President Mahama Blames Archaic Teaching Styles for Detouring His Engineering Ambitions | Discuss Ghana

 In a deeply personal and highly relatable reflection on the psychological barriers within Ghana's traditional school system, President John Dramani Mahama has opened up about how poor instructional methods completely derailed his youthful dream of becoming an engineer.

Speaking directly to students, teachers, and state education planners today, Friday, May 22, 2026, the President used his own academic history to heavily emphasize why the state is aggressively overhauling foundational training through the newly expanded Basic STEM (BSTEM) Project.

The Classroom Trauma That Altered a Career

The President dropped the candid revelation during a high-profile inspection tour of the Sawla D/A Primary and Junior High School in the Savannah Region. Flanked by his Minister for Education, Hon. Haruna Iddrisu, Mahama paused during a demonstration of practical robotics kits to critique the old-school, overly abstract pedagogy that historically alienated generations of brilliant Ghanaian minds from the sciences:

"If there was STEM at the time I was in school, maybe I would have been an engineer. I was traumatised by the way Mathematics was taught. How can you teach a child Mathematics in that manner? It was all about abstraction, fear, and memorization without any practical context or real-world application. That harsh, punitive environment discouraged so many of us who had genuine curiosity. We must permanently change that story for the modern Ghanaian child." 

The BSTEM Blueprint: From Fear to Robots

To guarantee that no other child is structurally "traumatized" out of their professional potential, the President used the Savannah regional tour to review the massive milestones achieved under the iTech BSTEM programme—a comprehensive policy framework originally drafted following a structural review committee set up by Vice President Prof. Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang.

Education Minister Haruna Iddrisu provided a breakdown of the aggressive, practical interventions currently being scaled up across the country's public schools:

The Mass Injections: According to the ministry's updated data sheet, the project has successfully moved past the pilot phase, supplying modern, locally manufactured practical equipment to 3,518 junior high schools and 1,432 primary schools nationwide.

The Teacher Reset: Recognizing that a curriculum is only as good as its instructor, the state has fully trained between 7,000 and 8,000 public school teachers to shift away from old-school theoretical dictation toward active, hands-on experimentation.

The AI and Coding Mandate: Minister Iddrisu explicitly announced that the state is finalizing a progressive curriculum revision that will make Robotics, Coding, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) an integral, mandatory component of the basic education scheme from the foundational level.