Science education for developing districts; Local content for project- based teaching and learning

In the thick of India’s independence struggle in the 1940s, Mahatma Gandhi (1869 – 1948), adopted a most dramatic tactic. He got his fellow Indians to remove their European coats and trousers and toss them into a heap, which was then set ablaze. The bonfire was a symbolic gesture crafted to set India on a course to grow her own cotton, weave her own textiles, and wear - with pride - her own “homespun” fabrics.  

The posturing was intended to be dramatic to fit the colonial context for the “Quit India” movement Gandhi led. His strategic purpose was to liberate the sub-continent from foreign bondage. 

[India’s “homespun” idiom is, more or less, the metaphoric cousin of Ghana’s “domestication” and “Operation Feed Yourself”, all aimed at home grown solutions].

Invited finally by the British to England to discuss India’s independence, Gandhi used the occasion to level with the workers in the textile factories in Manchester. He assured them that his method wasn’t targeted at their exports of clothes and fabrics to India, but that the Indian masses needed jobs through the growth of their own textile industries. Following from that symbolic gesture, India has today arrived to become a world economic power deserving a permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council. 

Going forward, there’s a pertinent lesson for Ghana in the 21st century: How can a nation in the fertile tropics ever become economically independent if she neglects to produce her own cotton for textiles for clothing and furnishings, or refuse to grow her own food to feed a population of some 25 million people?

Self sufficiency

The quest for self-sufficiency ruled my thoughts when I visited the Northern Region to do a Pre-Service Teacher Training for a skills training institute at Nalerigu, in the Mamprusi district. My feelings were enhanced by two reflections: One, Abraham Maslow’s “Theory of Human Motivation” which identified the most basic human needs - food, clothing, and shelter; and Two, Lee Kwan Yew’s observation in Ghana in 1964 when he visited as a Prime Minister of Singapore. Yew came looking for inspiration and/or partnership with the newly independent African nation, but he left disappointed. He wondered how a country so blessed with great agricultural potentials should have “its brightest and best do Classics – Latin and Greek!”

What Yew meant, in essence, was that to perceive maize as mere corn - or rice as just plain rice – or cotton as just fluff, is shortsighted. Those food items happen to be valuable commercial inputs traded on international Commodity Exchanges. Such critical products need to be appreciated as strategic agricultural inputs for bona fide industries with value added, economic, and social benefits for any nation. In a nutshell, agriculture or agri-business needs to be scaled up way beyond the miniscule hoe and cutlass mindsets. It’s time to see the bigger picture, and not miss the forest for the hoes.  

How unimaginative it is for a country crying out for jobs and employment to continue importing corn flakes, canned corn, flour, biscuits, sugar, rice, canned tomatoes, tropical juices, chicken, canned beef and the rest! It makes no sense at all considering that serious nations grow food even in the deserts.

Global market place

As the prospects in the global marketplace evolve and grow, it is prudent that governments prepare their citizens for the future by mapping out educational outcomes to basic workforce competencies. The slant for the academics alone is not only shortsighted but promotes poverty; other hands-on skills and competencies for producing bona fide products are critical for a nation’s survival and prosperity. 

In a presentation I designed for the Parliamentary Select Committee on Education for the “Education Strategic Plan 2010 – 2020” at Koforidua (11th and 12th May 2013), I stressed to the MPs assembled that all districts were not endowed the same way; and so one size of science education did not fit all. In the Mamprusi District, for example, cotton, shea-butter, and various fruits grow naturally, and they need to be incorporated as science projects to support students’ enlightenment in the area as a prelude to bona fide agricultural inputs for scaled industries.

My other observations in the regions suggested that school projects in each district must be promoted and tailored to fit its local contents. Cottage industries, for one, start with local content. In the Savelugu / Nanton District, rice cultivation in the Nabogu Valley should feature strongly as science projects for the youth there.

The North and South Nkwanta Districts must stress yams and legume production. In the Shamaa District - and other districts by water bodies - Tilapia and other fish farms should feature there. In the Asante Akim South various vegetables and horticulture projects will be useful. 

Comparative advantage

Those are just samplers for starters, but at the end of the day, the districts themselves must be in much better positions to identify their comparative advantages and peculiarities and focus their energies and intelligence there. 

Integrated science projects are already recommended in the Ministry of Education / GES syllabus. It’s time to make sense of education by walking the talk in the curriculum, but the lassitude of “NATO” (No Applications, Theories Only) must be gotten rid of, and teachers trained for this critical purpose of hands-on science education.

Curricular objectives must sync basic academics with economic related functional science activities. The convergence of science education and hands-on meaningful applications is needed to enrich each district in Ghana to reduce the poverty and curb the drifts of frustrated youths to the overcrowded city centres.

Email: anishaffar@gmail.com