In this paper, the author first cites passages that highlight the key developments and dilemmas of teacher education in Ghana in the 1960s, when the new nation resolved to prepare its largely untrained teaching force in "progressive" methods. Across the decade--and across subject areas--Ghana conducted in-service teacher training to promote group projects, inquiry learning, and the other hallmarks of progressive pedagogy. Education should be child-centered, progressives said, not teacher-centered; active, not passive; grounded in experience, not simply in books; and focused on the community, not just the school. The widespread popularity of this philosophy in Ghana--among politicians, school officials, and teachers--belies Westerners' frequent claim that progressivism was somehow alien to African "culture." Although born in Europe and the Americas, progressive education had become a truly global initiative by the early post-war period. The ultimate failure of the 1960s teacher-education reform speaks less to Ghana's culture than to its poverty. Despite scattered assistance from the West, in money and manpower, Ghana simply "lacked" the money or manpower to change teaching. It also lacked the democratic norms and institutions that true "enquiry" requires. The same regimes that gave teachers sporadic training in progressive pedagogy also subjected them to incessant political indoctrination, fostering widespread fear and cynicism in the schools. Into the present, and around the world, the author suggests that one needs to re-examine the political conditions for the reform of teaching. He discusses the Ghanaian in-service teacher education and the political economy of failure from 1961 to 1971. (Contains 44 footnotes.)