Post/Colonial Ghana, elites, and education

Thesis

This dissertation critically examines how colonial missionary education in Ghana has shaped its students’ life chances and attitudes, and subsequent international schooling choices for their own children. Despite regaining independence from colonial rule in 1957, with a campaign born of the Pan-Africanism movement, Ghana’s elites are still looking to the West to educate their children; with ‘Britishness’ continuing to play a central role in the acquisition and maintenance of elite status in postcolonial Ghana. Through interviewing elite Ghanaians who were educated by the Scottish missionaries in the two decades post-independence; the children of missionary educated parents, whose primary and/or secondary education took place in the UK; and a retired university expert on the Scottish Presbyterian Church in Ghana, this dissertation reveals how social class reproduction in Ghana is both a complex and multifaceted process involving the intersection between class and race. Through applying a ‘postcolonial constructivist’ methodology (Adem, 2021), and by theoretically engaging with both Bourdieu’s (1984) ‘theory of practice’ and Fanon’s (1967) ‘thesis on whiteness’, this dissertation confirms much of postcolonial analysis, and is indicative of the broader asymmetrical power relations that exist between Africa and the West. That is, that the legacy of colonialism, and missionary education more specifically, has upheld the British as the main purveyors of elite identity is postcolonial Ghana. As a result, and regardless of current governmental efforts to encourage the diaspora to return, if this ‘colonial inheritance’ continues to cast a shadow over Ghana’s own indigenous heritage, then the country may potentially be deprived of some of its own skilled human capital, that is so necessary for both its economic and social development.

Authors: Seagrim, O

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-dxo8jmaq8
• Type of award: MSc taught course
• Level of award: Masters
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: post-colonial; CIE; Ghana; interviews; education; CIE2022; religion; elites; colonial
• Subjects: Religion; Education; Interviews; Postcolonialism