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The Ghana Secondary Technical School Alumni Association (GAA) has been on a mission these past three years to revive interest in technical and science education at GSTS. That desire was underscored in our recent fundraising event to sponsor our school’s robotics team, GiantBot1, the current National Robotics ARC Champions, to the 2018 Robofest Competition in Southfield, Michigan and to Massachusetts for an educational tour.

The GAA got interested in robotics for a number of reasons. Primary among them is to find a way to get students interested in technical education again. Currently, the school’s technical curriculum is moribund; the technical workshops are in ruins, with only a minority of students pursuing technical subjects. For most alumni, this represents a dramatic shift in the core mission upon which the school was founded. In the past, all students were required to take technical subjects regardless of their intended educational trajectory.

In the following essays, two Giants share their perspectives on the importance of technical education as it relates to their own experiences, their reflection on the 2018 Robofest Competition, and what it means for GSTS and science education in Ghana.