Matthew Nyaaba, an educator and former Lecturer at Tamale’s University of Development Studies, has emphasised the importance of Ghana developing its own curriculum at all levels of education.
He argued that this would expedite our country’s growth.
He warned that adopting or adhering to foreign curriculums will not help Ghana achieve its objectives due to the varying environment and issues in their respective countries.
An educational curriculum, he posited, must meet the desires, aspirations, and needs of every country, hence the need for us to invest in
it if we want to develop at a faster pace.
He claimed that a curriculum includes several aims, objectives, or developmental orientations for teaching and learning.
It also symbolises our goal of acquiring knowledge, skills, attitudes, and the necessary competencies for the country’s development, which should be based on societal ideas and conceptions, as well as its requirements and culture.
In an interview on Frontline on Rainbow Radio 87.5FM, he emphasized the importance of a homegrown curriculum that includes identifying necessary human and physical resources to meet training objectives and train individuals capable of managing the country’s affairs.
Ghana’s refusal to design a homegrown curriculum is attributed to the complexity involved, but the positive impact on education is unmeasurable if a country can do so, he said.
“We need to develop our own curriculum. On paper, our current curriculum is good and widely approved, yet it does not guarantee our country’s success. Adopting a curriculum designed by another country does not ensure its success in Ghana because it worked for them. For example, if Singapore designed a curriculum that worked for them, it would not guarantee an automatic success for Ghana because our concerns and challenges are different.
We need a homegrown curriculum, but designing it is difficult, which is why Ghana has refused to do it. This is why Ghana is always sourcing from other countries. Homegrown curriculum is tough to design, but once completed, your nation’s advancement is rapid.”
If you are designing an agricultural curriculum, for example, you will take into account our weather patterns as well as the crops that survive in Ghana. You don’t waste time developing a curriculum around crops that won’t grow in Ghana. Our language should also enable us design our own curriculum. We must concentrate on indigenous knowledge and develop our curriculum in our languages.
He said that it should not be done exclusively in English, but we should keep our languages in mind when developing our curriculum.
By: Rainbowradioonline.com/Ghana
