Educate or Bust!

Entry #4 28/10/13

School in Ghana: Hello all! Lately another volunteer and I have been going down to the school (Bethel Academy, run by the owners of the orphanage) and teaching a creative arts course for kids up to class 3.  Ghanian schooling, as I am sure you’d imagine, differs greatly from that of the US/Developed world.  It would be considered a Private School in American terms, but since all schools are Private in Ghana, it doesn’t hold much prestige.  All students are required to wear a uniform of the school colors and pay a quarterly fee, as well as bringing 1 Ghana Cedi ($0.50), per day. Bethel Academy services children from Nursery (approx. age 2) up to Form one.  The grades start at KG1 (kindergarten), then KG2, Class 1, Class 2, Class 3, Class 4, Class 5, Class 6, and From 1.  From here the students move to a Junior High School, then Senior High school, and some continue on to University or Vocational training.        Education is highly valued in Ghana, but their learning style, or at least the teaching style, emphasizes memorization and recitation instead of reasoning and deduction.  For example, many of the students are able to list all the 5 and 8 times tables, but don’t realize that 5X8 is the same as 8X5. While this may not sound like a problem in the younger grades, if students need to write, say, a persuasive essay, they’ll need to come up with their own ideas, because building an argument requires more that the memorization of facts.  This gap in education became apparent to me when we tried to do art with the students and all of their trees looked identical because they were taught, “this is the Correct way to draw a tree”.  When we would work on examples for the class, all of the kids would try to copy ours exactly.  Creativity is a foreign concept for these little ones. 

The teachers each keep a “cane” with them in their classroom, and use it liberally as a “negative reinforcement learning tool”.  Although for all of the negative I’ve found in Ghanian schooling, the positive can’t be ignored.  Recently, education has become readily available, preparing kids for the world of math, language, and technology.  Teaching offers a wonderful transitional job between Senior High School and University, and many of the kids are learning life skills, cooperation and obedience which they may not be exposed to in their home lives. 

Overall, I think the emphasis on education in Ghana is admirable, but could use an alternative structure, which I do my best to implement whenever I am around the school!

Everyone back home stay safe and warm.

All the best from Africa!