Negritudism in African Education: The Ghanaian Perspective

International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) | Volume III, Issue VI, June 2019 | ISSN 2454–6186

Negritudism in African Education: The Ghanaian Perspective

Ruby Jecty, Benjamin Ayerkain Tettey

Foso College of Education, Assin Foso, Central Region, Ghana

ABSTRACT:- The main objective of the study was to transfer the philosophies of negritude as an ideology in literature into education to sensitize well-meaning Ghanaians, stakeholders in education and traditional custodians on the collapse of cultural awareness subjects from Ghanaian school curriculum. The study traced the continuity from a much older work Ethiopia Unbound to a more recent one Two Thousand Seasons to see how Ghanaian novelists have contributed textually to the sentiments of negritude which can be adapted and adopted by curriculum designers for Ghanaian education. The research design used for this study was a library research which involved activities in which the researcher worked exclusively on literature which addresses the issue. No attempt is made at reviewing literature on this study as the authors, saturated with the numerous experiments with issues of Ghanaian education by politicians wish to express a ‘spontaneous overflow of strong emotions.’ However, the knowledge gained by the authors was derived from various literature and these are duly acknowledged. The findings led to suggesting subjects and courses to be studied in Ghanaian schools.

I. INTRODUCTION

Education, they say is a subset of culture, as such formal education in any given area must have as its utmost prerogative, the need to fashion its structured programs to inculcate a cultural heritage into its clients from the immediate community in which it finds itself. It is said that education must have a relevant cultural component to make the pupils hold in high esteem the heritage of their people through educating them culturally, and traditionally refining them to hold to their roots. In such a case, education in Ghana can therefore be said to have no cultural inclination of making its clients take pride in their Ghanaianism but rather succeeds in alienating them from their identity. Though an undeniable fact that education and culture are symbiotic and balancing each other, the existing Ghanaian educational system does not reflect on its own culture, but fashioned after standards and principles of western science and literature and the infusion of its way of life among Ghanaian school-going children. Ghanaian education is still theoretical, abstract and foreign which has no motive than to promote cramming rather than promoting a sense of social, cultural, economic or political development in Ghanaian children.

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