Saturday, September 14, 2013

History, Racism, White Privilege, Culture, Everything

My experiences in Ghana, more than any other experience in my life, have led me to intense reflections on the history of racism and on my experience of white privilege.  Certainly, I have read and thought about these things a great deal and have made them the focus of my studies and my teaching.  But this trip brought me experiences that confirmed and deepened my understanding.

I have wanted to write about this for many months, but I have hesitated, partly because my experience there was, in some ways, so bound up with Bonnee's that I am afraid I might misrepresent or seem to be speaking for her.



I will try my best not to do that.

I was blessed to be paired with Bonnee, and we have many things in common--both high school teachers in urban schools, both active in our teachers unions, both feminist, many shared ideas about the role of race and racism in the U.S., both with a history of working with people in prison, both with a particular sort of openness to the experiences we had in Ghana.

And there are big differences, as well--differences in religion, sexuality, and, most visibly to all those we met, race.  Our racial difference means that, despite our similarities in education and politics, our experiences vary widely.  The history of racism in the U.S. has constructed my life as one of privilege, and one of those privileges is that, unless I remain vigilant and work at it, I don't even have to be aware of my privilege.

Bonnee spoke eloquently to the students we met about how racism continues to shape her own experiences in the U.S.  At one point she told students that she often finds herself the only person of color in the room at conferences or other educational meetings.  Later, a student said something to me about how my experience in Ghana must be like the experiences Bonnee described, since I was the only white person at APGGS while we were there, and only saw other white people two or three times during our week in Takoradi.

No, I said, and thought, and have been thinking over and over ever since.  It is not the same.  My experience in my brief time in Ghana was filled with feelings of warmth and welcome and hospitality and respect.  And those are not the experiences Bonnee was describing to the students when she talked about being the only person of color in the room.

Even at times among TGC fellows, I heard this over-simplified parallel drawn; white people going to countries populated mainly by people of color is compared to the experiences of people of color in the U.S. But my experience in Ghana confirmed at a visceral level what I have known intellectually for so long: Racism is not about majority and minority. Racism is complex and insidious and systemic.  My white privilege is tenacious and portable; it crosses oceans and borders.

The institutional racism that leads to things like only one person of color being part of our 12-person TGC group in Ghana also shapes the experiences of that group and of those it encounters. TGC, and other programs dedicated to fostering global education among teachers, need to begin to include critical race theory and a basic understanding of white privilege in their core curriculum.


Language as Culture in Ghana, Part 2

I was not surprised, of course, when we arrived in Accra, to see that almost all media was in English:

But this was the case in all the parts of Ghana I visited, including areas where people speak almost exclusively in local languages:

In fact, I think that the only place I ever saw words printed in a language other than English (aside from names) was in my Fante language workbook.

Almost everywhere, however, Ghanaians spoke to one another in indigenous languages, unless the speech was part of a conversation that included us visitors.  And I did meet at least one person in Accra, the mother of a student Bonnee and I befriended in Takoradi, who did not speak English.

While we were in Takoradi, Bonnee and I received lessons in Fante, the dominant local language, almost every day.
Here we are with our Fante teacher, Mama Albs.  Alberta is one of the assistant headmistresses at APGSS, and she has taught Fante and other Ghanaian languages to Peace Corps volunteers and others.  She's a talented, warm and patient teacher!
Bonnee and I both worked hard to improve our Fante and to use it to greet people and ask basic questions while we were at APGSS.  Students and others were almost always surprised to hear us attempting the language.  I could produce peals of laughter by saying "mema wo ace" (good morning) to folks I encountered on campus or in town.  But there was appreciation there, too, and no derision. From conversations I had about this, I learned that the surprise and appreciation was partly because they didn't expect Americans to put effort into learning and speaking the language.  

But I also noticed that most of the students at APGSS spoke English to one another.  I imagine that some of this comes from the fact that these students grew up in different parts of the country and speak different local languages, but they all at least know some Twi and/or Fante.

Of course, I asked some students about their use of English versus local languages.  During the meeting we had with the editors of the school magazine, one student said, "my local language is my identity."  But another admitted that she didn't know any Ghanaian languages.  She grew up in Accra in a home where English was spoken, so English was her first language.  Her parents are Ewe and Twi and she can understand some things in those languages, but not speak, read, or write them.  There seemed to be some embarrassment on her part as she told us this; and there was some laughter among the other girls.  Even in this generation who went to primary school under the English-only educational policy, this lack of Ghanaian language seems to be seen as unusual and even a bit shameful.

Language as Culture in Ghana, Part 1

One of the most obvious ways that the indigenous cultures are preserved or expressed in Ghana is through the many, many languages that are spoken.  I found various numbers of languages listed in different sources.  Ekem told us more than 50, but in other sources I've seen 70 or even 80 listed.

The history of the state's treatment of these languages in education is fascinating.  Of course, the first schools in Ghana, begun by colonial powers and missionaries mainly to educate children of Europeans, delivered instruction in European languages.  Once England became the sole colonial power, the language of education became English.

This changed with Ghanaian independence in 1959.  Unlike the United States, where states and even local school districts have a lot of control over curriculum and educational policy, Ghanaian schools are governed by the national Ghanaian Educational Services (GES).  This centralized system has lots of implications that seem extraordinary to those of us teaching in the U.S.  For instance, teachers are assigned to their jobs by the GES at the federal level, so a new teacher may be assigned to a school at the other side of the country from where she lives.  Another reality of the centralized system is that new presidential administrations can bring about sweeping policy changes.  We saw that played out during our time in Ghana, when two classes of students--the third- and fourth-years--were preparing for the end of high school, because the new government of John Mahama had decided that secondary school should be three years and not four.

The status of indigenous languages in the schools has been determined by this federal control as well.
For many years after independence in 1959, Ghanaian schools educated the very young--Kindergarten through third graders--in their indigenous languages.  Children who had access to schools became literate in their home languages or in some related indigenous language before instruction was exclusively delivered in English beginning in the 4th grade.  This multi-lingual approach created a population of educated adults who were at least somewhat literate in two languages and who could speak multiple languages: their own indigenous language; Twi or Fante, two of the dominant indigenous languages; and English.

Then, in 2001, the government adopted an English-only policy for education and indigenous languages disappeared as languages of instruction in schools, officially at least. Ekem told us that there was already a generation gap appearing between older folks who were literate in local languages and younger folks who were only developing literacy in English.

Another switch occurred in 2007-08, when the federal pendulum swung back toward multi-lingualism.  Once again, the GES policy is that Kindergarteners through 3rd-graders learn in their local language and have English as one subject, then shift to English exclusively in the 4th grade.  Local languages continue to be a required subject through junior secondary school and an elective subject in high school. Study of an indigenous language is required of university students.

BUT the GES only recognizes 11 local languages when there are many more in Ghana, so this still means that there's some homogenization of language going on through schooling.  In addition, there are problems finding enough teachers in some local languages.  Theoretically, though, the GES has returned to the research-supported policy of establishing literacy in a student's indigenous language before introducing instruction in English.

These are the policies and some of the history.  In my next post, I'll share some of my admittedly limited observations about how this linguistic diversity plays out in Ghana.
In this school timetable from Katapor Junior High School in the Central Region, you can see both local languages ("Ghan. Lang") and English ("Eng Lang") as subjects the students study each week. French is also on the schedule as a third language--there's a push to learn French since almost all of the countries bordering Ghana are French-speaking.
 All the other courses--science, social studies, etc., are taught in English.