Coded!

In one way or the other, one can make a lot of argument in, around or outside a classroom or an education institution. The validity, efficacy and time relevance of the argument can be inspiring or not. Once upon a time, when I was studying technology at IPMC (Ghana, Labone) in 2009, our teacher did something thought provoking. He was our teacher in Programming Methods. He looked fairly handsome, had a well kept afro, spoke eloquently and dressed with gentleman stature. He thought at times we were nagging and not motivated at what he was teaching. We felt the subject was really mundane to us and we were constantly asking ourselves what we have signed up for. As a good teacher who wanted to show his commitment to success for his students, he wanted to find other ways to make the subject relevant for us. Voilà, he figured out he could tell us about how we could apply the subject matter in our personal lives. He rather chose a surprise topic as to how programming can help us choose better marriage partners, we laughed hard. However respectful, the laugh was synonymous to the laugh received by Arnold Schwarzenegger when he told the gang in the pub to give him their clothes, boots and their motorcycle in the hit sequel of the Terminator movie. For those who don’t know the movie, Arnold entered the pub stark naked. In retrospection, our teacher was trying to paint a bigger picture of a certain naked truth to us.

I mean it when I say I am not making it up. He explained how the logic of programming can help us choose suitable partners for marriage. He argued that using our thought mechanism was prone to some mistakes and that the conscious and subconscious nature of the brain and mind may make us overlook or under look some things. He suggested we list the most important qualities or items to us in a preferred partner. The list items should be given rankings in points. For instance, if it was most important to a man, a woman know how to cook very well, he could give it a ranking point of 10. The next important quality shouldn’t have a ranking point than the most important item (10), it should get a lower number, like 8. After that, we design a table, at the top of the columns, we head them with qualities we are looking for and at the side of the rows, we head with names of whoever we are considering. At the opposite side of the row, which will be the last column, the ranking points will be totaled. Here is the caveat, we were not to be emotional or bias about deserved points to our partners. He explained the table as a computer’s CPU which didn’t mind the feelings of the operator and only relied on stated logic. The input we give it will show a certain output. If someone deserved a point, he encouraged us to give it fairly in short. Our teacher argued again that the table will produce a result different to our expectation. The better the rules the table had, the better it will process a (suggestive) marriage partner for us. The laughing had reduced a little in the class. Go Arnold!

There has been several conversations about how to turn around our education system in Ghana. Politics, churches, the media, work places and educational institutions have discussed this repeatedly. Some have argued what courses to take out or include in the curriculum, some have also put forward their argument on learning style and examination quality and so on. To put programming side by side required courses or not, has not received primetime discussion, at least yet. If Ghana can paint a picture of an education system that heftily contributes to its own digitilisation agenda, attract internationally outsourced software development and produce tech entrepreneurs capable of productising at scale, then its moving part needs to be thought about deeper. In this essay, I want to make some points about the prospects of coding as a required course in tertiary. However you take my input, your processing maybe varied from another person. At intervals, I will abstract my points across an easy to understand pseudocode. For the unfamiliar, please do not be intimidated by this type of technical communication, it is in natural language, read it and give it a thought. The Arnold in me wants your attention.

Begin Ghana

By a certain level of self-conviction, I think communication skills is one of the popular required courses in tertiary institutions in Ghana. Most tertiary institutions approach its pedagogy in slight varied ways but it is certainly aimed at taking the communication ability of students to another level to prepare them for higher learning and higher impact. Communication skills covers writing and oral aspect. Among many things, this skill aims to develop the student’s writing for academia, the working world and other social circles he or she will interact with. It is mostly a required course in the first year. Ghana is an English speaking country and the sense of you getting tested from primary to the tertiary can be exhausting. Normally, a general required course in tertiary isn’t given a difficulty level like other courses they will encounter for their program. The onus is on the student to at least not fail communication skills as an examinable subject. In as much as the institution can show examination proof of how a student learnt the subject of communication skills, the employer has a certain verdict as well. Employers continually complain of the quality of communication skills graduates have, it is almost in every job requirement in the world. When a course is comparatively easy, do students know how to harness its potential to the employer or one could go over it three days to when they need it on the job? Does making a required course comparatively difficult state its importance to the job market? The impetus to make a required tertiary course very attractive for students to be good at maybe more challenging than what meets the eye.

Begin Ghana

import Education Framework 
import University Admissions Framework 
define constant student_demotivation

The Ghana Tertiary Education Commission breaks down tertiary institutions into eight categories. They are the Tutorial Colleges, Academies, Institutes, Schools, Colleges, Technical University (Polytechnics), University Colleges and Universities. They graduate students in their numbers annually with some estimation of around 600,000 in recent times. If Elon Musk, a passionate person about employment wastage, decided to counter his beliefs and get jobs for all these numbers at X, Tesla, Space X and Starlink, he still wouldn’t have tackled one third of the numbers graduating annually in Ghana. A year is also not a long time in education, so one can imagine the numbers that continue adding up to previous graduates in the country finding their way in the job market. Whiles employment data systems around the world like that of the United States of America, Germany, South Africa and more churn out projections and reports by any economic turn, Ghana has a big latency in its turn of report. For instance, the Labour Statistics 2023 Quarter 3 Bulletin was ready in February 2024. What this mean for anyone to make a decision about job creation in whatever way remains a huge crystal ball to look into. In short, the mean time for the Ghanaian government to know the impact of Ghanaian graduates is a bit longer. Should there be a case for faster measuring instruments of employment data?

Begin Ghana

import Education Framework 
import University Admissions Framework 
define constant student_demotivation
 
run Admissions Program with G:\Applicants

No one can question the immense benefit of computer programming to the world. If you are to quantify the economy of computer programs in the world at the time of this reading, it will surely appreciate by the next weekend. Commercial and non-commercial computer programs are being released by the minute somewhere in the world. Computer programs operate our airports, broadcasts our entertainment, allow the military to refine their combat, reduce the human errors in sports, allowing financial institutions to talk to each other and so much more. The number of programmers or coders making this come about in the world are enormous. China, India and the United States have a combined number of nearly 20 million software developers. Europe has over 6 million software developers. Africa by most estimations have less than a million software developers, with South Africa, Egypt and Nigeria leading in the numbers. Ghana, with a population of more than 30 million, has less than 30,000 software developers as of this writing. With the statistics comes about pedigrees of what nations bring to the global table, a lot of success stories defying conventional thinking. If you ever get the chance to watch Bloomberg TV, you will come to terms why the technological revolution by these nations are televised. They didn’t just happen. Coding prodigies are searched and talked about in these countries. There are universities that buzz with technological exploits. There are companies and individuals sponsoring hackathons. There are also a multitude of technology conferences in these countries. Some immigration policies of these countries cater for the inclusion of these class of workers as well. To call a spade a spade, and not a small spoon, Ghana has no pedigree when it comes to software development. The comparison with other African countries doesn’t do the needed benchmarking. There is no visibility of practical tech conferences here. Not even a majority of the population understand who a hacker is, let alone deduce what a hackathon is about. Most tertiary institutions with computer science departments are not birthing students’ innovation capable of going into the international market to make a profit or at least try. You will have to be a great conversationalist with the right person to discover Google and Microsoft have ‘small’ offices here and Twitter (now named X) closed theirs down on the call of Elon Musk’s takeover.

Begin Ghana

import Education Framework 
import University Admissions Framework 
define constant student_demotivation
 
run Admissions Program with G:\Applicants
call function first_year(applicants_number) //returns courses

Critiquing the education system in Ghana is quite a complicated conversation also. In one sense, a group believes the Level testing of the General Certificate of Education (GCE) should return, others argue around a case for making the Senior High School a better standard, a group also believes the University curriculum is archaic and needs to be overhauled. I also don’t know whether the suggestion of a mandatory military service can serve as a point of education extension in these talks. I do tend to think of the matter like this, the most important formative period of a child’s education, which is in primary, needs much more investment for change. It is the stage where children are drawing lines, learning to connect the dots, colouring objects, forming their own expressions and more. The infrastructure to bolster these kids to surface their interest and talent, be it in digital initiatives or not leaves a vacuum to the whims and caprices of their environment. The tertiary institutions at the extreme end need clever turn arounds, and not just any investments for the sake of investments. Students at this level are better built for grit, eager to probe mindset and having the religious faith that believing in what they have not seen yet will yield them something. In other words, if tertiary students make their minds up to immerse themselves in a particular field, chances are that they will carry themselves through the institution’s facilities to get to where they want, however the deficit. Putting interesting hooks along the way in the curriculum thus can help students to make their minds up about settling on the education deficit ahead of them, crafting ways to be good at something through individual or groupthink effort and an authentic interest to upgrade the education experience by the student body themselves.

Begin Ghana

import Education Framework 
import University Admissions Framework 
define constant student_demotivation
 
run Admissions Program with G:\Applicants
call function first_year(applicants_total) //returns courses

hook_array_1 = courses.required

Teaching programming can come in various ways. The most immediate teaching method can rely on internet search engines. Your motivation and figuring it out ability must be high, for primary textual knowledge seeking is very research demanding. Those who need videos to learn can be assisted with YouTube’s service. It lets you know how it is done through the voice of the teacher and a screenshot at what he’s doing on his own computer. These education mediums can create very good programmers or coders in the world but it doesn’t take away the fact away that the debate of whether one needs a university or a college degree to be a very good software developer is an important decision. A case for tertiary education option offers immense benefit in one way or the other for any kind of subject. Timely schedule of lessons helps a student’s discipline to avail themselves to be taught, design of topics outline helps in what they need to abstract early on in such colossal subjects, assignments develops the student’s attention to problem solving, creativity and reporting back, one can fall on basic peer review mechanisms on campus to improve on whatever they present for assessment. When universities produce very good programmers, they go on to contribute to the pedigree of their nation about software development. Guido van Rossum, creator of the Python programming language, studied computer science in Amsterdam. Linus Torvalds, the lead developer of the Linux Kernel, studied computer science in Finland. Rasmus Lerdorf, a co-author of the PHP programming language, studied Systems Design Engineering in a Canadian university. Breandan Eich, the creator of the JavaScript programming language, studied computer science in an American university. The list can go on but the point is not to present an arm wrestling contest between tertiary education and self-taught approaches, they both can offer each other a gentle handshake.

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My case to create interesting hooks within the curriculum is borne out of encouraging speed of thought about future occurrence for students and putting the very hard decisions first for students in the early stages of tertiary education. There’s no reason to doubt students ask themselves whether they are on the right path in the first year, give themselves the second year to get some answers and may probably have to settle with adapting to the path ahead of them. In my thinking, the first two years should focus on the idea energies of students and the second two years should focus on the advancement of soft skills after those energies. This has a potential to shift the pieces of our tertiary education setup on the national chess board. In other words, the first year should be more intellectually rigorous, then from second to the fourth year, the ease sets in to figure out possible career opportunities. Memorisation and the rote learning style has often done work by the university for the employer at the edge case, with the believe the employer wants you to remember the most you were taught. One might ask the philosophical question after all, when the students get out into the working world, the universe presents them with a carrot and stick situation and it will be theirs for them to choose, then can the university promote more core essential student skill beyond passing an exam. The tertiary education system shouldn’t be doing the edge case duties of letting students learn the hard way (always). To cut to the chase, this will be the essay’s blueprint to get the best out of coding. It is not outside the box thinking, just shifting things within the box. Communication skills should be taken to the third year, studies in entrepreneurship should be brought to the first year, coding education should be sent to the second year and the ability for students to defer their courses should be popularised. Don’t get to the edge of your seats, I will make the core explanations.

Defining entrepreneurship in Ghana is unnecessary. Ghanaians have a rough idea about what it means to start a business. If this is buying and reselling, starting a food joint, putting something in fabricated containers and what have you, it crosses the mind of almost every Ghanaian to start a side or a full hustle. Intrapreneurship, which is not talked about often, rather needs to be defined to Ghanaians. It is more like behaving like an entrepreneur whiles working for an organisation to identify problems and drive change. Either which way, the boundaries of creating economic value has ever become so thin, it is not about whether you work for someone or not, it is about the mindset you have. Placing it as a first year study course should be seen as a foundational way of letting students understand the capitalism out there in other for their ideas to thrive. Why do people don’t know what they want, why is Facebook making money off my connection with others, why is Starbucks selling beverages and making so much money out of it, why have the likes of Satya Nadella, Sundar Pichai, Tim Cook risen through the ranks to become CEOs of some of the world’s biggest companies and many more questions can be the depth for their entrepreneurial education. The very careful thinking of starting a farm, renting a shop, partaking in network marketing and others maybe limiting financial and social dividends for such youth demographics. Ghana needs to sophisticate its manufacturing base and the possibility of this must be placed infront of students without fear it could go wrong plays a major role. The mantra of thinking big and starting local should feel for students as still thinking bigger and starting on campus. The leeway of exploring this for 3 more years on campus should give a few called to learn novel value creation to most of the internship they (intentionally) forego. Universities shouldn’t shy away about what is in it for them. The fulfillment they get from commencement speech invitations when these students turn to success stories outside of their schools, the branding a school’s endowment fund recieves (if there is ever one) when a successful student announces their giving and the inspirational story that the university can leverage on to attract more (quality) admissions. It is workable.

Begin Ghana

import Education Framework 
import University Admissions Framework 
define constant student_demotivation
 
run Admissions Program with G:\Applicants
call function first_year(applicants_total) //returns courses

hook_array_1 = courses.required
 
select[entrpreneurship] from hook_array_1
call function teach_differently(entrpreneurship) //returns creative business ideas
   push notification to programming_class_queue //background script

Programming teachers paying attention to what entrepreneurial studies is supposed to do can still continue the hook for these students. There is a way when you learn something and ask yourself what you want to do with it. Programming actually offers a more existential question about that. During my Primary to Junior Secondary School education, we had some classes of life skills shown to us. We will do things behind a calabash, cut and glue some things, creating small mats by interlacing yarns and so on, gave us some appeal about what we could do with them if we finished it. The school showcasing it at one of their events was not left out but the simple excitement about showing it to your family and friends or placing it in somewhere in the house also existed. The teacher orchestrated this sense of excitement for us. It was a really a good escape from learning all things towards a WAEC (West Africa Examination Council) exams back then. Fast forward a little bit, when I was studying technology at IPMC, what we could do with a subject of programming wasn’t really clear to some of us. If we were not hired by a software development company then, it is not like we could create a program and place somewhere among the shelves of the living room divider in the house. Intrapreneurship wasn’t a relatable concept to us either. A technologist wanting to drive change within an organisation wasn’t getting its idealism in us, let alone take it to nation building. Today, entrepreneurship stands a bigger chance of inspiring students to learn coding if the real life case studies are put infront of them. The case studies of people who took programming serious and setup international companies in or after school. The anxiety that certain subjects are difficult only depends about the teacher infront of you. Letting students learn the hard way should be antiquated. Programming languages with gentle learning curves can introduce them to the concepts of web sites, databases, networking, mobile application, cloud computing and many simple concepts that can help them envision the service they want to bring together. I know a brilliant lady who studied under the Health Sciences in one of the tertiary institutions. Her brilliance got her a first class. One day, she had a conversation with me about her interest to learn technology on the side during her National Service. She said she wanted to be a Product Designer. I was open with her that she could learn something far more challenging for her intelligence and suggested programming as a better option. She might not have known the intrapreneurial or entrepreneurial ability I saw in her to say that. Now count the number of first class students who go on not to have jobs after school, just for an example.

Begin Ghana

import Education Framework 
import University Admissions Framework 
define constant student_demotivation
 
run Admissions Program with G:\Applicants
call function first_year(applicants_total) //returns courses

hook_array_1 = courses.required
 
select[entrepreneurship] from hook_array_1
call function teach_differently(entrpreneurship) //returns creative business ideas
  push notification to programming_class_queue //background script

call function second_year(applicants_total) //returns courses
hook_array_2 = courses.required
select[programming] from hook_array_2

//ideas object created from entrpereneurship class
business_assignment = ideas.digital.challenging.true
purpose = ideas.purpose
 
business_product = (business_assignment/purpose) + programming
call function investment_memo(business_product) //returns interest:true or false
  run CI/CD workflow: continuous_improvemment

Studies show there are a lot of varied reasons students will drop out from a university. It can be of concern to reduce the dropout rate but there exists another possibility of helping them think of a certain opportunity nevertheless. The tertiary education system can understand the purpose glass of these potential students or not as holding water, to some extent. Once when I was in my early teenage years, someone far older than me at that time told me Russian programmers were one of the best in the world. Due to this, he explained to me, their logic questioned a lot of things and didn’t take church going serious, maybe in my view as a result of having something ‘better’ to do such as coding on Sunday mornings. I believed him then. Growing up, I have come to better reverse engineer what he said. If you have developed a passion for Accounting or Civil Engineering, you probably will think about it a few times a day. You are limited with what you can do with it in a way unless you are given some keys to a workplace technically speaking. When one develops a passion for programming, one is carried away differently, the keys are different. There will be a paradigm shift in their lives. One starts to think what code could be behind almost everything. A lot of coders are always seeing ways to compress our way of life into some lines of code. There is now a mobile app for almost anything. Someone actually took the time to explain why software is eating the world. There has come about a gold rush to productise an idea after conceiving it as fast as possible. This brings about a mentality to search for ideas inward and outward of the human experience, work late into the night to get a workable code, think about very early funding possibilities and be bold to take it to market before someone putting in more work does. It simply comes to the measure about the work you are putting into it. The extreme risk a student can take is to take a break from school and throw the kitchen sink at it. Obviously, the Ghanaian way of doing things encourages taking your time at things and that includes finishing school. It will be argued to get your certificates down. It will be your saftey net. There must be another argument for universities to do something contrarian, encourage studies deferral in their handbook in the wake of an economic opportunity. Raising funds and building a business idea whiles one is in school is an impressive feat that one can build momentum with for their prospective capital market. In as much as people will think universities cannot be in direct suggestion for students to defer, universities can allow the student body to understand this risk is welcome and can help them manage it. Help them unpack any economic window they face in their student life, get them to forward engineer their futures.

Begin Ghana

import Education Framework 
import University Admissions Framework 
define constant student_demotivation
 
run Admissions Program with G:\Applicants
call function first_year(applicants_total) //returns courses

hook_array_1 = courses.required
 
select[entrepreneurship] = hook_array_1
call function teach_differently(entrpreneurship) //returns creative business ideas
  push notification to programming_class_queue //background script

call function second_year(applicants_total) //returns courses
hook_array_2 = courses.required
select[programming] = hook_array_2

//ideas object created from entrpereneurship class
business_assignment = ideas.digital.challenging.true
purpose = ideas.purpose
 
business_product = (business_assignment/purpose) + programming
call function investment_memo(business_product) //returns interest:true or false
  run CI/CD workflow: continuous_improvemment

If hook_continues {

  ping motivation.risk.resilience.intergrity
  reply > student_demotivation
  call function think_bigger(time)

 } else {

  call function third_year(applicants_total) 
  call function fourth_year(applicants_total)
  GET[graduation]

 }

load JavaScript: upload_graduates.js in job browser

If opportunities pop ups are disabled {

  complain of unemployment

 } else {

  try something else.

 }
  
 Continue Ghana

I know I have stated a lot of wishful thinking. My credentials and education experience will not match up if put in any witness box I guess. The purpose of my life will be critiqued in this court of trying to appeal to a certain mindset. I will be told to get a life sentence, of course! The point is not to be controversial or overly indulge in a thought experiment. There are a lot of set pieces in the country’s educative setup but isn’t making much gains from a globally competitive standpoint. On the other hand, developed nations are not accepting higher education as another step of knowledge acquisition, but a calculator of good economic fold to come. The government mindset that these students are going to create new companies or join existing companies, deliver more on innovative services, get more money into the economy, create more jobs and improve upon their social security just to say a few comes as a positive light. Ghana’s future is still bright, despite it flickers and goes off at times. Lest I forget the education sector hasn’t fully tackled our national electricity problems also. Just before you turn your mental lights off as you leave the reading room of this article, let’s visit for the last time what our programming teacher pre-paid for us in his at times ‘non-electrifying’ lessons. If according to his method for selecting a suitable partner for marriage, one labels a column for ‘Manual Direction to Coded Location with least Information Ability (M.D.C.L.I.A)’ as a quality requirement, then there will be some inconclusive permutation for some men as a sheer example. Showing directions in Ghana is a show of what one’s memory can hold, no tech connection intended. Imagine a location direction such as, “Tell the driver you will alight at second factory after the filling station. Pass right and go straight, go straight till you get to a big tree on the left. You will see a lotto kiosk at the other side, use the road behind it. You will see a blue house, pass the blue house, you will see another red house pass that house, then stop at where the mechanic is. Call me when you get to the mechanic shop, I will meet you there. My house is around there.”

How some lines of computer code are making meet ups possible in coded places for potential marriages, Google has no idea!