A LETTER TO GES

By: Ebetu ThePoet(0540565239)
(18: 04: 2025)

Dear Ghana Education Service,
May peace find you at your desks,
May strength walk with your every endeavour,
And may wisdom light your path in these testing times.
I remember your footprints, deep and long
Carved since the days of Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah,
When your touch shaped boys into men,
And girls into women of purpose.
For this, I bow my head in thanks.

But with respect, I seek your listening ear.
Permit me, to lay bare before you
The bleeding wound of indiscipline
In the heart of our schools
Where structure once stood, chaos now dances.
Where future leaders are moulded,
The mould is cracking.
And the rot is seeping deep,
Deeper than chalk can write.

Let me take you back
To the time when school was school.
When teachers’ glance was instruction,
And their words, law.
When children stood at the mention of “Good morning, Sir,”
And sat only with permission.
When the cane was not a weapon,
But a compass pointing to better ways.
When a teacher’s pocket was empty,
Yet his soul was full
Full of pride, purpose and prestige.
When GES stood firm behind the teacher,
And the home held hands with the classroom.

So, what has changed?
What turned the chalkboard into a battlefield?
What clipped the wings of teachers
And handed them shackles instead?
What made the student a law unto themselves?
Today, students walk into class
With hearts full of contempt
And hands trained not for pens,
But for attack.
Have you heard of the O’Reilly incident?
The stabbed eye?
The blinded child from the Adventist gunshot?
These are not tales, GES
These are screams muffled beneath your silence.

What would you do
If the bleeding eye was your son’s?
If the blinded girl was your daughter?
If the trembling teacher was your spouse
Held hostage by a law meant to protect
But now protects wrongly?
If your own child sat in a classroom
Where fear teaches louder than the curriculum,
Would you still fold your arms?

Why have you kept the pockets of teachers mute,
And worse: stripped them of their voice?
Why is discipline now a taboo
And correction a crime?
Are we building a future or a facade?
Is this the education we fought for?
Where a teacher dares not shape a child,
And a child dares everyone?

We remember the days of Mensah and Dede,
When school was more than books
It was a village shrine of values,
Where children were shaped into gold.
Where the teacher’s word mended homes,
And the school served the nation
As both a wellspring of wisdom
And a fortress of discipline.

GES, I write not to condemn
But to cry out.
The soul of education is fading.
The fire is dim.
And if all hands do not rise now,
The taste of learning will sour forever.
Let us not wait until schools become tombs of silence
And classrooms, corridors of chaos.

The elders say, “If the drumbeat changes, the dance must too.”
The dance is dangerous now
And we must ask:
Will you change the beat?
Or shall we dance ourselves
Into darkness?

We call on all:
GES, parents, chiefs, lawmakers, citizens.
Let us act, and act now.
For if the tree of education dies,
What shelter shall Ghana’s future find?