Education in Dependent Societies: Ghana and Tanzania

Abstract

The framework of comparative study which governs the organisation of my discussion has already been set out in Chapter 2. In this section of the present chapter I want to make clear why, given the general orientation to comparison which I have adopted, a specific comparison of Tanzania and Ghana is a useful one to make. My argument has three main themes. The first is that both societies have experienced a direct form of colonial domination by Britain. The second is that, as a consequence of this colonial domination both societies experienced economic changes which tied them to the developed capitalist economies of the western world and which, even after the formal transfer of political authority in the form of independence, continue to set the constraints on what is possible in terms of further socioeconomic development. Finally, both societies, for complex historical and political reasons, face the future in different ways. They follow quite different models of development and these differences have a direct bearing on what is being done in the field of education and in other institutional areas. The differences between the two societies in this respect are sufficiently great to help us judge how far social changes stemming from the action of a dependent state itself can overcome the structure of economic and cultural constraints which colonial penetration left behind and which modern capitalism maintains.