Ghana Today: Challenges of a Developing Nation
Shawn Townes, Ph.D.
Communication Studies
Foothill College
I would like to express my sincere thanks for the substantial financial support granted me by the Ping Fellowship which enabled me to participate in the CIEE Faculty Seminar “Ghana Today: Challenges of a Developing Nation.” The seminar was an invaluable experience that has prepared me in a number of ways to perform tasks within my college community in order to meet our goal of “Excellence through Inclusion.” Although our college has run a number of successful campus abroad programs to Europe, Asia, and South America for the past twenty years, the continent of Africa has, unfortunately, been largely ignored. Having an academic background and teaching experience in Cultural Theory and Communication Studies, I was given the charge to build campus abroad programs to Africa, to develop and lead the first program to Ghana in 2008, to explore student/faculty exchange program opportunities with African Universities, and to develop curriculum to support these programs.
The ability to travel to Ghana and immerse myself in the culture most definitely increased my knowledge base, which up to that point had only been obtained through reading about the country’s history, culture and people. I returned exhilarated by the experience and am not only able to bring fresh perspectives to the classes that I currently teach but the knowledge gained has unquestionably prepared me to lead the Ghana Campus Abroad Program in August 2008. The familiarization of regional areas, visits to significant cultural sites, and the lectures provided by university faculty and CIEE’s seminar leader will greatly inform the planning and procedural issues relating to our campus abroad. Additionally, the experience allowed me to see firsthand the similarity in challenges faced by Ghanaian society and the African-American community. Issues such as “brain-drain,” the HIV-AIDS epidemic, and unemployment, crime, and family instability were examined. These issues are currently addressed in my existing courses (Intercultural Communication and Gender Communication) but now having studied how Ghanaian society is grappling with the same maladies I am better able to draw a comparative analysis which is essential to accomplishing a major goal of the program for 2008, to help students see themselves reflected through the “Other.”
The ability to meet and converse with Ghanaian faculty and administrators was tremendously helpful in initiating contact and beginning discussions about the possibility for a student/faculty exchange program between our college and the University of Accra. From my initial connections made at the university, a relationship has been established between administrators from both colleges and our Vice President of Student Development and Instruction will be accompanying our group in August 2008 with the specific purpose of advancing the discussion and finalizing details to bring our plans to fruition.
Realizing that such a venture can only be successful if there is curriculum in place to support such efforts, I am currently developing three courses “African Diaspora,” “Africa: Global Connections,” and “Ebonics: The Racial Politics of Language.” Dr. Michael Williams’ (CIEE seminar leader) lecture on the African Diaspora augmented my research on the ways in which Africans, though dispersed and scattered, have managed to retain their traditions and fuse their identities in a new world. His critical analysis of elements of African history and culture, such as, forced and voluntary migration, religion, language, folklore and the examination of the similar experience(s) of African peoples throughout the world was one the most the powerful lectures offered. It helped me to understand the importance of a holistic approach to this topic.
Examining African contributions and exports to the world, such as agricultural products, minerals and other material goods, as well as knowledge and cultural expressions is the focus of “Africa: Global Connections” course. Though trade interaction has also allowed African societies to benefit from imports from the outside world, such as information and other technologies the course will examine imbalanced trade agreements, which create and sustained poverty in many countries. A special emphasis will be given to Africa's contributions to and trade with North America. Additionally, media representations and stereotypes of Africa will be discussed, as well as the popular images of Africa held by Americans that are based on stereotypes, which offer fragmented, often inaccurate images of Africa. The curriculum, will purposefully confront stereotypes and misrepresentations of Africa that are popularly held by many Americans and others throughout the world. The concept and development for this course was greatly influenced by the lectures given at the University of Accra.
In the course “Ebonics: The Racial Politics of Language” I highlight the African roots of African American speech and its connections with languages spoken elsewhere in the Black Diaspora. In addition to Ebonics having been profoundly influenced by African languages, this course will address how it has also undergone the kinds of simplification and mixture associated with Creole formation in the Caribbean and elsewhere. The evolution of this distinctive language variety and how thoroughly it is intertwined with African American history and linked in many ways with African American literature, education, and social life will be examined. Many laypersons and academics, black and white, regard it as a sign of limited education or sophistication, as a legacy of slavery or an impediment to socioeconomic mobility. The course explores the validity of such arguments but will also extend the discussion to the politics involved in speaking Ebonics and consequences of using a “contrastive analysis” method, which involves drawing students’ attention to similarities and differences between Ebonics and Standard English.
Without the assistance of the Ping Fellowship it would have been extremely difficult for me to attend the CIEE seminar and to make the advances that I have in terms of building campus abroad programs to Africa, developing our first program to Ghana, exploring opportunities for student/faculty exchange programs with African Universities, and developing curriculum to support these programs. So, it is with my sincerest gratitude that I write this report and hope that I will be considered for future fellowships from the Ping Fellowship Program, as my work has only just begun.