During Ghana Month, as the country honors its rich cultural legacy, it is important to consider how music and dance education are being taught in our schools.
These colorful ways of expressing oneself have long been essential to Ghanaian identity, but in the educational system, they are being treated less and less as important subjects, more like afterthoughts.
This worrying trend of putting less emphasis on music and dance education runs the risk of eroding young people’s artistic inventiveness and sense of cultural identity.
Ghanaian traditions have always been closely entwined with music and dance, which are essential mediums for spiritual expression, community building, and storytelling. Our cultural history is alive and well in these art forms, from the rhythmic pounding of traditional drums to the elegant movements of Adowa and Kpanlogo dances. But music and dance education in our schools steadily fades into obscurity, despite its cultural significance.
Students in Primary 6 at Wajir Barracks “A” Basic School voiced concerns about the education of music and dance in an interview; however, there aren’t enough teachers to teach these subjects in the classroom.
The curriculum’s emphasis on academic subjects over the arts is one of the main causes of this decrease. Schools frequently devote more time and money to topics like math, science, and language arts that are seen to directly contribute to academic success because of the emphasis on exam-focused education.
As a result, dance and music are given little money and are restricted to extracurricular or optional activities.
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