If you have had to spend your last penny on a handout not because you wish to but because your lecturer bluntly assured you of failure if you refuse to buy his handout, then this should leave you with that euphoric feeling that comes with electricity after 12 hours of dumsor. It is simply indescribable.
University Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG) has welcomed a directive to authorities at the country’s tertiary institutions to ban the sale of handouts to students by lecturers. The Education Minister, Professor Jane Naana Opoku Agyeman at the weekend directed lecturers of tertiary institutions to cease the sale of their handouts to students, arguing it does not help the students to research.
Except for the handouts discouraging students to research bit which I opine to be open subjectivity, because students they always say would always remain students. Whilst handouts would urge others to research, others would just be comfortable with the least information they are served with.
The Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology has since 2014 banned its lecturers from selling handouts to their students, it said discourage students from taking interest in personal research. Commenting on the latest directive by the Education Minister, President of UTAG, Prof Kwame Osei Kwarteng, speaking on Onua FM said the practice “brings hardship to the parents and the students so the University Councils must take up the issue.”
“If lecturers want the students to be independent minded, they should tell the children to do their own research and not to produce what has been written by other authors even though they don’t pay copyright to the original owners. Lecturers a facilitator and it is ethically wrong for them to sell to students” he added.
I am glad this issued has been raised and if it were up to me, it should not even stand deliberations but outright ban. This subtle bullying from lecturers must end.