In Ghana, a cane is a teacher's staff. If you were in a school of 50 teachers you would find 50 canes and more reserves.
"A hit from Sir's cane is more painful than that of Miss," a boy of about six years told his classmate as they strutted home from school.
She said it appeared the black outer lining at the handle of Sir's cane makes it particularly biting and hinted she might stop school to avoid Sir's strikes. Both spoke in vernacular.
Every year these “staffs” of teachers countrywide including Sir's branded one drive scores of pupils from the classrooms on to the streets. Among them are hundreds of people with various forms of disabilities.
For example Tom was a tall eight-year old class one pupil with a hearing impairment.
On account of his height, Tom was put at the back of the classroom, where he could hardly hear anything the teacher said.
For the teacher, Tom was lazy, would not listen in class and therefore answered no questions right. No day passed without him receiving hits from the Teacher and in frustration Tom dropped out of school.
At home, Tom was not appreciated either by his unknowing parents. The taunts and punishments were too much for Tom.
At 10 years he left home for the streets.
Too many children are either dropping out of school because of the nation's inability to seriously create a total school environment for every Ghanaian child.
A school is that which supports every child regardless of his or her disabilities, where there is so much warmth to make it a desirable place to go to every day, as envisaged in the policy of "inclusive education".
What is inclusive education? The Nevada Partnership for Inclusive Education (NVPIE) explained thus.
"Inclusion is an effort to make sure the diverse learners-those with disabilities, different languages and cultures, different homes and family, lives, different interests and ways of learning-are exposed to teaching strategies that reach them as individual learners."
It continued, “Inclusive education asks teachers to provide appropriate individualized support and services to all students without the stigmatization that comes with separation.
The NVPIE concluded, "Teachers in inclusive classrooms vary their styles to enhance learning for all students".
The world is moving that direction. Ghana also has a Ministry of Education Strategic Plan (2003-2015), with pilot projects in a few districts, with the view of all Ghanaian schools going "inclusive by 2015'.
The journey to that realization is however dogged with horrendous problems of acceptance, commitment, management and human resource.
Mr Japhet Buama, a Special Education Professional and Mr Francis Asong, Director of the Voice of the People with Disability (VOICE)-Ghana, a Disability Interest NGO, were unanimous that the policy as it affects the disabled in Ghana today is disappointing, and indeed could be tugging precariously to a crash.
VOICE-Ghana with the support of Strengthening Transparency, Accountability and Responsiveness (STAR)-Ghana, had undertaken surveys on children with disability of school going age currently out of school in the Ho and Nkwanta-South Districts of the Volta Region.
Mr Asong told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) that all studies of repute, including theirs, want the segregated system of education for the disabled cancelled.
He said the alternative, inclusive education, is a hard road to travel.
Mr Asong said the stories of disabled people making it in Ghana are exceptions and not the norm, as the poor perceptions about these categories of people lingers on.
"Parents are confused about them and write them off, superstition about them being cursed is thriving and mainstream educators marginalize them," a distraught Mr Asong, himself physically disabled, said.
He said VOICE-Ghana's initial search for people with various kinds of disability when it arrived at Nkwanta-South was fruitless.
"We had heard their story; we knew they were there but we drew a blank. They had hidden them.
"It took the intervention of a local, who advised that we could only get them, working through a local," Mr Asong said.
The Nkwanta-South survey, conducted at random in 23 communities in February 2012 revealed that 37 children with disabilities (mainly hearing impairment) were not in school.
Mr Asong said parents interviewed did not know they were obliged by law to send them to school and above all, they did not see the need to send them to school.
Mr Charles Nyante, VOICE-Ghana Programme Coordinator, told another story.
At Adaklu-Helekpe where all efforts to get parents of mainly children with intellectual disability to get them some formal education failed until a trip with some of them to a segregated institution of children with similar conditions changed their perceptions.
"They marveled at the sight of children with similar conditions as theirs, gaining capacities to fend for themselves in many ways and even produce items of economic value, such as Christmas and other greeting cards, and now want formal training for their disables," Mr Nyante said.
The Ho report on Adaklu was based on interviews of 51 parents and guardians from 35 communities and revealed 51 children with disabilities were not in school. The survey was in December 2011.
Challenges mentioned in the Survey Reports made available to the GNA is a distressful but not unexpected.
"Parents do not see benefits in educating their children with disability, particularly children with intellectual disability."
"Most parents and guardians of children with disability have limited understanding of the causes and nature of their children's disability."
"A family at Kpale Xorse blamed Captain George Nfodjo MP for Ho-Central, when he as District Chief Executive for Ho, led police and soldiers to forcefully administer polio vaccines to parents not wanting the vaccines for their kids on religious grounds.
"Some parents think the school environment was not inclusive enough to accommodate their disabled children".
VOICE-Ghana gathered that some of the disabled would want to go to school.
It sighted a case "at Abutia-Teti, where a parent kept her daughter who has a disability confined in a rubber basket in a room for most of her lifetime."
The import of the VOICE-Ghana survey was to highlight the problem to get stakeholders appreciate the urgency to mainstream the disabled into the formal education (inclusive) in the country.
Mr Asong and Mr Nyante have hope though, but did not mince words anyway.
For Mr Asong "it is an uphill task, but must be done. What the VOICE-Ghana survey is saying is only a tip of the iceberg. The country must sit up or we risk pushing a sizeable number of its population in the garbage bin".
Mr Nyante, a former state social worker, said "our pressures on stakeholders to fall in line would not slacken, join us for the tough advocacy".
Both said the first major step the educational authorities could take to show they were serious was to revisit the syllabuses of the Colleges of Education to make it "inclusive-education compliant".
Mr Buame, who has some direct association with schooling for the disabled in the US, wants a thorough re-direction of the educational authorities on education for the disabled.
"Many, including teachers only see the obvious-mobility, hearing, sight and the serious types of intellectual impairments, as disables.
He said there are many other conditions, especially emotional disabilities that needed to be hyped.
"A teacher unable to make ends meet is an emotionally disabled person just as a pupil who reports to school late everyday because of heaps of house chores piled up for him by foster parents.
"But the child arrives in school to be bumped everyday by that teacher
"It is the responsibility of the schools to find out about the habitual late comers or that school is not in the business of modern education delivery.
"Even kids with torn uniforms, berated by their teachers, teased by peers are special cases, needing special attention in the envisaged inclusive education for Ghana," Mr Buame said.
He said it was joy in school campuses in the US to see various forms of impaired pupils and students at play on the same compound and moving into resource rooms for special attention when need be.
USAID in a collaborative effort with government had done some work on the issue in some selected districts, including Ho Municipal.
But Mr Buama said that could go waste if the political will would not push managers of the education in the country to set goals and reach them.
Budget now for the special education units is not low but non-existent.
Mr Buama said it takes a lot of lobbying, to get something flaked off other areas for the area of special education.
In effect the schools are only depicting the general environment where marginalization of the disabled is pronounced.
Inclusive education for all manners of disability, essentially, would make them less dependent on the so-called able-bodied.
Perhaps the greatest challenge is getting teachers to show interest in the issue.
A chat with some teachers was disappointing.
A few of those spoken to, did in fact burst into side splitting laughter, when asked, if they would offer special education in school.
The trend at the universities, Mr Buama said was to add special education to make up for the required subjects to qualify for a certificate.
He said they eventually got on to the teaching field and forget everything about the disabled and rather gratuitously grab the teacher's "staff'.
Managers of education in the country are indeed in a fix. They have big jobs on hand to fix. Plummeting standards, at the time of supposed higher teacher-standards across the country, and planning for the needed inclusive education.
This big job is against the backdrop of grossly inadequate budget for educational management and weaker teacher commitment to duty.
For whatever reason, teacher interest in a second job unrelated to teaching, had so eroded performance to warrant a study.
So that, for intrinsic policies such as inclusive education, planners might be stranded as there might not be the workforce with the sustained interest to implement them.
Across Ghana in many big towns today, there is a push for male teachers especially to own and drive taxis and so please don't be surprised the next driver union to come out could be Teacher Taxi Drivers Union of Ghana (TTDUG).
There is the need to get all teachers on board the programme to take Ghana into the era of "inclusive education".