured or a refined form and secondly the acquisition of the capability to transform ones surroundings into a form that increases quality of life. It is in the second point that a clear demonstration of concept of purpose driven education lies. The key question that anybody in the educational sector needs to always ask is, "for what purpose is this quest for knowledge and understanding?" A quote from the Bible will explain what the purpose should be for any society seeking enlightenment and training for its people. When the time came for God to instruct the people of Israel to build the tent of meeting and ark of the covenant, God said to Moses in Exodus 31:3 -"and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with skill, ability and knowledge in all kinds of crafts". And in verse 6 of the same chapter it says "Also I have given skill to all the craftsmen to make everything I have commanded you". In this situation God choose to build the capacity of the workmen involved in the project of constructing the tent of meeting and the ark of the testimony by filling them with His Spirit. Society today builds the capacity of its people through education and training for the many different projects necessary to build the structures and create the substance our lives depend on.

Therefore, the delivery of educational services must be bench marked not by the grades awarded but rather the various project targets in specialised fields. A case in point is the training of automobile engineers in this country. The fact that courses in automobile engineering is offered in the Polytechnics and KNUST should reflect on the performance and longevity of our cars. Any one who owns a car can agree with me, without subjecting this issue to scientific polling and statistical analysis, that the current situation strongly suggests that the level and scope of training in automobile engineering is far lower than what is needed. I recently watched an interview of a businessman whose cold store in Tema broke down so frequently that he had to hire expertise from Holland at a great cost for revamping equipment and training his personnel to better maintain their set up. What he said clearly was that the Dutch expert had to be engaged again because his personnel still could not manage the plant. This speaks volumes about electrical engineering training in this country.

*Way forward:*

I was glad to note recently that KNUST was collaborating with GRATIS Foundation for the practical assessment of students in the engineering disciplines. This is one excellent way forward for rescuing the current standards of education. Industry and end-users of educational products must be involved in the evaluation of training programmes, with little emphasis on grading of examinations but rather more on creative works. Those in the visual and the performing arts will know exactly what I am talking about because it is easier for these disciplines to escape the flaws of paper-based examinations. And I will strongly advocate the use of creativity as the basis of assessment by teams of assessors to be made to form a larger proportion of the educational grading systems.

*Stratification of Education at All Levels:*

The growth of any plant is well known to be dependent first on its root system and therefore the way to fix the system of education to correctly deal with the needs of society is to ensure that everybody is given a good chance to express and develop the gift of God within them. The greatest disincentive to any teacher is to be asked to handle a class of students with vastly different intellectual abilities. In a typical class, the most endowed students grasp what is being taught very quickly and are able to ask the right questions, this is sharply contrasted by a group who require several hours of teaching and will still fail. The danger is that the scope of training is narrowed and endowed students are progressively retarded whilst less endowed ones are frustrated by the higher standard of assessment.

The way forward is the use of stratification of the student population at all levels in addition to specialization based on the natural talent of the people. I am of a strong conviction that a system that works well in Germany and other developed countries could be adopted and adapted to rescue our schools. The lower primary 1-3 could have all the kids together, upper primary 4-6 could be separated into a 2-tier system and a 3 tier system for JHS, SHS and the tertiary levels.

I fervently hope a major reorientation of the educational system will be done soon to begin the process of turning the wheel of progress. Education is considered to be a fundamental human right, but I favour the concept of education as therapy. Therapy is designed to correct a misnomer; it is rare to find raw creative talent in the mould of Bill Gates and Isaac Newton. The vast majority of people absolutely need training to be become productive members of society, implying that the "all manner of skills" needed for the nation's development can only be obtained through training and education.

God bless our homeland.

---------------------------------------

Patrick Kobina Arthur (PhD),

parthur14@gmail.com




Kindly edited by Gloria Baaba Arkaifie