Education

In the traditional societies of Ghana education was informal and was carried out by the community as a whole, with the child’s own family playing the most important role. It was, in fact, identical with the process of socialization by which the culture of the society was passed on to the young generation. In such relatively homogeneous, slowly changing societies such a system was adequate to meet the needs of the society. Consequently, when the first European type schools were introduced to West Africa there was no popular demand for their services. The chequered history of the early schools clearly demonstrates this, and the only schools to achieve any degree of success were those which catered largely for the inhabitants of the coastal castle-towns. The slow growth of the early schools and the closing of many of them soon after their foundation are usually explained in terms of the financial and health problems which were encountered. The main factor in their failure, however, was that the African population was not interested in them. Once this lack of interest was overcome the other factors melted into relative insignificance. Moreover, the interest of the local population in formal schools was not gained until social and economic changes had occurred which made the old type of education inadequate. As Philip Foster states in his pioneering study of education in Ghana, ‘in the initial stages there is no demand for education unless significant changes have already taken place in the traditional structures’. 2 In the case of Ghana the significant changes in the social structure which led to a situation conducive to the growth of specialized educational institutions were brought about in the first place by the presence in the coastal towns of increasing numbers of European traders. During the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the coastal peoples gradually became more and more involved in trade with the Europeans. With the increase in trade, urban areas began to grow and a comparatively rich group arose, a group which owed its wealth and position, not to the traditional society, but to trade. It was these merchants who were the first to see the advantages of the Western type of education. Some of them sent their children to Europe to obtain such an education, but increasingly they sought educational opportunities locally.