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Forum to improve history education held

More than 80 scholars, researchers and university administrators have met in Accra and Elmina to discuss ways of improving history education on the continent.

The gathering offered participants, who were from across Africa, the African Diaspora, Europe and North America, an opportunity to reflect on the challenges faced by history education stakeholders and leaders of academic programmes of higher educational institutions, as part of efforts to enhance the paedagogical use of the General History for Africa (PUGHA).

 

The participants, who included vice-chancellors and presidents of universities, heads of academic programmes and history departments, deans of social and human science institutes, history teachers and history teacher trainers, converged in Ghana to revise the concepts, paradigms and categorisations used in the social and human sciences in Africa. 

The purpose of the regional conference was to discuss ways and means by which the General History for Africa (GHA) could be promoted and its teaching harmonised in higher education institutions.

Participants, who also considered ways of improving the availability and the dissemination of volumes of the GHA publications in a three-point recommendation, resolved to improve and intensify the teaching of History in schools using pedagogical material extracted from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) GHA volumes.

In 2009, at the request of the African Union, reflected in the decision of Heads of State, UNESCO undertook the second phase of the General History for Africa (GHA), designed to make the publications widely available and accessible across the entire educational system on the continent, beginning with institutions of higher learning.

The Chief of History and Memory for Dialogue at UNESCO, Mr Ali Moussa Iye, said the conference was a success because participants promised to reinforce and harmonise the teaching of the GHA in higher educational institutions; to integrate the GHA in the training courses for teachers and, to improve the availability and accessibility of the GHA publications in schools.

The Minister of Education and Chairperson of the Ghana National Commission for UNESCO, Professor Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang, said if we expected those who were victims of the misconception of African history to shift the Eurocentric paradigm of African history, “a whole  lot of education needs to occur.”

 She expressed the hope that the GHA publications would find their way into all schools in the country and that teachers would use them as a tool for teaching African history.

The Minister of Tourism, Culture and Creative Arts, Ms Elizabeth Ofosu-Agyare, received a complete set of the eight volumes of the General History of Africa, donated to the Government of Ghana by UNESCO’s Deputy Director General, Mr Getachew Engida.   

Daily Graphic/Ghana

A version of this article appears in print on November 7, 2013, on page 36  of the Daily Graphic with the headline: Forum to improve history education held 

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