Blind Leadership

It was once a love affair. A warm reception from the Headmaster. A nice fatherly approach, helping, directing and facilitating my stay on a place I had never dreamed of staying- even for a day.

At first I conditioned my mind to get rid of any kind of stereotype whether based on ethnicity, religion, sex, race, philosophy and so on. But a stern warning- perhaps an admonishment from the people I had first interaction with in the village which will be my station for at least ten months- made me start a journey. A journey of believing through experience all that I ignored and considered as stereotypical. Perhaps the realities contained in the stereotype have started manifesting itself.

I have to end the confusion here. It's simple. For the first three months of my national service, the headmaster behaved like a father, a caring man. Vacation came. Home called and I heeded to the call of Christmas and the new year. Reopened soon only to be embraced by a new year and a new law. A change of mentality, an unnecessary change. Perhaps he was demanding his pound of flesh from the rest of the teachers who disagreed on his blind leadership- his result-deficient policies in the school. A teacher could be teaching and one common scenario of his authority is this: "Headmaster says the children should go and fetch water; headmaster says the children should carry bricks for the community people; headmaster says the children should go to the school farm and weed", simply wasting instructional time. Yet the results/benefits of the "work" or more specifically the exploitation of the school children are felt by only a few pockets.

Should we change if we do not have to? The headmaster started reshuffling the teachers only to create the impression of "I AM IN CHARGE". By his poor, porous and unorganized communication to those teachers who where affected by this storm of change, I was sent from class 5 to the JHS block to handle ICT in Form 3 and Religious and Moral Education in Form 2 giving me the luxury of free days. My worry is the less contact hours I have and knowing very well how that will affect the impact I want to make in this rural school.

 Being aware of the enormous gap between the students here in the village and those in the cities and other big towns as far as information technology is concerned I approached him with a simple proposal to convert a small room with electricity into a makeshift computer lab so I can bring the practical aspects of ICT closer to the students. I had 3 laptop computers, a camera, microphone, printer, internet modems and speakers. Then his long story started. "I would have to bill the school with the electricity consumed because I am personally responsible for paying the electricity bill; There is a refrigerator in the room and the children might disturb it; Or the school can buy an electrical cable to connect to the form 3 class and so on and so forth; bla bla bla. Non of these have seen the light of day.

A cunning man- good family man though, but a bad manager- has created hostility among members of staff including the national service personnel. Now his focus is to find fault with the staffs and query them rather than focuse on building bridges on the communication gaps between him and his staffs. Or perhaps, focus on raising funds to equip the school with basic teaching and learning materials. Or might it be an "unbridgable" generational gap that has created this hostility between him and the rest of the staff? He simply do not want to experiment with new ideas from his young, energetic, result-oriented staffs.

I promise to use the power of communication to solve this backward attitude stifling the development of Have Ando No. 1 Primary and JHS in the Volta region.   

       


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