Page 12 - Exposition of Dagara Morality FNAL

The Dagara use proverbs as a sign of wisdom. Thus, when they want t speak of Patience is also one of the greatly cherished positive moral values in traditional
serious matters or secret issues and children or strangers are around, they speak Dagara society. Patience here does not mean cal endurance of pain and
in proverbial language. For example, instead of telling somebody in plain terms provocation but rather that we should learn to be patient with things because
that his aspirations are too high for him, they use the proverb tat “nobir mi yang ni there is time for everything. Also, with patience, we can achieve seemingly
kuo mani o menga”. That is, “the finger swells according to its size”. This means impossible tasks in life. Furthermore, we should learn to be patient in life when
that one should cut one's coat according to the size of one's cloth and top building things are being delayed.
castles in the air. That is, one should not bite more than one can chew. The
epitome of it all is that, human experiences are the life-world of the Dagara Obedience in the Dagara traditional society means respect for and observance of
proverbs and those proverbs dealt within this book cover a wide range of human the teaching of parents, elder siblings and of all others who are older than you.
experiences and express different moral values. These moral truths are of vital Obedience presupposes reverence for and deference to the person to be
importance in the sense that they compel us to act according to the moral truths obeyed. An obedient child enjoys some privileges and chances in life whereas
they imply. the disobedient child will mostly find himself in “hot soup”. Disobedience has
some adverse effects so we should learn to obey but out of conviction. For
The proper comprehension of the Dagara proverbs can lead one to the obedience is better than sacrifice.
appreciation of Dagaare, their culture, their philosophy and the principles that Respect for Dagara is of paramount importance in their society. First, there
integrate their personalities. Also, this will go a long way to portray the should be respect for each other in the society to foster peaceful co-existence.
fundamental determinants of morality among the Dagara per se. Also, respect is reciprocal and there should be mutual respect between adults
and youngsters. We should learn to be respectful in society.

KINDS OF PROVERBS Having discussed some of these Dagara proverbs that illustrate the positive
values for moral education, let us turn into the last chapter, to also talk of some
There is no clear cut classification of the Dagara proverbs because the cover a Dagara proverbs that illustrate some negative values in the Dagara morality.
wide range od experiences an moral values, Nevertheless, when they are taken
as simple short statements, they can be positive or negative. An example of a
negative proverbial statement is “tagr k'n tagr nu are ngman”, “pull and I will also
pull cracks the calabash”. An example of a positive one is “nyira meng tug ne o
bog mani o menga”. It means that, “the ant digs its hole according to its size”.
Others are very metaphorical. For instance, “koyere tagr kobuo”. “The funeral
announcer pulls the funeral goat”. Having exposed to the Dagara notions of
morality and proverbs, let us proceed to the next chapter to discuss some Dagara
proverbs that illustrate their positive values for moral education.

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