Pedagogies and Politics of “Culture”

Abstract

In southern Ghana, as this poem, recited as part of a school cultural competition, declaims, it is through elders that one learns forms of knowledge—appropriate speech and elders’ matters—that are marked as cultural. The poem hints that a child gains access to these skills through dedicated copresence with elders while staying at home doing housework. Furthermore, the verb kyerε. translated here as “to teach,” means also “to show”; the verb sua, commonly translated as “to learn,” originally meant, “to imitate.”¹ Cultural education by elders in southern Ghana takes place through informal, daily interaction, emphasizing performance and activity through demonstration and imitation, rather than verbal instruction or inner awareness. This is knowledge how to rather than knowledge of. Thus, two systems of education exist side by side in southern Ghana; both an informal education connected to a gerontocratic social order, in which elders are the custodians of the most prestigious knowledge, and formal schooling linked to the rise of the modern nation-state, the training of experts (teachers), and the creation of a new elite. The history of schooling in Ghana has in some ways been about the relationship between these two realms of a child’s experience, with those concerned with schools and the state attempting at various times, sometimes simultaneously, to denigrate and appropriate the power associated with traditional social order and the education associated with it.

Wunni panyin a due ampa.

Mmerewatia ne nkwakorawa yi

Wone nkwadaa na edi afoofi.

Woyε akyerεkyerεfoɔ pa.

Woyerε kasa pa ne mpanyinsεm Tete mmofra nimdeε kwan so.

If you don’t have an elder, my condolences.

These old, old women and men,

It is they who stay home with the children.

They are good teachers.

They teach proper language and elders’ matters

and educate children to be knowledgeable

—Poetry recital from Kwawu South, Eastern Regional Cultural Competition, April 16, 1999 (translation by Mari Amoako and Cati Coe)