Education and Social Change in Ghana

Book excerpt: First published in 1998. As the first of the newly independent nations of Africa, Ghana has received fulsome attention from scholars in many fields. In this intensive case study on educational development by two principal considerations. The documentary materials relating to the earlier history of the Gold Coast and adjacent areas were unusually extensive and well organized. Ghana now possesses the most elaborated school system in sub-Saharan Africa. But the expansion of this system has given rise to many perplexing problems and revealed many unexpected consequences, and the author suggests that similar experiences will be the lot of many other countries, even outside Africa. So this is not just study of Ghanaian education alone but a case study wherein some of the basic processes underlying educational growth in states newly emerging from colonial rule are delineated.This is Volume III of eighteen in a series on the Sociology of Development. Originally published in 1965. As the first of the newly independent nations of Africa, Ghana has received fulsome attention from scholars in many fields. In this intensive case study on educational development by two principal considerations. The documentary materials relating to the earlier history of the Gold Coast and adjacent areas were unusually extensive and well organized. Ghana now possesses the most elaborated school system in sub-Saharan Africa. But the expansion of this system has given rise to many perplexing problems and revealed many unexpected consequences, and the author suggests that similar experiences will be the lot of many other countries, even outside Africa. So this is not just study of Ghanaian education alone but a case study wherein some of the basic processes underlying educational growth in states newly emerging from colonial rule are delineated.