From proselytization to democratization: Tracing the footprints of religion in Ghanaian Basic School Curriculum

The history of education in Ghana cannot be narrated without recourse to engaging the role of religion in both policy and curriculum practice. After decades of Religious Education (RE) in the basic school curriculum this chapter attempts an introspection that traces RE’s footprints in curriculum history, assessing religion’s survival as curriculum content through various curriculum reforms to the present. I draw on Michael Apple’s politics of official knowledge to theoretically filter significant episodes, while highlighting the role of missions, whose vociferous agitations have created a socio-cultural capital for religion as a learning area in the curriculum. Writing from a qualitative research paradigm, the chapter is composed out of prior studies that relied on interviews, focus groups, and document analysis to generate data. Discourse, content, and thematic analysis of data was done to arrive at findings that point to religion as a contested learning area in the curriculum. Significant milestones of religion in the school curriculum from the origins of Castle schools, through education reforms in 1961, 1987, 2002 and 2019 are highlighted. These milestones have altogether catapulted the gradual transmogrification of the purpose religious studies from single-faith proselytization agenda to multi-faith RE focused on global citizenship education. Besides this retrospective overview, the question of how the study of religion should be positioned in the 21st Century of decreasing spiritual and religious thoughts, crowns this chapter. I argue that a lot more opportunities exist in civic education if RE can be attuned to the needs and interests of the contemporary child.