African Humanities and the Paradox of Western Education in Ghana

Abstract

The pre-colonial era of Africa was characterized, among other things, by a traditional or informal system of education. Some of the emphases of traditional education were (and still are) Africans’ delight, expression and appropriation of their beliefs, values, precepts and ideals. Despite these laudable emphases, the traditional system of education is characterized by some scholars as lacking a formal or systemized structure of knowledge production. Moreover, the post-colonial debates on the influence of Western education in Africa in general and Ghana, in particular, are conspicuously silent on Western education’s role in gradually altering the economic ideology of Ghana from a mixed and socialist economy to a capitalist mode of production. Using secondary data sources, this paper argues that the traditional system of education was (and still is) somehow structured or systemized almost as the formal or Western education. It also contends that Western education is gradually spearheading a paradigmatic shift in Ghana’s economic system from mixed economy to capitalism. It further maintains that recourse to African humanities would mitigate the unbridled effects of capitalism in Ghana.

Keywords

• african humanities
• western education
• traditional education
• economic system