The Editor,
The President likes to pay lip service to “quality education”, but does little to improve it. To improve it, her government needs to get the hell out of the way and “let the market handle it” !!! (Re “Ellen Commends Turkish School for Commitment to Pursuing Quality Education”).
Hey Madam President, if you’re committed to quality education in Liberia, you need to abolish our US$84 million Ministry of Education (MOE), and give that money to poor parents to send their children to private schools.
Why? Because quality education is desperately needed by our youngsters, especially poor kids who live in the slums and rural parts of Liberia. For most of them, a quality education is their ONLY ticket out of poverty.
And who do you think would offer a quality education?
Our government schools? Please. Since 1847, our government schools have provided inferior education to the masses and produce hoodlums like Rep. Acarous Gray and Mulbah Morlu.
By the way, government schools were established to educate houseboys and hoodlums, but they failed miserably!
Oh, you think I’m kidding?
Most of those goons you see on our streets, throwing stones at Police, begging for money, destroying private property, stopping productive citizens from going to work, etc are either political science major at LU or unemployed graduates of government schools who wants to seize state power by force!
On the other hand, private schools provide quality education and produce outstanding citizens. Most of the private school students have good home training and score the highest on the WAEC exams! So don’t you think it’s wise to use the private sector to solve our educational mess?
Look at our telephone industry. Because of competition in the private sector, 8 of 10 Liberians own cell phones today! Cell Phone companies compete to attract customers, increasing the quality to everyone.
But it would be a whole different story if the government were in charge of our telephone industry: Corruption and stealing would be rampant. And the cell phone call quality would be so poor that my free-loading family in Liberia wouldn’t bother calling Uncle Martin, in America, for money!
So how about abolishing our US$84 million MOE altogether, and using that money to help poor parents take their kids out of our poor performing government school? (Hey, Minister Werner can go back to his old nursing aide job in America–who cares!!)
At the barest minimum, poor people children should be given an “opportunity scholarship” or education voucher opt out of our rotten government schools.
Denying a decent education to poor children is child abuse!
Martin Scott,
Atlanta, Georgia
[email protected]
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