Their music is written down and played by orchestras. they work much harder than people of the poor countries… have orchestras and concert halls. Factors that make some countries rich are:…. Ghana belongs to the class of poor countries. There are the rich countries, the middle-income countries and the poor countries. The world is divided into three classes on the basis of income. In a 2009 social studies book designed for junior high students, Unit 1 – Our Culture, has a subsection entitled “why some societies develop faster:” In one multiple choice question, students are asked to identify “all the positive effects of colonialism except”: The Aki-Ola Series Millennium Edition 2 Social Studies textbook is a prime example. Wrote one Achimota alum,įrom first to last the book aims to prove two amazing facts: first, that the only place Africans, especially those living in West Africa, have occupied in history is that of slaves secondly, that Africans have never made any original contribution to world civilization (2008: 57).ĭespite such objections almost 90 years ago, such discourse remains prominent within Ghanaian social studies textbooks. The textbook became a point of contention for nationalists, who demanded it be removed from school curriculum. The book,Įntitled Africa before the White Man Came… function quite usefully to demonstrate British superiority and to convince Africans therefore of the benefits of British rule (2008: 56). Holsey points to a 1934 textbook used in one of Ghana’s elite colonial (and contemporary) schools, Achimota. Such discourses, of course, emanate from colonial times. schools and museums), and eventually become part of contemporary subjectivity specifically in regards to agriculture and development.
Motivated by anthropologists of Ghana such as Jemima Pierre and Bayo Holsey, I hope to use these curricula to demonstrate how colonial legacies are presented and circulated in institutional settings (e.g. Rather, I worried that such responses overlook opportunities to interrogate very real colonial legacies and formations.īy way of example, as part of my ongoing research on colonial legacies, agricultural modernization, and social movements in Ghana, I have been collecting Ghanaian public school textbooks. This isn’t because I think there is a case to be made for colonialism - I don’t.
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The kicker is the author’s call for re-colonization in some cases, and he cites Paul Romer’s charter cities as an example of how to do so (though outside the scope of this essay, charter cities - privately run cities - definitely deserve our attention).Īs I read the article and numerous responses to it, I became troubled by the swift, “of course colonialism isn’t good!” responses. The article, entitled The Case for Colonialism, argues that colonialism has (unjustifiably) gotten a bad name over the past century, and that there are in fact lessons are to be learned from colonial rule. Third World Quarterly recently published an article that sent academics and their networks - Twitter, listservs, etc - in to outrage.