Ghana: Textbooks

LETTER TO THE SPEAKER

Towards a needs-based curriculum for schools

Mr. Speaker, Honorable majority members, Honorable members of the minority, ladies and gentlemen.
In my letter to you some months ago, I discussed programmatic structures with regards to the curriculum in our universities, in which I indicated that the current curriculum succeeds in producing students en masse at the end of each academic year, but fails to make them productive in society. Even though the greater majority of my audience understood the import of my argument and agreed with me, in principle, on the challenging issues I raised, others misread the piece and thought I meant that some courses in the liberal arts such as History and Philosophy, among others are irrelevant and should not be offered. I don’t think I can ever dream of such an idea, having gone through the same system and programs, myself. In that piece, I argued that the current set up of programs, among which are those in the liberal arts, have not been designed and taught with any connection to the outside world, thus products of the universities become displaced in the communities in which they have to serve because they find it difficult if not impossible to apply such knowledge in the real world. It has been seven (7) months since this piece and I am yet to hear a single reform about that.
We seem to be losing hold of a number of things, one of which includes our English language. We can hardly talk of a language policy which identifies us as real Ghanaians. I am not talking about whether or not we should have a national language, but a national English language policy that can identify us as Ghanaians and can identify us with one bloc of the so-called powerful Western countries. Today, when experts talk about the Englishes of the world Nigeria is mentioned. Nigeria has become such a powerful bloc identifiable with a consistent, marked way of speaking and writing that is uniquely Nigerian. There is no such thing as Ghanaian English even though I can easily make out a Ghanaian from a Nigerian should they both present themselves. Usually, for a developing country, the success of language policy might be contingent on how well its system is modeled after its colonial powers. Thus, one would easily assume that the Ghanaian will take after the British both in speech and in writing. Unfortunately, however, we seem to be at a cross-road in this direction as one is not sure if our speech and written forms are American or British. When the Ghanaian speaks or writes, it is very difficult to decipher its form and function as it is not clear if it follows the American or the British tradition. This is worrying, considering that even in schools the problem has crept into the syllabi and most instructors have no clue what this is doing to our identity or even if there is some awareness, instructors do not care. What is obvious now is that Ghanaians are now like the metaphoric pendulum moving to and fro at the touch of any harmless weapon.
This chaotic situation on the language scene is reflected in curriculum development at the basic and secondary levels of education. I don’t know if I am the only one who has observed this phenomenon but over the past years there have been attempts by curriculum designers to introduce some Western (American or British) subject matters into the syllabi of students in the educational sector and this hasn’t helped. Isn’t it a source of concern that children as early as the crèche level are made to study subject matters that have no bearing on their cultural contexts? Consider a child who lives in the Kushiegu-Karaga area, who is forced to study subject matters about hurricanes, history of other countries, animals, and concepts that are so foreign to pupils. The process of education at the tender age at which these pupils find themselves is so complex and until the pupils are able to have some grounding in their environment, they can’t make any sense of other materials that are so foreign to them. At the basic level, pupils wherever they find themselves know as much terminologies of their environments and will take sometime for them to be exposed to foreign phenomena. How would they make sense of hurricanes and holocaust when they don’t ever happen in Ghana?
The Literature scene has been invaded by foreign texts and materials, many of which students have no clue what the texts are talking about. The worrying development is that for the most part texts from the western orientation have been favored over the texts and materials that deal with the Ghanaian or African experiences and whose themes provoke crucial debates and arguments. What this means is that students know more about foreign subjects than they know about their local heroes and writers, and how can they relate to their history with this growing sense of displacement? As it stands our education is not geared towards producing graduates who will meet the challenges of the nation, but graduates who will serve the needs of the West. By the time a student leaves school he can recite and quote notable areas of Shakespeare’s or Arthur Miller’s texts but display sheer ignorance about the culture and history of Ghana or Africa, or in other words his/she will hardly be able to display knowledge of Ghanaian texts.
I am by no means discounting the importance of materials of the Shakespearean or western tradition but our dependence on them has not done our students any good. I will admit that Literatures of the western tradition or specifically those of the Shakespearean orientation are one of the best considering the universal nature of their themes but how can you treat such foreign subjects in schools when students can make no connections with the concepts discussed in the materials? Pupils and students can only benefit if they are not rushed into studying the Literatures of other areas they are yet to encounter. Our educational authorities can only hasten slowly in introducing these materials to our pupils and students. At the university level a careful blend of Ghanaian or African texts and those from the West and not necessarily an over-dependence on western texts and materials will help.
We seem to be at a cross-road, only feeding on systems that have not helped us. We need a curriculum that can identify with the needs and ideals of our system. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Author: Godwin Yaw Agboka