The Chief of Staff, Julius Debrah has urged school authorities to reconsider the use of weeding as a form of punishment for students.
According to him, it discourages young people from viewing farming as an attractive and valuable activity.
Sharing an experience while addressing students and staff of St. Aquinas Senior High School on Friday, August 29, 2025, Mr. Julius Debrah recounted a conversation with his driver on their way to the event.
“But whiles on our way here, I was picking a chat with my driver. And of course he knew why we were coming here. And he said, but sir, this thing that you people are doing, you have to talk to the headmasters to reconsider using weeding as a punishment to the students”
During the launch of the School Farm Initiative, a bold program aimed at turning schools into hubs of agriculture, innovation, and entrepreneurship, the Chief of Staff explained that assigning students to weed as punishment creates a negative perception of farming.
He warned that when children are repeatedly made to weed for wrongdoing, they grow up believing that farming is undesirable.
He therefore appealed to school authorities to explore alternative forms of discipline, such as fetching water or sweeping, so that students can begin to view farming as an attractive and rewarding activity rather than a form of punishment.
“Because if a child does something wrong, and the only option of punishing them is to ask them to weep, they grow thinking that weeding or farming is a bad thing. So I will appeal to you to look at other alternative punishments, either they go fetching water, they go sweeping, so that they will see farming as something attractive and not as a punishment.”
He stressed that changing this practice is crucial to shifting perceptions about agriculture among the youth, adding that schools must present farming as a productive and rewarding activity that can contribute to national development.
