International Journal of Children's Spirituality

ISSN: 1364-436X (Print) 1469-8455 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cijc20

Spirituality in African Education: Issues,

contentions and contestations from a Ghanaian
case study

George J. Sefa Dei

To cite this article: George J. Sefa Dei (2002) Spirituality in African Education: Issues, contentions
and contestations from a Ghanaian case study, International Journal of Children's Spirituality, 7:1,
37-56, DOI: 10.1080/13644360220117596

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13644360220117596

Published online: 21 Jul 2010.

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International Journal of Children’s Spirituality,
Vol. 7, No. 1, 2002

Spirituality in African Education: issues,

contentions and contestations from a
Ghanaian case study
GEORGE J. SEFA DEI
Department of Sociology and Equity Studies, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
of the University of Toronto (OISE/UT), 252 Bloor Street West, 12th Floor, Toronto,
Ontario M5S 1V6, Canada. E-mail: gdei@oise.utoronto.ca

ABSTRACT This article explores Ghanaian educators’ and students’ understandings of

spirituality and its role and implications in education. Using a Ghanaian case study of two
selected school sites, the article addresses local conceptions and responses to educational
reform initiatives and the speciŽ c implications of spirituality and values in education. In
particular, the article examines how students and teachers employ local meanings of self,
personhood, and the individual identiŽ cations with the group/collective to promote learning
and teaching. Attention is paid to understanding what it means to teach and learn culture,
history, and spirituality within a holistic paradigm. The article also highlights contestations
in educators’ and students’ views regarding the place of spiritual and religious values in the
educational system. It is argued that educational change will emerge from understandings
of the goal and purpose of education as pursued through educators’ and students’ teaching
and learning practices.

Introduction
For some time now, education in Africa has been a subject matter of intense
scholarly research. Published works have emerged from diverse theoretical positions,
drawing attention to the challenge of educational reforms and educational change.
Pioneering literature on knowledge production in African schooling focused on
educational transfers from the north to the south and the effects of producing an
African elite alienated from the rural masses (see Carnoy, 1974; Altbach & Kelly,
1984; Mazrui, 1975). These works were seminal in the discussion of the impact of
colonial education and the creation of African servitude. Early approaches to
‘promote education’ in Africa did not simply negate African peoples’cultural, politi-
cal, economic, emotional and spiritual conditionalities with projects of so-called
‘neutral/objective’ educational practices. It privileged Eurocentric paradigms over
indigenous ways of knowing. Today, relations of power and dependency are still
maintained in knowledge production in and about Africa. African-centred

ISSN 1364-436X print; 1469-8455 online/02/010037-20 Ó 2002 Taylor & Francis Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/13644360220117596
38 G. J. S. Dei

approaches to understanding educational issues are Ž ercely resisted in the academy

and other institutions involved in the dominant production of knowledge. Often-
times, the linkage between education and development is theoretically assumed. But
the universal deŽ nitions of these terms, of the parameters of the relationship and of
the practical and policy implications of this connection have not always been fully
understood.
In rethinking African education, critical scholarship must begin to focus on some
fundamental questions regarding local conceptions of schooling. For example, how
do local understandings of self, culture, society, and nature inform schooling
processes (i.e. administration, teaching and learning)? How are the connections
between personhood, culture, the environment and learning understood? What is
the place of the individual learner in the school, in the community? What particular
identities and representations inform local educational experiences? How do differ-
ences and contestations regarding the self/other and individual/community and in
turn regarding the morality, ethics and values of the individual and of the com-
munity inform local educational practice? Critical educational research and scholar-
ship can and should offer new knowledges in the search to address the concrete
needs of policy-makers, teachers, students, parents and local communities engaged
in genuine social transformation. Educational policies and practices must be shaped
by paradigms and theories that connect the lived experiences and world-views of
local peoples.
SpeciŽ cally, this article presents the view that critical scholarship cannot continue
to pursue an approach to educational reform that privileges the cultivation of an
abstracted intellectual mind and sees human abilities as outside the spiritual and
emotional considerations of the learner. Every person, every learner is a spiritual
being. This spiritual essence motivates and provides meaning and hope for learning.
Spirituality is about building and rebuilding the human spirit to embrace gentleness,
humility, and compassion in learning about ourselves and others. It is about a
powerful force beyond the immediate and more physically observable culture, one
which directs social action beyond the perspective of human control in terms of that
which can be counted, measured, evaluated and physically grasped. It is about the
individual identifying with what is the source of (universal) meaning in human
existence while acknowledging the diversity ‘that expresses that universality in many
different ways’ (Miller, 1999, p. 2). Spirituality is a search to understand with a
consciousness of the self, of personhood and the social values that connects the
individual to the group, to the community. It speaks to the interconnections of body,
mind and soul. Spirituality in education connects learners ‘to each other as human
beings, to the earth and to the whole cosmos’, and the learner shares the experience
of ‘being in community and being in relationship to other people’ (Miller, 1999,
p. 4). Spiritual education problematizes ‘rugged individualism’ and extreme compe-
tition propelled by greed that encourages the individual to disassociate the self from
the collective. It should be reiterated that in discussing spirituality, crucial questions
about power and power relations cannot be effaced. It is indeed problematic to
follow the liberal conception of spirituality and healing that separates the spiritual
from the political and economic effects and forces of society. In fact, within an
 Spirituality in African Education 39

anti-colonial perspective, the material and non-material are inseparable. Thus, a

dichotomization of the material from the spiritual is questionable. In discussing
spirituality, the material world must be seen as interconnected with the spiritual/
non-material existence (see also Batacharya, 2000).
Some emerging concerns about modern schooling have focused on the system’s
inability to serve the spiritual enfoldment of the learner. It has become clear that
schools as institutions that re ect modernist views of development are not healthy
sustainable communities, nor do they prepare students to become citizens of
sustainable communities locally and globally. For some educators and community
workers, these criticisms have translated into calls to re-centre spirituality into
education. Schooling in a highly individualistic and competitive society has validated
certain ways of knowing and knowledge forms, thereby, exacerbating a social
hierarchy of knowledge. This is not intended to deny the existence of norms and
values that may shape the spiritual knowings of communities. Spiritual knowledge is
not value-free. In afŽ rming the place of African spirituality, the critical educator
must be aware of these contestations. Merit and competition are not ‘absent’ in
communities that integrate spirituality in their everyday lives. For example, it could
be argued that in some cases, a ‘community ethic’ that insists on conformity and
harmony also engenders fear and sti es creative ideas. Nonetheless, what is being
stressed here is that in modern ‘Western’ based schooling, knowing subjects have
been and continue to be separated from each other. Rather than present new and
creative ideas, competition (Palmer, 1999, p. 2) has actually fostered a culture of
fear and a complacency not to deviate radically from status quo knowledge. In
competitive, ‘merit-based’ systems, schools create ‘losers’ and ‘winners’. To rupture
the sorting and hierarchical practices of schools, education must connect be the
learner as a whole person to her/his community. Education must afŽ rm spirituality.
In fact, spirituality has always been an integral part of the identity of the person
and the collective. Throughout the years, spirituality has in uenced educational
change in many indigenous cultures that have developed an ‘inherent respect for
things spiritual’ (Palmer, 1999, p. 1). Education has not primarily been about
seeking information or satisfying the temporal dictates of the job market/economy.
It has been about healing, creating a wholeness of being and the continuation for
future generations. Bringing spirituality into education challenges modernist projects
as well as the excesses and vagaries of post-modern cultures which have served to
uproot the learner from a spiritual base. Palmer (1999, p. 3) also notes that
spirituality has always been about liberation, empowerment, compassion, resistance,
and ‘reclaiming the vitality of life’. What is considered sacred is what is spiritual. It
is the inner knowing and power that lie at the heart of learning and teaching. In
connecting the sacred and the secular (tangible and outer) the individual engages
‘social reality’, as both a material reality and a metaphysical realm.
Drawing on the political and spiritual principles of locating the self in relation to
the social project, of grounding education (learning and teaching) to African peoples
ways of knowing and being in the world and of consciously seeking to connect the
spiritual, the theoretical and the material, in the next sections I will brie y locate my
academic and political project, describe the historical/political context in which this
40 G. J. S. Dei

study on Ghanaian education today was located and the research approach taken.
This will then be followed by theoretical and historical frameworks/lens used to
analyse and write the subsequent section on the narratives.

Political and Academic Project

How much of spirituality is a part of ‘knowing’ in our academies (schools, colleges
and universities)? In posing this question I implicate myself. I write from a position
in the academy and must acknowledge my privileged status. Being critically engaged
in re ective practice includes admitting one’s complicity in maintaining the domi-
nant and colonizing knowledge. However, one cannot allow self-critique to paralyse
a political engagement to transform dominant relations. In this way, I cannot
perceive my project as one of only uncovering the ‘problem of [my individual]
attitude rather than of institutionalized inequities in economic, political, and social
power’ (Armour, 1993, p. 1). The deconstruction of individualize d manifestations of
colonialisms and imperialisms would not be sufŽ cient to produce a systemic shift in
the balance of power. Working within the academy, we often hierarchically position
ourselves as the only subjects capable of ‘theorizing’. We name other experiences and
knowledges as unsubstantiated by formal research, as untheoretical. This process
often invalidates them. Armour and others have recognized the importance of
decentring the (privileged) individual from analysis to listen to and be informed by
the voices of ‘those deemed our others’ (Armour, 1993, p. 1), but also to consider
the political/social implications of these voices in systematically organized relations
of power/difference.
My political project in this article, then, is to mediate from my position of privilege
toward a consideration of spirituality as a grounded solid knowledge base present
through diverse, local voices that can challenge and rethink conventional processes
of schooling and education. I argue that it is through a deŽ nition of spiritual bonding
that youth learn about the connections of the self to the other. Spiritual ways of
knowing have implications for rethinking African education. Within Africa today,
critical educators are teaching youth to be spiritually informed, to think of them-
selves as Africans and as global citizens. Learning proceeds through the development
of the African self and identity. Critical teaching allows the learner to stake out a
position as African, one that is outside of the identity that has been, and continues
to be, constructed within the Euro-American ideology. Education in Africa today is
challenging the historical denial of African spirituality. A number of African educa-
tors are speaking of the integration and synthesis of different and multiple knowledge
(see Dei et al., 2000). Their teaching practices therefore draw on local/indigenous
knowledge, their understandings of the connection between body, mind and soul,
and the awakening of a spiritual consciousness of one’s self, of individual person-
hood, and of the group/community to effect transformative pedagogies.
Africa is seen as an important knowledge base with possibilities in the search for
genuine local educational and development options within communities, nations,
and for the continent. A major challenge facing contemporary education is the
reconciliation of the ‘secular’ and the ‘sacred’. Rather than shy away from spiritual
 Spirituality in African Education 41

dimensions of learning, educational practices may reconcile mainstream secularity

with individual and community understandings of spirituality. An argument may be
advanced that speciŽ c educational initiatives should ask learners to situate spiritual
knowledge in everyday practices and to relate common-sense knowledge to school-
ing. Local knowledge references the norms, values, and the social, mental and
spiritual constructs which guide and regulate a people’s way of living and making
sense of their world. Embedded in such knowledge are theoretical and practical
conceptions of what schooling should be and what it means to engage the self and
collective in meaningful political action for educational change (see also Dei, 2001).
Education that espouses excluding the spiritual, the moral, the emotional limits itself
to the material. This negates our humanity. It negates human agency. Regardless of
whether an individual or group belongs to a community of a particular faith or a
more secular community with particular values, there is no question that human
beings understand the world and act within it from positions that are informed not
solely through that which is objective and material. How we understand, learn and
draw on these ways of knowing and being in the world is critical to the processes of
education for different people, different places and different times.

Current Socio-political Context: educational reforms

Through the years, as with most countries, Ghana has struggled with the task of
providing education to suit the social development needs of its local populations.
The discussion in this article stems from a more comprehensive study on the
educational reforms of the 1980s and 1990s in Ghana. Although it is beyond the
scope of this paper to discuss the history of reforms (Dei, 1993), it is important to
brie y contextualize them.
In the early 1970s, the Dzobo Committee proposed curricular changes with a
focus on ‘practical activities and the acquisition of manual skills, the development of
qualities of leadership, self-reliance and creativity through the promotion of physical
education, sports, cultural and youth programs, as well as the study of indigenous
languages, science and mathematics’ (Ministry of Education, 1974, p. 1). In 1987,
the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) authorized the changes. The
adjustments began to be implemented. Evaluation in 1994 of the academic perform-
ance of the Ž rst graduates of this reformed educational system was represented as a
crisis in education. As a result, the Education Reform Review Committee (ERRC)
was appointed to overhaul the system packaged as ‘improved educational reform’ for
the 1990s. Under the ERRC’s recommendations, the Ministry incorporated
signiŽ cant changes, including a new emphasis on pre-university/college, religious/
cultural values education, life skills and the teaching of additional local Ghanaian
languages and cultures.
The educational reforms of the 1980s and 1990s were institutionalized as part of
the structural adjustment programmes mandated by ‘foreign aid’ agencies (World
Bank, IMF). The new school curricula emphasized the development of skills
oriented toward addressing social and economic development needs. Funding was
redirected toward supporting more universal access to and improvement of primary
42 G. J. S. Dei

and junior education. There was an emphasis on an economically streamlined

system with a reduction in the number of years of pre-university schooling to
compensate for the increased resources to basic early education. With this added
focus, primary enrolments increased by 31% between 1987 and 1994. Between
1987 and 1990, Ghana’s national budget also increased by 38%. To create/address
a 148% increase in enrolment from 1987 to 1997 at the basic educational level, the
1995/1996 budget was augmented by over 700% from that of the 1994/1995 year
(Nyalemegbe, 1997, p. 7). However, the Ž gures do not clarify what percentage of
the budget increase actually went to education. This is salient given the well-known
shortages of textbooks, school equipment and other supplies, and the reduction in
expenditure on staff and staff training. The increased enrolment and the working
conditions of teachers present a threat to the noble efforts of a few teachers to centre
African knowledges and spirituality in educational change and ‘reforms’.
The reforms called for greater accountability to taxpayers, parents and students.
Community members and private businesses became more involved in the design
and implementation of cost-effective initiatives. With the emphasis on structural
adjustment, the State reduced expenditures on stafŽ ng, textbooks and other while
also advocating human capacity building and social development. The shortages
created a need for greater collaboration with the local community. This advent
legitimated the active participation of local community groups in transforming of
educational processes to correspond with everyday life in African contexts.
The active involvement of the community and business people in local schools
may well have affected the increases in student numbers and the re-orientation of
education. Hence, in the Ghanaian schooling context, the possible disjuncture
between the ‘legitimation of participation’ and the ‘reality of participation’ cannot be
simply glossed over or dismissed. The processes of educational transformation
revealed in a particular case study may not always correspond to everyday life in the
larger Ghanaian contexts. However, my academic and political project in this article,
and particularly the adoption of an anti-colonial framework allows me to focus on
the possibilities for educational change that the lessons from a local case study offers.

The Case Study and Research Methodology

The research was conducted in Ghana in the 1997–1998 school year. The objective
was to examine local responses to the educational reforms implemented since the
1980s. A review of published literature on educational change in African was
conducted along with observations of school and classroom practices. But given its
focus, the study primarily involved interviews conducted between July and October
1997 with students, school administrators, teachers and parents about the educa-
tional reform initiatives. It was an in-depth ethnographic study of two school sites
and local communities. One of the schools selected was a Senior Secondary School
(SSS), whose graduates move on to post-secondary education (training colleges or
university). The other was a Teacher Training College. It was chosen because it is
a primary institution in the country for training teachers in the vocational and
 Spirituality in African Education 43

technical courses of the Junior Secondary School (JSS) programme established

under the initial reforms of the mid 1980s.
At each site 30 male and female students of different ages, home backgrounds
(ethnicity, language, religious afŽ liation) and courses of study were selected with the
assistance of school staff. Twenty-Ž ve parents and 28 educators (teachers, adminis-
trators, and teacher training faculty) were also interviewed. The educators and
parents included participants re ective of differences (gender, ethnicity, language,
religion, subjects taught). Through in-depth interviews, interviewees were asked for
their views on the continuing school reform initiatives, on the connections of these
initiatives to national development, and on their expectations regarding the search
for genuine educational options in Africa.
Elsewhere (Dei, 1999, 2000) I have presented the participants’ responses to the
on going reforms within the context of the objectives of the study as a whole. This
text focuses speciŽ cally on how student’ and educator’ narratives speak to questions
about spiritual knowing and the embedding of spirituality in African education. In
exploring the narrative responses, I have paid attention to the participants’ under-
standings of holistic education, school success, integration of language and culture,
the interconnections of religion and spirituality, and how this (indigenous/local)
knowledge promotes learning. Given the historical political legacy of colonialism in
the structuring of the civic institutions of the State (i.e. education), I view the
discussion of spirituality in this study from the perspective of reclaiming, retrieving,
and integrating African ways of knowing, speaking and being with a community of
people in a place.

Theoretical Lens/Discursive Framework

I utilize an anti-colonial framework to examine the role of spirituality in Ghanaian
and African education. The anti-colonial discourse theorizes colonial and re-colonial
relations and the implications of imperial structures on the processes of knowledge
production and validation, the understanding of indigeneity, and the pursuit of
agency, resistance and subjective politics. This perspective is useful in interrogating
the conŽ gurations of power embedded in ideas, cultures and histories of knowledge
production and use (see Fanon, 1963, Memmi, 1969, Foucault, 1980). Within an
anti-colonial framework, understanding educational change begins by questioning
institutionalized power, privilege, and the accompanying rationale for the dominant
production of what is considered ‘legitimate’ knowledge. This approach draws on a
critical analysis of the structures for teaching, learning and the administration of
education in schools.
The anti-colonial framework acknowledges the role of schools in producing and
privileging different knowledge forms. It acknowledges the urgency for creating
educational systems that confront the challenge of social diversity by being more
inclusive and better able to respond to varied local concerns about formal schooling.
In interrogating educational reforms an anti-colonial approach problematizes the
marginalization of certain voices and ideas in schools, speciŽ cally the de-legitimation
of the knowledge and experience of subordinate groups. This framework views
44 G. J. S. Dei

schools as one of the institutional structures sanctioned by society and the State to
serve the material, political and ideological interests of the social and economic
groups that have greater in uence in shaping the State/society. Thus, strategies
designed to respond to issues of schooling should address the processes of knowl-
edge (in)validatio n and the afŽ rmation of particular social, cultural, mental and
spiritual constructs of peoples.
An anti-colonial framework is well suited to question the essentialization of
norms, values and social constructs, and how these also shape indigenous knowledge
and spiritual knowing in African societies. Local/indigenous knowledge is neither
neutral, innocent nor apolitical knowledge. They are constructed within certain
socio-political-economic contexts. To inculcate indigenous knowledge and African
spirituality in learners, we need an anti-colonial framework to extract and critically
understand these internal contestations and contradictions, and to extract and
critically understand how colonialism is domesticated for certain political economic
agendas. An anti-colonial framework can offer a more nuanced and critical direction
with regard to the use of spirituality and community building for educational
enhancement.
Thus, an anti-colonial approach works with local/indigenous knowledge as a
strategic base from which to rupture the conventional processes of schooling. The
approach examines the notion of ‘indigenous’ as marked by the absence of colonial
imposition. ‘Colonial’ is understood not only in the sense of foreign, but also as
imposed and dominating. Indigenous knowledge arises from long-term occupancy of
a place (Fals-Borda, 1980; Fals-Borda & Rahman, 1991; Warren et al., 1995). As
Roberts (1998) recently argued, indigenous knowledge is ‘… accumulated by a
group of people, not necessarily indigenous, who by centuries of unbroken residence
develop an in-depth understanding of their particular place in their particular world’
(Roberts, 1998, p. 59). It is local knowledge unique to a given culture or society. It
re ects the common-sense ideas and cultural resources of a people concerning
everyday living. It is knowledge referring to those whose authority resides in origin,
place, history and ancestry. Notions of origin, ancestry, place and history help deŽ ne
a people’s spirituality. Such conceptualization of indigenous knowledge has some
notes worthy of attention. It highlights the falsity of positing an ‘indigenous’/West-
ern science dichotomy (see Jegede, 1997, for a discussion of the indissociability of
science and cultural contexts). Knowledge is operationalized differently given local
histories, environments and contexts. The insidious idea of reserving attributes to
Indigenous (pristine, metaphysical) and Western knowledge (modern, physical)
should be critiqued in those who fail to understand the collaborative dimension of
knowledge.
The anti-colonial framework allows for a critique of colonial education and the
implications of having colonial remnants in the current reforms. The framework
allows us to understand how these (colonial remnants) are being challenged,
reproduced, or transformed. In interrogating the current educational reforms, it is
important to examine the historical establishment of education systems in colonized
Ghana: how it was delivered, who taught, who attended, where schools were
located. Answers to these and other questions reveal a strong connection to the
 Spirituality in African Education 45

historical context of the current reforms (e.g. defence of boarding/residential

schools, rising cost of education, non-use of local languages etc.). It is also important
to examine how schools dealt with issues of spirituality and multi-faiths, including
assumptions around separating religion and spirituality from State funded schooling.
These are being struggled through from the very material problem of delivering
universal education to all Ghanaian children and from contestations around spiritual
and religious values in education as it pertains to how we come to know and
understand the objective and communal world in which we live.

Religion and Spirituality in the Context of Colonial Education: historical overview

Historically, colonial religious institutions assisted in delivering education in Ghana.
The spread of Christianity and colonialism went hand-in-hand in Africa. Education
was a clear example (see Quist, 1994). The work of the early missionaries in
establishing boarding/residential schools to further the missionary project of Chris-
tianity is well known. Missionary schools followed the pattern for other schools set
up by colonial authorities. Teaching Christian ethics and moral values was a major
component of school curricula (see Hastings, 1999). English was the sole language
of instruction. Boarding/residential schools were concentrated in the southern
coastal parts of the country. Students in missionary schools (like their colonial
government funded schools) studied away from their homes. In large part, if not, all
the teachers of the missionary schools and their students were members of the
afŽ liated church. Religion was seen as a powerful source/medium for the spiritual
development of the learner.
To administer education more affordably, governments (colonial and African)
through the years entered into partnerships with religious institutions to extend
schooling to a broad sector of the population separate of religious afŽ liation. With
time there have been efforts to include different practices of worship within public
schools. Consequently, tensions between the supposedly ‘sacred’ and ‘secular’
institutions have emerged. In Ghana, as elsewhere in the Continent, the partnership
with religious institutions has colonized African spiritual traditions in very real ways.
This has not been without resistance and without African peoples’ appropriating and
making these religions their own as well. Also, within different religious structures,
there are ways in which people voice a spirituality that goes beyond imposed
structures and reaches out to other spiritual expressions across religions. Some of
these can be seen in the ways in which a common sense of community and values
are expressed within, outside and around speciŽ c religious faiths. It is in this vein
that ideas about African spirituality must be understood. Even when the current
research study did not address the issue of spirituality directly or in any systemic
way, aspects of spirituality and spiritual education, nevertheless, emerged indirectly
from other entry points (e.g. in their meanings of schooling and social difference, on
the importance of self, group, community and cultural and religious identities).
Discussions on spirituality emerged in a context of how differences of ethnicity,
class, gender, religion, language can be/are addressed. For some students, spiritual-
ity was understood primarily from a religious perspective; how students of different
46 G. J. S. Dei

faiths Ž nd a voice of difference in the school. Such interpretations are accurate

conceptions of the link between religion and education in Ghana. However, they
demonstrate a gap in examining spirituality from a different perspective. Within a
broad and more critical view of spirituality outside of religion, there is a spirituality
that comes from the ways people live in communities across these differences.

Narratives
Religion and Spiritual Grounding: accommodation or imposition?
Because for many spirituality and religion are powerfully connected, a discussion on
spirituality in Ghanaian schools necessarily evokes religion. While this text distin-
guishes between religion and spirituality, some Ghanaian students and educators,
particularly those in mission schools, did not. In general, educators and students had
differing views on the role of religion in schools. There were contestations around
spiritual and religious values and how they should be taken up or (not) in different
schooling contexts. Otambo,[1] a Religion and Life Studies instructor in the SSS
level, acknowledged that differences exist in schools along spiritual, religious, ethnic
and cultural lines. When asked if schooling practices take these differences into
account, he was quick to note that in the case of religion and spirituality:

Yes, because in terms of religion we have Muslims, we have people

practising traditional religions. We don’t force them to accept one religion.
We give them an open forum. For example, religious/moral education,
when we teach about the concept of God, we say this is what the Muslims
call Allah. The traditionalists say the Supreme Being, but he is the one and
only person … We talk about the good values in all religions. They are to
pick. When it comes to the dialect [language] aspect, when teaching
children certain examples, we use English. Then we say, this is what the
Akans say, [for those] who speak Ga, [we ask]: How do you call that person
in your language? We cater to all languages. (11 August 1997)

Otambo accepted the multiplicity of faiths and how spiritual values helped the
learner develop an identity and a personhood. A second-year SSS student, Ayena,
also noted that the school acknowledged diverse cultures and practices of the various
religions. She asserted that each student was encouraged to afŽ rm her/his spiritual
and religious experiences as an important knowledge base in the learner’s develop-
ment. In her view, there was institutional support for all students to develop their
culture, broadly deŽ ned. She added; ‘you see, [in] this school, they [students]
normally converge here, share ideas too, all sort of things … are organized in this
school’ (7 October 1997). Her classmate, Hana, also saw accommodation:

[I]f you take a classroom, after Mosque and then on Friday they also go
and worship so they don’t discriminate between any religion. You go to
your church all right and in the evening all of us go for church service
together. (7 October 1997)
 Spirituality in African Education 47

In varied ways, Otambo, Agyena and Hana also allude to another way difference
must be understood. It is the hierarchy of difference within schools and how these
differences shape educational experiences. The last line in Hana’s quote reveals a
subtext that discloses a difference between rhetoric and reality. Accepting a multi-
plicity of faiths may not necessarily eliminate the presence of silences within schools.
While in theory a school may uphold the rights of multi-faiths, the practice may be
different in terms of what is privileged with resources, space and ofŽ cial legitimation
of school practice. I see this as the challenge of contestation that points to the
practical undertaking of the abstract understanding of spirituality.
This challenge comes out clearly when another student presents opposing views
on how multi-faiths are engaged in the school. Rather than dismiss the potential of
engaging multi-faiths for the enhancement of learning, we must seek to interrogate
how the rhetoric of holistic/spiritual learning is borne out by the educational
experiences of all students. It is through these different, often competing and
contradictory voices that we can carve out genuine educational alternatives/options.
Ohemaa, a non-Adventist, Ž nds the discipline severe and the standards high at the
teacher training college where she teaches. She critiques what she sees as religious
imposition and discrimination. Asked how the school addresses differences, she
observes:

… In my view, it is an Adventist institution so they tend to use their

doctrine [to] dominate. Although every two weeks they allow students to
go to town and have their own church activities, I don’t think they really
consider the differences. When you come here, for instance, you are not
supposed to put on earrings and other things. But at home people put on
all sorts of those things when you come here you have to go the Adventist
way; that’s how I see it. (20 August 1997)

To Ohemaa the ‘imposition’ of a particular set of values presents a challenge to the

freedom of self-expression. She credits the school’s academic success to the disci-
pline maintained through the values of the faith. Yet she critiques the restriction of
personal and cultural identity.
Kidi, a student in the same institution, shares Ohemaa’s concern on the impo-
sition of religious and spiritual values:

The school should be free. There shouldn’t be an Adventist thing. They

should allow every denomination to exist in the school. If you are
Methodist or Catholic they should allow us to have a way of worshipping
God. We should be treated fairly and equally. Attendance should be free
not compulsory. (19 August 1997)

Kidi and Ohemaa speak of freedom of religious expression which they found lacking
in their school. However, other colleagues disagreed. Boatemaa chose the college
because, she said, it was near her hometown. In responding to some students’
critiques of religious practices being ‘imposed’, she forcefully expressed her views,
conceding she was of the Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) faith.
48 G. J. S. Dei

I think that they are wrong, because as a human being you have to combine
everything with God. So if you study and God doesn’t help you, it is going
to be fruitless. So they have combined the studies, so that after getting the
physical aspect you are getting the spiritual aspect as well. (20 August
1997)

But educator Koto, who teaches physical education in the same institution, is
adamant about the place of religion in schools. He believes that religious beliefs
should be private and not forced on to others ‘… because the school is a government
school it is not a Church school’ (12 August 1997).
These narratives point to a legitimate reason for disassociating the teaching of
spirituality from religious denominations. What is taken as ‘sacred’ maintains its
efŽ cacy through a personal negotiation of the self and one’s identity. Identity is
linked powerfully to schooling and knowledge production. Educators and students
of the SDA faith produce particular knowledge which afŽ rm their religion and its
beliefs. They attribute school success to its grounding in spiritual and religious
values. Within schools, the sacred can be the connecting link that holds fragmented
parts together. The sacred can be important in helping to understand otherness as
source of richness and as the site of an interdependent sense of community.
However, the sacred cannot be institutionalized or imposed through the political
system of power, otherwise it loses the respect and humility attached to it and the
power to connect individuals to a community. Palmer (1999) points out that
‘distortion happens when the sacred [is] vested in an institutional context or
framework’ (p. 9). The respectfulness and humility of the educator are crucial in
transforming knowing, teaching and learning. Such characteristics are the corner-
stone of developing the educational values of community. Humility makes teaching
and learning possible by respecting the knowledge, ideas and contributions of others
(see also Palmer, 1999). When the sacred is imposed, it does not allow the self to
know, learn and teach from within. When the sacred is imposed through a power
relation, the learner cannot recover the sense of community with others. The learner
may not easily connect with the subject of study and the self who is teaching. Every
learner, educator has a soul—the driving force of human action. The effective
educator develops a sensitivity to the ways the body, mind and soul unfold within
the learner to create a strong community relationship. Critical teaching allows the
educator to transform the learning and teaching process and to see the learner as a
resisting, active being.

Holistic Education and Success

Miller (1999, p. 3) presents the view that the individual is ‘a complex existential
entity made up of many, many layers of meaning’. This complexity marks the
uniqueness of being. Holistic education stresses the complex, multiplicated and
differentiated self as a whole being, pointing to the cultural, political, emotional and
spiritual implications of this knowledge for schooling. It is a humanizing education
which empowers the learner to fulŽ l her/his responsibilities to a larger citizenry, such
 Spirituality in African Education 49

as confronting and resisting oppressions and social injustices in many forms. Holistic
education cultivates meaningful relationships. Students and educators can dialogue,
connect and mutually create meanings and interpretations about their worlds
(Miller, 1989, 1997, 1999). As Groome (1999) also notes, holistic education
engages individuals as whole beings to learn, teach, think and act critically for
themselves and their communities. Spiritual learning as a form of holistic education
integrates and synthesizes that which is ‘sacred’ and the ‘secular’ (see also Shepard,
1988) to constitute material and emotional success.
In discussing what it means to promote learning, educators and students integrate
views about academic and social success. Arts educator, Mina, sees academic and
vocational pursuits as constituting part of what can be broadly understood as a
holistic view of student success:
Success is not deŽ ned simply in academic sense. Not everybody can be
successful by the academic. Someone who has extra curricular activities
can be successful. Some students who like the skills aspect will be success-
ful through the vocational aspect. Success is not determined solely by the
academic. (18 September 1997)
Skills are not simply what one knows but how one applies what one learns. When
probed Mina adds the social dimensions of school success, tying the learner to the
broader community:
The social aspect of success should be classiŽ ed as well because sociability
should be achieved by everybody so that he will be able to … contribute to
society. If a child doesn’t achieve the social aspect, I think the society has
lost. (18 September 1997)
Otambo also places educational success within the wider community context:
Educational success is measured after schooling, when the child is able to
use what he learned to Ž nd what he needs to do to Ž t in a society, make
a living. It doesn’t matter if he has a high qualiŽ cation or not. If he is able
to make ends meet, that means she has been successful. (11 August 1997)
Mina and Otambo offer a challenge to how educational ‘success’ is understood in
contemporary society. In their extended narratives they lament the fact that school
success is measured in purely material and human capital terms without any
corresponding obligations to people in communities. They argue that academic
achievement must be read in social terms as beneŽ ting both the individual learner
and society at large. Success must be relevant to the individual (in terms of
self-actualization) and to the group/community (social responsibility of citizenship).
There is a powerful spiritual domain in holistic educational processes. For
example, helping learners formulate a sense of self, collectivity, and a consciousness
of being in a place (see also Shields, 1999). Students and educators use the spiritual
understanding of personhood as an entry point to teaching and learning. They
engage knowledge production through an understanding of the self, spiritually,
emotionally, materially and politically. Classroom teachings stress the society, cul-
50 G. J. S. Dei

ture and nature nexus and the need to cultivate peaceful co-existence. Learning
happens across differences. Group-focused teaching and learning emphasizes indi-
vidual creativity, resourcefulness and collective empowerment. It encourages diver-
gent and multiple thoughts and ideas. The evocation of the ‘spiritual’ in education
also has implications for understanding power, authority and respect in student–
teacher relations. Collective and collaborative learning allows the student to display
dependence, interdependence and independence simultaneously (see also Hoffman,
1999, 1995). The teacher’s authority is enhanced when the learner understands
without the exercise of authority to maintain compliance.

Language and Culture Integration

At the time of the study, Odom was nearing completion of his teacher training
programme. He sees the importance of language, history and culture for effective
schooling:
Language and culture is, let me say, equal in a sense that language teaches
us our norms and laws. Our culture too teaches us some of our traditional
norms. Then our laws let us know more about the future. Because what
happens in the future in our culture, we say that this is what our forefathers
did when they were there. At times a man or woman may speak to someone
using proverbs and we see that they actually know the language very well.
And if we want to know something about that, we may ask the elder
person, what is the meaning of this? Then, that man or woman will teach
the meaning of that proverb. It will guide you in your life. Yes culture and
language at times go together. As we said, history, also teaches your origin.
Where you came from. Your forefathers, even my father has done that.
One time he called us and told us how we came to stay in a particular town.
The way we moved to this town. What happened. So history will tell you
what happened in past years and how your community came about. (9
October 1997)
Local languages for Odom are critical in the transmission of cultural norms and
values. Proverbs carry powerful meanings and through their use knowledge of a
community’s history and social existence is shared. Onipa, a student in the Ž nal year
of her SSS, is encouraged that students are learning about ‘history, culture, cultural
studies’ at the JSS level:
To learn about our culture is very important. It helps us to know things
about our tribes. I learned culture to know the importance of festivals. And
it teaches those of us who aren’t from a tribe the way they eat, the way they
dress and other things. It led me to appreciate it. So I think it’s important
to learn culture. (21 September 1997)
The reference to festivals is about cultural activities carrying the social, economic,
political and spiritual symbols of community life. In learning of local cultures she has
come to ‘know about music, how you play, how you sing music to a person who is
 Spirituality in African Education 51

dead, when a baby is born at a party or other thing.’ To learn of the past, to
understand oneself in society, is to study one’s culture/s.
In the olden days I was not there. I was not born when he was living and
other things even those who are not in Ghana. Those who have died.
Through history I’ve learned that. I know what they did to help the
economy of Ghana. (21 September 1997)
Learning culture acknowledges the spiritual connection between the living and the
dead. This is an important link revered in local cultures. The dead person does not
sever her/his ties with the living. The dead watch over the living by constantly
providing knowledge, guidance, and protection. The respect for elders is important
as the older generation is known to possess spiritual and ancestral knowledge by
their ‘approximation’ to the dead and the world of spirits. This is why gerontocracy
is a very prominent aspect of Ghanaian cultures.
To know one’s culture is to be spiritually informed. For the educator, this spiritual
grounding is an important communicative tool. To Onipa, to know culture is to
study history. It teaches continuity and foregrounds the totality of people’s lived
experiences. It is about learning one’s history in which the learner is the subject and
can make connections with past experiences. She/he is centred in the learning
process and reads the world through her/his eyes. Teaching about African history
means centring the African experience, identity and human condition. Thus, it is the
reorientation of what is contained in learning a ‘history’ that is signiŽ cant. Some
Ghanaian educators emphasized these aspects of local culture, history, language and
what they mean for the learner to develop spiritually. This is grounded pedagogy
which assists students in remaining focused and connected to their education.

Conclusion
This article explored new concepts and theories on the nature of Ghanaian edu-
cation and perhaps the direction it needs to go if it is to be rooted in and be relevant
to the specific circumstances of the continent. It addressed how local understandings
of spirituality, self, community and knowledge are employed for learning and
teaching. It calls for the pursuit of a holistic, spiritually centred educational system.
Situated within a critique of colonial education, the article suggests paying attention
to educational options that utilize local cultures, histories, knowledge about self and
indigeneity. It argues for spirituality to be included in the educational processes of
Ghanaian schools, while addressing issues and contestations of spiritual knowing.
Ghanaians today are struggling with the issue of ‘relevant’ education that prepares
students for employment and to become contributing citizens of the local com-
munity and the nation with understandings of its histories, languages, cultures, and
values. They simultaneously yearn for an education that prepares students for the
local and international economy and for the social needs of the individual and the
community. Developing educational systems that address the local and global
economic needs of students and communities and guides students in becoming
adults, who respect their ancestral heritage, others in the present and who are
52 G. J. S. Dei

cognizant of their role in maintaining and preparing the ground for future genera-
tions, is a daunting challenge.
The discussion on spirituality and Ghanaian education shows some of the ten-
sions and contestations around the direction of education that must be addressed.
For example, what do we make of the participants’ comments about spiritual and
cultural learning in schools, and the harsh critique of the imposition of religious and
spiritual values in school? How do we affirm spiritual knowledge for cultural and
personal identity and at the same time acknowledge the alternative critique of
hegemonizing particular religious and cultural identities in schools? What comes
across is a recognition of the value of learning about local differences in order to
participate in communities as a resident, a worker and a child with roots to a
people’s multi-layered historical and cultural heritage. And within the narratives of
the larger study there emerges the articulation of a need for a national struggle, for
a national identity that is strong in its knowledge of the past, allows a people to come
together to speak as a community against its colonial past, and further affirms an
‘authentic’ need to develop the local political economy (Dei, 1999, 2000, 2001).
This article follows the analyses in Tobin (1992) and Hoffman (1999) in positing
that rather than downplaying individuality, effective educational practice should
seek to develop and connect dimensions of the self and the collective. Spirituality
supplies the context of meaning for society and regulates the thought and behaviour
of individuals in everyday life. Learning and teaching must generate relevant
knowledge for collective resuscitation, spiritual rebirth and cultural renewal of all
learners. Independent thinking and action, while emerging from an understanding of
the self, nevertheless, is rooted in a shared sense of belonging to a larger collective.
Schools cannot dismiss the importance of ‘spiritual’ knowledge in the development
of personhood. In spiritual education, teaching and learning are geared towards the
cultivation of the inner level of self and of social responsibility. This does not mean
that individualis m and individuality is lost within the group social context. There is
a degree of both individuality and individualis m (Hoffman, 1999) within Ghanaian
traditional teaching. Individuality is seen as the affirmation of uniqueness/distinc-
tiveness. Individualism is the competitive spirit that seeks to avoid the collective
perceiving the groups as a threat to individual survival, and accomplishment. If it
harnesses individual creativity and resourcefulness for collective use, individualism is
not a detriment. It becomes a problem if it ascribes knowledge to individual acumen
and negates the degree of dependence and interdependence in knowledge pro-
duction.
The maintenance of the bind between self and other, and individual and group,
is significant in the teachings about social relations in African contexts. For example,
African spirituality embraces the ‘complementarity aspect of the male–female rela-
tionship or the nature of feminine and masculine in all forms of life, which is
understood as nonhierarchical’ (Dove, 1998, p. 522). In other words, every life form
or knowledge exists as indispensable pairs. The self is connected with the other,
inner with outer, individual with group, subject with object, reason with emotion,
culture with nature, mind with body, and the abstract with the concrete. To posit
 Spirituality in African Education 53

these as distinct from each other is to show the ‘ahistoricity of all such dichotomies’
(Harding, 1998, p. 385). There are no neat distinctions in life.
Like history and culture, space and location, are significant to the African spiritual
sense of self. African spirituality defines the ‘space’ as both geographic, connected
and sacred. Land, as a physical space, is embedded with metaphysical meanings that
are sacred and spiritual. Land is knowledge, not a mere possession. It is key to
human survival. Land and people are inseparable. In broaching the wider theoretical
implications of this article one needs to be aware of the problems of ‘abstract
universalism’. That construct often results in ‘decontextualized learning’ and ‘con-
sensualism’ which can downplay the importance of specific local situations, experi-
ences, histories, cultures and identities in the learning process and may not
acknowledge conflict, tensions and ambiguities in claiming a role for spirituality in
education (see also Hatcher, 1998, in a different context).
The intellectual engagement of spirituality and African education leads me to
argue that Africans, to paraphrase Ifi Amadiume (1989), need new terms of
reference to speak about our identities, histories and social existence. The African
spiritual identity, like all forms of identity, is embedded in and constituted by
particular social practices and ideologies. Resisting imposed identity in the African
sense is a politics to construct an Africanness which is outside of that identity which
continues to be constructed within Euro-American ideology (see also Muteshi,
1996). That is, the capacity to project oneself into one’s own experience, culture and
history instead of continuing to live on borrowed, external terms (Mazama, 1998).
From the narratives in the study, the possibility of analysing a broad view of a
grounded local spirituality has been attempted. Areas for pursuing and asking
different questions that focus on values and ways of living on a land and with each
other were identified. The theoretical discussion on spirituality requires that we ask
deeper questions of the interconnection between spirituality, nature, and the institu-
tions of schooling and religion. For example, how do we, as African peoples, engage
our institutional structures to better reflect the spiritual ways a community of people
live with each other in a given place and time? From the perspective of established
religions, some key questions that emerged are: What did the advent of these
religions do to local spiritual and educational practices? Which were silenced and
which have influenced established institutions (church, State, schools). Which are
strongly reflected in how local Africans practice spirituality in their different reli-
gions? And within given communities with different faith groups, what common
spiritual values and expressions do they share across their differences that are
connected to the place and to their local traditions? How can educators tap this in
the search for genuine educational options for Africa?
The future of education in Ghana, as in Africa, must move beyond the fetters of
an externally-imposed and sanctioned agenda to one defined in relation to locally
relevant and meaningful visions of the equilibrium between change and historicity.
As Ghanaian education addresses indigeneity through ongoing implementation of
State reforms, striving for equitable access and inclusive social participation, edu-
cation must validate not only diverse human resource knowledge bases as productive
54 G. J. S. Dei

agents of change, but must rehumanize knowledge production and human ‘capital’
in spiritual, ancestrally-linked terms negotiated on local terms.
Education is about our humanity. Spiritual knowing has an important place in
contemporary education, knowledge and science. The question of science, spirit and
religion are old dialogues. Spirituality and the conflict with religions and histories are
all part of the dialogue in the science of knowing. Sometimes, I have wondered if the
discussion on separating church and State means separating church, spirit and the
‘body politics’ of knowledge. Culture, history and origin emphasize the uniqueness.
Yet, we need to escape the quagmire of relativism by acknowledging that individual
ideas about spiritual knowledge, values and ethics while located in place and within
historically specific contexts, can still be shared with others. Writing on African
womanism, Dove (1998) points out that the diversity in peoples of African descent
does not preclude sameness, ‘there is a belief that we, despite our different experi-
ences, are linked to our African cultural memory and spirituality and may at any
time become conscious of its significance to our Africanness and future’ (p. 516).

Acknowledgements
This paper was presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational
Research Association (AERA) in New Orleans, 24–28 April 2000. I am grateful to
Dr Margarida Aguiar and Christine Connelly at the Ontario Institute for Studies in
Education of the University of Toronto (OISE/UT) for reading and commenting on
a working copy of the paper. Thanks go to Olga Williams of OISE/UT for her
editorial assistance. I am also grateful to the anonymous reviewers of the journal for
their constructive comments. I acknowledge the assistance of Ernest Dei of OISE/
UT, Messrs Ferdinand Otigbo, Dickson K. Darko, K. Baah and Kofi Adu-
Amankwah, all of Ghana, who served as graduate research assistants during my
fieldwork. Funding for my study leave project in Ghana was provided by the
Spencer Foundation, US, and also the Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council of Canada (SSHRC) through the OISE/UT Small Scale pool.

Note
[1] All names used in the text are pseudonyms.

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