Terry Bright Ofosu, a lecturer at the Department of Dance Studies at the University of Ghana, has bemoaned the lack of teachers and teaching aids for creative arts subjects at the basic school level.
According to him, although Creative Arts and Basic Design and Technology are taught at the basic school level, there are challenges.
He told Kwame Dadzie on Joy FM’s Showbiz A-Z on September 23, 2023 that these hiccups are militating against the preservation and promotion of our arts forms.
“Not until recently when we were tasked to look into the educational in the basic and senior high school, kindergarten, that we introduced the teaching of the arts. Performing arts, creative arts and design were put together as one that should be taught from kindergarten all the way. We’ve done that but it is not fully implemented because there is lack of teachers to do that at that level, so all the teachers have to do is to make do with what they have, the little knowledge they have in the arts to try and teach that and the books too are not ready yet.
We are going through a system where we are trying to change that but it is very difficult trying to implement this. Because within like an hour or 40 minutes you have to be able to teach dance, music, drama, visual arts and design. Within 40 minutes. That is the period for teaching. How is this going to work?,” he said.
Terry Bright Ofosu made the comment while discussing ways to preserve and promote Ghanaian traditional dance forms.
He added that another way of making the preservation possible is to have proper recordings of Ghana’s indigenous dances.
In the meantime, a policy framework is in the works by the Creative Arts Agency to establish a creative arts curriculum for Ghana’s education sector.
The Creative Arts education policy framework is intended to make students think in creative ways from the basic level to the tertiary and will equip students with creative skills for solving issues.
On April 14, 2022, at one of the meetings by the Creative Arts Education Committee, the Chief Executive Officer of the Creative Arts Agency, Gyankroma Akufo-Addo, tasked the committee to come up with a proposed bill on arts education.
“I’m hoping that we have some sort of a proposed bill before the end of the year to be implemented,” she said.
Currently, Creative Arts is taught as a subject at the primary school level, while pupils in the junior high school study Basic Design and Technology.
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