Need for creative education in basic schools – Minister

PupilsMr Joseph Yamin, Deputy Minister of Youth and Sports, has stressed the need for a paradigm shift in the basic education curriculum to place emphasis on creativity development in the formative years of the child.

He said the curriculum should reflect the current global trends which focused on building creative educational content to inspire inventions rather than attainment of mere literacy culture fit only for examination purposes.

Mr Yamin said this at the launch of the Ghana-imaginative Creative Thinking (iCT) project and Basic School Motivational Series: Inventions and Good Habits, at the International Press Centre.

It was under the theme: Mentoring & Empowerment at the Basic Level of Education – A Critical Tool for Building the Next Generation of Thinkers.

The Ghana-iCT project is an initiative by the Sharper Generation Network (SGN), a Ghanaian-Based Personal Development Organization, with international affiliation, committed to the moral and intellectual mentoring of the youth at the basic level of education.

It aims at building the next generation of creative thinkers to invent solutions for national development, a statement issued by the SGN said.

The Deputy Minister explained that even though Ghana had made a quantum leap in literacy rates since independence, this had not reflected in the developmental needs of the people.

This was because the country’s education had placed emphasis on “literacy and numeracy where degrees and certificates appear to have more value than deeds and creative imagination”.

Mr Yamin said it was time policy makers in education shifted their focus and place much premium on creativity in the educational system to enable the youth to acquire skills that would make them more productive for the speedy development of the country.

He said the country would not develop in a way as expected if its educational system lacked the space for creative content to inspire inventions.

Mr Nyaaba-Aweeba Azongo, Country Director of SGN, said the Ghana- iCT was to inaugurate a nationwide road-show towards making imaginative creative thinking a major content and culture at the basic school level.

He said the basic education level constituted the formative age to foster creative imaginative attitudes as the benchmark of educational success.

Mr Ebenezer Agbettor, Executive Director of the Institute of Human Resource Management Practitioners, Ghana, lauded the initiative by the Sharper Generation Network and appealed to the Government and stakeholders to lend the needed support to the project to ensure its success.

Source: GNA

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