CIVIC EDUCATION MUST START AT KINDERGARTEN

THE inculcation of core values that unite Ghanaians must begin immediately from the kindergarten level through all levels of education.
This will help to foster togetherness and a common purpose among the people in the country, a Renowned Educationist, Professor Jophus Anamuah-Mensah, has stated.
He said the Report of the President’s Committee on the Review of Education Reforms in Ghana (2002) highlighted a system of education that sought to make all Ghanaians united even in their differences.
Speaking in an interview with the Daily Graphic, Prof. Anamuah-Mensah, who was also the Chairman of the Presidential Committee on the Review of Education Reforms in Ghana, agreed with former President John Agyekum Kufuor’s suggestion that the educational system should be used to unite Ghanaians.
Addressing Parliament in his last State of the Nation Address on January 6, 2009, former President Kufuor said, “Mr Speaker, further to eliminate factionalism within society, part of the school curriculum should be devoted to studying and strengthening the factors that unite us so that our politics will not be driven by ethnicity, but rather merit.”
Prof. Anamuah-Mensah said the committee had taken cognisance of this and highlighted this issue in its report.
What was now needed was the full implementation of recommendations that would foster a united country by the Curriculum and Research Development Division of the Ministry of Education Science and Sports (MOESS).
He was of the view that the tension, divisions and acrimony that characterised the election campaigns of the past year would not be repeated with an educational system that built up individuals to appreciate each other’s differences while remaining united.
“If we all remain united we can achieve this, starting with kids from the kindergarten. If we do not, they will imitate us and we will not be able to bridge the breaches we started. We must start and introduce the core values into our children,” he said.
In her view, another member of the Presidential Committee on the Review of Education Reforms, Dr Mrs Sylvia Boye, said the system of education, where some children from all over the country lived together in a boarding system in the past, helped to foster unity.
Children were then able to learn about the differences in ethnic, tribal and religious backgrounds, while living and learning together.
She said the boarding system currently did not achieve this as children were from the same region in which the schools were situated.
Dr Boye noted that a properly developed curriculum, under which core values of respect for each other’s differences and the essence of unity were inculcated in all, would help the country to maintain its cohesion.
DAILY GRAPHIC, FRIDAY JANUARY 9, 2009