Nkrumah’s overthrow distorted education – Ansu-Kyeremeh

The former Director, School of communication studies, at the University of Ghana, Professor Kwasi Ansu-Kyeremeh has said the overthrow of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah's government in 1966 distorted Ghana's educational agenda to regrettable extent that even today pupil teachers still exist in the system.

According to him, Ghana's founding fathers saw teacher development as the cornerstone of the type of transformative education that would develop society.

This in his view explains why teacher training transformed from certificate B at the early 1960s, to certificate A and post-secondary by the mid-1960 to the current undergraduate diploma.

He said the 1961 Educational reforms which converted Osagyefo Teacher Training College to University of Cape Coast to spearhead graduate teacher training with emphasis on science ended fruitless due to political instability.

Professor Ansu-Kyeremeh noted that with "the 1961 education reforms, every teacher at all levels would today be a graduate teacher," adding "the Kwapong reforms some six years later reversed the radical 1965 doubling of four-year teacher colleges by halving and converting the half into grammar school type secondary schools. We then saw in the ‘surplus’ of trained teachers as wealth commodity we could export, to Uganda, Niger, and as far as Jamaica. We didn't, however, have the sense to export to Nigeria during 1970s and early 1980s teacher exodus."

He made these statements at the inauguration ceremony of Central Regional Branch of Komenda College old Students' Association (KOSA) at the University of Cape Coast (UCC) Senior Club House on Saturday August 5, 2017.

Delivering a lecture on the theme: "Developing the society through the teacher" Professor Ansu-Kyeremeh impelled teachers to be mindful of the need to do from the need to think (that is psychomotor vis-a-vis cognitive skills), and conjoin them effectively to stimulate society development.

He emphasised that teachers need to redefine "imparting knowledge as knowledge sharing" in order to contribute meaningfully to developing societies.

He called on teachers to minimise didactic teaching approaches while emphasising on Socractic and dialogic approaches in teaching.

"We don't want the teacher teaching bead making by writing the process on the chalkboard for students to copy and memorise. We want the materials made available for students to physically make the actual beads," he stated.

Prof Ansu-Kyeremeh urged teachers to be committed and dedicated towards societal development.