Research on the practice of massaging the head of a baby with hot water and ointments in Ghana. By Dzamesi Yael (Ph.D. in Science Education)
Learning impairments
In Ghana, there is a low academic performance which is attributed to the widespread method of learning by reciting, which is also called rote learning. Rote learning does not give understanding, and it results in poor problem-solving abilities. This is mainly reflected in poor performance in math and science questions in examinations. Instead of rote learning, meaningful learning which promotes understanding should be used to improve academic performance. When using meaningful learning, certain cognitive abilities such as attention and reasoning skills, are used in the process of understanding. Yael Dzamesi setup a school, Creative Foundation School, to practice meaningful learning. However, she found impairments in the cognitive abilities of the children, which hindered their ability to learn meaningfully. These impairments are suspected to be associated with the hot water treatment that the children had undergone as babies.
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Rote learning is responsible for low academic performance.
Ghana has come a long way in the quality of its education system, yet the performance in the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) remains poor. As reported in an article published on July 14, 2018 under the title “EDUCATION MINISTRY TO INVESTIGATE ‘POOR’ 2018 WASSCE RESULTS FOR MATHS, ENGLISH” in "Ghanaweb", the percentage of students who failed (could not pass the 55% score) was: 58% in Math, 46% in English and 45% in Science” [1,2].
One of the main reasons cited for the poor performance is the widespread method of rote learning, which is locally known as "chew and pour". It involves repetitively reciting something in order to commit it to the memory, without really understanding it. There have been calls to change this method, such as by Dr. Patrick Awuah, the founder and president of Ashesi University and the Sabre Charitable Trust, who said in 2016: “The system of memorization by repetition has become an impediment for people to be forward-looking” [124] and in 2017 “It is time to end the rote method of teaching in schools” [125]. He was as well backed by the Deputy Minister for Gender and Children. However, such calls for change have not really caught on, and the alternative to rote learning, which is meaningful learning that focuses on understanding, has not been implemented on a broad scale.
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Meaningful Learning enables us to solve new problems.
Rote learning involves reciting new information in order to remember it. This information is not processed and integrated with an existing knowledge. Rather it is stored separately in our brain and the existing knowledge undergoes no changes. On the other hand, meaningful learning involves processing a new information in order to understand it and to connect it with the existing knowledge, which by itself undergoes changes during the connection process. Thus the process of meaningful learning depends a lot on how organized the knowledge in our brain is. To understand more about how the memory is involved in learning, see "Memory and Learning" page.
If we learn by understanding a solution to a problem, we can use the learnt information in solving new problems encountered in life that are related to the original problem that we learnt. But if we learn by reciting a solution to a problem, the recited information can only be used for solving problems encountered in life that are exactly the same as the original problem.
For example, a child already knows that 2+2=4 and now learns that 1+3=4. If he or she does not connect the new information (1+3=4) with the existing information (2+2=4), he or she will not be able to make the connection that 1+3=4=2+2. When asked whether 1+3 equals, the child will be able to answer, similarly for whether 2+2 equals 4. However, when asked whether 1+3 equals 2+2 the child will not be able to answer. This is a simple example of two separate cases (equations) where understanding them and seeing the resemblance can connect them to provide a solution for another case. As we progress in learning math and science, we face complicated problems in life that do not appear exactly as the questions and problems that were presented to us in school. If we can not realize the resemblance of the new problems to the old problems we already encountered, we will not have the correct knowledge, tools or methods to solve the new problems.
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Cognitive abilities are required in the process of understanding.
The process of understanding enables our brains to receive information, processes it and take action. The inner working of the brain has been of interest to science from as early as the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 BC) who had an interest in how the inner working of the mind affects the interpretation humans give to their experience in life. The different types of processes of thinking are collectively called cognition, which is a combination of Greek and Latin words that mean thinking and awareness [145]. We can break these processes into separate cognitive functions. Simple functions such as: attention, memory, comprehension and attitude. Complicated functions such as: reasoning, judgment, evaluation, attribution (ability to give a reason for a behavior). These complicated functions are built on the foundation of the simple ones. These cognitive functions are used in analyzing daily experience and together with the existing knowledge in our brain they generate new knowledge which we use to understand and explain the world around us. Therefore, our cognitive abilities shape the quality of our meaningful learning, both in school and daily experiences.
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Difficulties in training cognitive abilities in Creative Foundation School.
Recognizing the necessity for meaningful learning and its requirement of strong cognitive abilities, Yael Dzamesi opened the Creative Foundation School at Ayimensah-Danfa in the rural area of the Northern Greater Accra region. It operated for three and half years (2011-2014), closing due to the economic hardship of the time.
In Creative Foundation School, meaningful learning was applied instead of rote learning. A special program called ‘Focus’ was designed to develop attention abilities and reasoning skills through a variety of activities. Focus activities included reading stories, talking about pictures, and educational games. These activities were even more essential because the children came from a poor area and did not have encouraging learning environments at home with materials such as books and games. In the school, the children were engaged in ‘Focus’ activities for periods of between one to one and half hours, twice a week in Primary and three times a week in Nursery and Kindergarten. Lessons in Nursery were mainly in the mother tongue while acquiring new words in English. Lessons in Kindergarten were given in English and followed by the mother tongue. Lessons in Primary were given in English, with the mother tongue being used only when English was not understood. Such activities required a good amount of time, and therefore were practical to implement only until Primary 2, because from Primary 3 onward the time needed for teaching the subjects in the official Ministry of Education syllabus, could not allow for any other activities.
The teachers used the official mathematics learning books for primary of the Singapore Ministry of Education. These books are rich in practical examples that train the children to understand that numbers are not just digits but quantities and are used widely all over the world.
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During the time the school operated, many cognitive difficulties were observed and recorded. More disturbingly, some of them were persistent and had not been overcome at the end of the period of two or three years that the children learnt in the school. The following table 1 shows a list of some selected tasks that the children had difficulties in them. It states the class, the related ages of the children, and the duration of time that it took the children to overcome the difficulty. Each difficulty has a link to a page with more details. The first section deals with Math and the tasks are arranged according to the order in which they were taught. The second section deals with other general tasks, and they are arranged according to increasing level of cognitive complexity (from simple activities to more complex activities).
Hot water and ointment treatments cause cognitive impairment.
One factor that influences the performance of children in primary and high schools in Ghana is Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). It is as high as 30% among public school pupils in Ghana [3], whereas it is around 7-10.5% in other places in the world such as Europe and the USA [4,5]. ADHD is one of the most common neurodevelopment disorders in childhood. It is characterized by age-inappropriate levels of inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity that lead to acting without regards to the consequences, which are otherwise not appropriate for the behavior of a person in that age [3, 5, 102]. There is a high possibility that the hot water and the ointment treatments affect the attention span of the children and contribute to the high ADHD among Ghanaian pupils. Hot water massage to the head of a baby could also contribute to the difficulty in learning showed in table 1. For more details see "Attention span" and "Robb ointment effect" pages.
Table 1 does not include difficulties in learning English language (reading and writing) because the children did not have much difficulty in this subject. The question of why there was such a big difference between learning English language and Math is discussed in "Language" page.
During the stay of Yael Dzamesi in Ghana she influenced five women before delivery not to use the hot water on the heads of their newborn babies. The reports she heard from the three mothers, the behavior she saw in the baby of the fourth child, and the examinations of the cognition she did with the two children of the fifth mother proved that there is a great hope, and the answer to improve the cognitive skills of Ghanaian children lays in stopping all treatments to the heads of the newborn babies. To learn more about it see "A call for a change" page.