Ama Ata Aidoo’s daughter, Kinna Likimani, says Ghana’s education system stifles creative thinking.
The Mbaasem Foundation Programmes Officer told XYZ Breakfast Show Host Nana Kwaku Agyeman on Friday that: “Our education system kills our creativity”.
Mbaasem Foundation, an NGO established by Ama Ata Aidoo, one of Africa’s renowned female writers, aims to promote and help develop women’s literary art.
According to Likimani, “…when we talk about not achieving, not being assertive, not being creative, a lot of that is rooted in how we are educated. And our education system actually lowers our creativity”.
She bemoaned the situation where “children are not inspired to continue to be children”, when they start schooling.
“We don’t use the stages at which a child develops to teach them things. A lot of the stuff is through what we call ‘chew and pour’ [and] ‘true and false’. We like the old mode of education where people actually memorise as opposed to understanding the concept and applying, so a lot of our exams are based on ‘have you memorised this theorem?’”
She said: “What we can’t do is, we can’t look at our University graduates, wake up one day and go: ‘These are not the graduates we want’. We need to start from early childhood development, Likimani observed.