Emmanuel Victor Nii Tackie-Yaoboi
Department: College of Social Sciences and International Studies
Project Summary
Working title: How do we educate the Ghanaian (African) child for the 21st century and beyond? Ever since independence in March, 1957, there have been three major educational reforms, that is, in 1961, 1967 and 1987 and there have also been several reviews of the education system, notably those in 1966, 1974, 1993 and 2002. The search for a ‘best’ education system for Ghana has, however, remained elusive. The previous New Patriotic Party (NPP) government also proposed changes in the education system and a new education system was introduced at the beginning of the school year in August 2007. As a developing nation, Ghana must re-examine how it is preparing the up and coming generation for the future. The current situation whereby over 50% of children are failing their Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) is unacceptable and cannot be justified in any human society. It is therefore vitally important for every reasonable Ghanaian to want to see drastic changes to the current educational system which only benefits the rich at the expense of the poor. Some questions that I would be asking are as follows: 1. How do we re-indoctrinate the up and coming generation to value what is Ghanaian, and for that matter African? Considering the fact that in the minds of the majority of Ghanaians, everything ‘White’ (Western) is good and everything ‘Black’ (African) is bad. 2. What kind of education system would prepare the up and coming generation to be producers rather than consumers, overcoming the current culture of dependency? 3. Can our education system produce an up and coming generation wanting to stay and contribute to the overall development and stability of Ghana, instead of rushing to the Western world where their services are not so necessary? 4. How do we re-organize the Ghanaian education system which is currently consisting of inequalities at the expense of dirty politics? 5. What can we do to overcome the problem of producing too many school dropouts and the associated problems of outmoded examination practices? My aim in the research is to investigate how the education system in Ghana can be reformed; this will involve major changes which typically include a change in the structure of the education system. The methods I would like to employ in my research approach would be mixed methods – a combination of collection and analysis of quantitative and qualitative data, I could envisage myself bringing into play some educational evaluation as a process of characterizing and appraising some aspects of the educational process of Ghana. Ghanaian education calls for an urgent action research!
