1. The social base of Ghanaian education: is it still broadening?
- Author
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Bibby, John
- Subjects
EDUCATION ,EQUALITY ,SOCIOLOGISTS ,SOCIAL stratification ,SOCIAL structure ,CLASS society - Abstract
In education, as in other respects, Ghana's position has been a lodestar from which other emerging nations chart their course. This pioneer status has attracted many eminent scholars to scrutinize the system at close quarters, and to examine the origins of Ghanaian students. Thus, within three years of the University of Ghana's inception Gustav Jahoda found that 66 per cent of its students came from the top 7 per cent of the working population, while farmers and manual workers were poorly represented. Subsequent scholars have reached similar results, although some have preferred to emphasize long-term trend toward a student body more representative of the population as a whole. Unfortunately, such optimism proves to have been somewhat premature. The debate has also illuminated the variety of interpretations of social stratification. Sociologists take the observed, inequality of life chances as axiomatic evidence of the existence of class differences. They replied that class has a psychological as well as a structural connotation, and he suggests that relative consensus over the value of education itself indicates the classlessness of Ghanaian society.
- Published
- 1973
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