Youth urged to be disciplined, determined
Mrs Elizabeth A. De’Souza, Greater Accra Regional Director of the Ghana Education Service (GES), has urged children to be disciplined and determined in order to be able to fulfill their God given destiny.
She advised them to emulate the life stories of heroes like President Barack Obama of the United States of America and Mr Kofi Annan, former United Nations Secretary General.
Mrs De’Souza, who made the remark on Saturday at the first inter-schools national Universal Concept of Mental Arithmetic (UCMAS) competition in Accra, said with discipline our children are bound to become trailblazers.
She said UCMAS Ghana has since its entry into the educational landscape of the nation in 2007 received popular acclamation from the Ministry of Education, the GES and many parents whose children were enrolled on the programme.
She said UCMAS Ghana had trained a lot of pupils and had developed and expanded their brain capacity adding that by visualizing an abacus, a child could do arithmetic calculations up to 10 digits and master the skill of doing it mentally without relying on modern devices such as calculators and computers.
The Regional Director said UCMAS programme provides an all round education to develop children’s concentration, creative thinking, memory power, logical reasoning abilities and to boost children’s confidence to face challenges.
Mrs De’Souza urged all directors, proprietors and heads of basic schools both private and public, to embrace this all important programme to enable children, who are the future leaders to reach their full potential.
She appealed to the Management of UCMAS Ghana to expand the programme to cover public schools through the country, in order to help our children.
Mr Girish Gurbani, Director of UCMAS Ghana, said the programme tends to develop the right brain in children in the formative years of four to 14 years.
He said: “we hope to gradually eradicate mathematics phobia from all Ghanaian children, boost their confidence level and bolster their creativity and imagination level for the betterment of mother Ghana”.
The programme was patronised by over 600 children from leading private basic institutions across the country between the ages of four to 15 and they were taken through abacus and mental drills.
Six year old Jason Bonsu Odei of the Ladlink School, North Kaneshie, told the Ghana News Agency that he was very happy to be part of the pupils selected to contest in the inter-schools national competition.
Source: GNA