Western formal education in Gold Coast-Ghana: an overview of colonial educational policies and curriculum from 1919-1927

Abstract

At the arrival of Europeans in the 15th century, some form of formal and informal education existed in the Gold Coast—now Ghana, with the goal of introducing young people into the society. As a result of colonization, the colonizing nation implemented their own form of formal education within the Gold Coast colony. An understanding of the present-day educational policies and curriculum in Ghana and its effects on the Ghanaian people must be rooted in analyzing the various educational policies and curriculum implemented by her colonizer, the British. Britain played a significant role in the introduction of western formal education in which the Guggisberg administration of 1919 to 1927 has been characterized as the most successful on issues related to education in the Gold Coast colony. Findings from this study serve as elements for educational policy formulation and curriculum development for governments, policy makers, educators, administrators, teachers, and students by helping them to appreciate, understand, and critically analyze how past events have shaped the present educational policies and curriculum. This study critically analyzed the 1919 to 1927 period when the Gold Coast had a proliferation in educational development, a kind never experienced in the then British Empire. It affords stakeholders the opportunity to know the past mistakes and predict future problems with the view to making the necessary changes for an improved educational system. Using historiography methodology, Critical Policy Analysis (CPA), and Postcolonial Theory (PCT) as frameworks for interpretation and analysis, it is evident the British colonial government’s educational policies, and curriculum under Sir Frederick Gordon Guggisberg made some positive impacts including building of Accra Government School, Achimota school, road systems, and road network. However, its aim at character training and civilization of men and women to become leaders of their own country instead became a means to achieve social control over the people. I emphatically state, what the policies said were different from what they achieved. Research findings like loss of land, cheap laborers, break of family systems and sense of community, loss of cultural identity and religious practices, taste and preference for foreign goods and services, and language loss affirms that western formal education introduced to the people of Gold Coast-Ghana by the Christian missionaries and under British colonial government from 1919 to 1927 didn’t serve the interest of natives. The education which aimed at civilizing a ‘primitive’ people instead resulted in acculturation, religious proselytism, and philology/language dominance thereby indicating the clear disparities between what policy says and what policy does. These together became the medium for imperialism and inculcation of western traditions, values, way of life, and systems. The findings further reveal how the colonizer maintained systematic marginalization of the colonized through policies.