There is this video making the rounds on TikTok that every teacher and parent in Ghana should watch not for amusement, but for soul-searching.
I realised the footage, which appears to show a teacher mocking a pupil with obvious signs of dyslexia, while other children look on has attracted thousands of interesting views and comments.
Like many trained teachers who have sat in a special education class, I watched it with a mixture of disbelief, sadness and concern.
I was not angry at my colleague teacher’s behaviour but kept hoping.
I hoped there was some context missing. I hoped there was an explanation that had escaped the camera. Most of all, I hoped that the teacher, as a trained professional, understood something the rest of us did not.
Because I simply do not want to believe that a trained teacher would deliberately expose a vulnerable child to ridicule not in front of her classmates but to the entire world.
We were taught to believe that teaching was the noblest of all professions where society entrusts you with its most valued asset; Children. We, as parents hand over our sons and daughters every morning to teachers believing that, while we are away earning a living, another responsible adult will educate them, protect them and help them become better human beings. What could be more sacred than this kind of trust?
That is why this viral incident goes beyond that very classroom or one child. It should force us to ask difficult questions about how we see children who learn differently.
The video also transported me back many years, to my own days as a basic school teacher.
Like every public school in Ghana, ours had children who struggled in different ways. Some could hardly read despite trying their hardest. Others mixed up letters and numbers. There were those who seemed unable to concentrate for long. Some hardly spoke to anyone, while others behaved in ways that puzzled even experienced teachers who had sat in special needs classes in the Training College.
Looking back now, I appreciate the inclusion of Special needs education in the College’s curriculum by those who developed them. They knew we were going to encounter many of those children who probably would be living with conditions we scarcely understood. Dyslexia. ADHD. Autism spectrum disorder. Mild intellectual disabilities. Speech and language disorders. Perhaps even Down syndrome.
Yes, there were occasions when we as teachers laughed among ourselves about some of the unusual things these children did. It was not always out of cruelty, it was because we were encountering it for the first time. Most of the time these came from ignorance and frustration. We simply did not have the vocabulary or the training to explain what we were observing.
But there was one unwritten rule. The child was never the audience. Those conversations happened in the staff common room, behind closed doors. We never intentionally turned a child’s struggles into a classroom performance.
That is why this TikTok video to me, is so unsettling. It appears to take what should have remained a professional concern and transforms it into entertainment.
The classroom suddenly has become a theatre. This struggling child has become the main attraction of a comedy show, and the internet is the audience. Thousands of strangers have become spectators to a child’s most vulnerable moment.
Surely, this cannot be what education is supposed to look like. What educational purpose is served by publicly embarrassing a child? Does this humiliation improve her reading ability? Will this ridicule correct her dyslexia? Can laughter cure a learning disability like what she is experiencing?
Congratulations for answering ‘No’ to all the questions I have asked.
If anything, research has shown the exact opposite. Children who experience humiliation in learning environments become anxious like this girl. Her anxiety will definitely affect her level of concentration which will lead to poor learning. Her poor learning ability will surely lead to more embarrassment for her. This unfortunate cycle will repeat itself until she becomes withdrawn from all school activities including hidden curricula like teasing among peers.
She will stop asking questions in the future.
Others in a situation like hers will stop volunteering answers because they have stopped believing they are intelligent and eventually stop believing in themselves.
What is more tragic than someone who does not believe in him or herself?
We need to remind eachother as parents and teachers that dyslexia is not laziness. Our child with dyslexia is not unintelligent. Many of these children possess remarkable creativity, excellent reasoning abilities and exceptional talents in situations that conventional classroom assessments may never capture. Across the world, countless innovators, entrepreneurs, scientists and artists have lived successful lives despite dyslexia. What they needed was not mockery.
They needed understanding. They needed support. They needed parents and teachers who recognised that different does not mean deficient.
The same applies to children living with Down syndrome, autism spectrum disorder and other developmental conditions. These children do not wake up each morning choosing to struggle.
Parents of such children often carry emotional and financial burdens that few people appreciate. Many spend years moving from clinic to clinic seeking answers. Some sell property to pay for therapy. Others battle social stigma before their children even enter school.
Then those who cannot afford the services of therapists send these children to school hoping the trained teachers and mainstream education will become their refuge. Imagine how devastating it must be if that refuge becomes another place of rejection.
Teachers occupy a unique position in a child’s life. No one in my opinion, is better placed like the teacher, to notice that a child may require professional attention.
A doctor may see a child for twenty minutes. A psychologist may assess a child once every few months. But the teacher spends almost every working day with that child, and it is important for him or her to recognize her role in the child’s development.
If one of your pupils persistently reverses letters while reading, struggles with decoding words or displays patterns suggesting a learning difficulty, your responsibility is not to become a comedian nor a content creator. You owe the child the responsibility to document your observations, engage her parents respectfully and initiate the appropriate referral processes within the public school system.
That is what our children deserve.
Perhaps what troubles me most about video of this kind is not even the teacher’s conduct itself but what the other children were learning, morally.
When they see their teacher laugh at a vulnerable classmate, they receive an unintended lesson of ridiculing persons who look different.
They learn that weakness is funny.They learn that the child who struggles is somehow less worthy of dignity. Then we wonder why bullying persists in our schools.
If the teacher cannot protect the vulnerable child, how can we reasonably expect the other children to do so?
Here comes also, the other uncomfortable part to this conversation. Must everything become social media content?
We are living in an era where every mobile phone doubles as a broadcasting station. Unfortunately, wisdom has not always grown at the same pace as technology.
Not every classroom incident belongs on TikTok and not every mistake deserves thousands of viewers. As teachers, we should know better that no child should have their most difficult moment preserved permanently on the internet.
We should always remember that our children cannot meaningfully consent to such exposure. Yet long after today’s comments disappear, the digital footprint may remain.
Years from now, that child may apply for university, seek employment or simply try to build confidence, while a humiliating video from childhood continues to circulate online. No child deserves that burden.
Ghana has made significant progress towards inclusive education. We have policies. We have trained specialists. We have the Ghana Education Service’s Special Education Division. We increasingly acknowledge that children learn differently and that our education system must adapt to meet diverse needs.
But policies alone cannot build inclusive schools without professionalism, attitudes, and empathy from those charged to implement them.
As teachers we should ask one simple question whenever we stand before our pupils: “If this were my own child, would I handle the situation this way?”
Your viral video will eventually disappear from people’s timelines. Another trending topic will replace it, undoubtedly. But somewhere, there is a girl who will remember how adults made her feel. I pray and hope that memory is not one of laughter of her peersechoing around a classroom.
May I end by reminding you that our purpose as educators and responsible adults, is to help every child discover that they can become more than they ever imagined, and not to feel smaller than they already do. Not even your own child deserves to be mocked by you, on social media.
By Benjamin Quarcoo
