These are not stories. They are bricks that scaffold knowledge/history — and what you should know?
On Ghana’s Independence Day, a photo of my father (with glasses) who was one of several Ghanaians who came to the UK through scholarships provided by the newly elected government of Kwame Nkrumah.
In the UK he would, alongside other Africans and Caribbeans, face immeasurable challenges and racism. That reception was exasperatedly told in Oscar winning filmmaker Steve McQueen’s ‘Small Axe’ series on BBC.
In the 70s at a time when the British educational system for Black children in the UK was in serious decline my father many years later would return to Ghana with my siblings and I.
I would be sent to a school Prempeh College and that’s where this story starts. But why would a story about a school be important?
Well, for one this school is symbol of education in Ghana.
History is written by victors and losers, but unfortunately losers rarely get to tell their stories. Hence we know of British bastions of education, because they’ve been lauded over by writer after writer.
And here is a school modelled on a combination of features from the West and Ghana, which requires telling.
In 2020/ 2019 its students won the world robotics championship beating S.Korea, Hong Kong, the US and UK. Fancy that!
The school was set up by one of Ghana’s most powerful figures Otumfuo Nana Sir Osei Tutu Agyeman Prempeh II, KBE. He was assisted by Reverend Pearson.
It’s produced a spectrum of world leaders and the current President of Ghana had this to say a couple of months ago
The hope is to turn this into a cinema documentary. I specialise in a story form called Cinema Journalism.
Last year we located some rare footage shot 20 years ago which a global archive body deemed historically important in a competition against several production companies.
Read more here https://lnkd.in/dhEW6FV
#students #education #school #leaders
