Polishing the pearls of indigenous knowledge for inclusive social education in Ghana

Abstract

The goal of my paper is to argue for the need to polish the pearls of Akan indigenous wisdom as creative cultural eclecticism to constitute a theoretical base for destabilising cultural imperialism and ontological individualism in favour of inclusive social education. Since the sixteenth century, European expansion to the rest of the world, particularly, Africa has imposed an European single narrative on Africans. This is to the extent that, as a result of the colonialization of Africa, western cultural values have been homogenised and hegemonized as a template for the rest of the world. Consequently, the cultural uniqueness of different African societies has been marginalised – leading to the imposition of a western education system that undermines indigenous knowledge systems of Africa for collective living. And as part of the western dualization of time into “modernity” and “tradition”, African cultures have been profiled as “tradition” and concurrently relegated to the background. Through the deployment of the Akan historical philosophy “Tete wo bi kyere” and “Sankofa” as creative cultural eclecticism given Ghana's cultural pluralism, my paper provides a theoretical foundation for the need to integrate the Akan indigenous values of inclusiveness to foster inclusive social education. I argue that theory is as important as practice and activism in re-imaging social justice education that upsets neoliberal individualism embedded in western education.