[lg policy] Ghana: National Education Language Policy needed to promote mother-tongue in the country

[Harold Schiffman]

NEL Policy needed to promote mother-tongue in the country
 The Executive Director of the Ghana Institute of Linguistics Literacy and
Bible Translation (GILL/BT), Dr. Paul Opoku-Mensah, has said a National
Education Language Policy should be put in place, to help promote the
national mother language in the country, as other countries in the sub
region have done.


Dr. Opoku-Mensah stated this in a key note address he delivered at a durbar
to commemorate the celebration of the International Mother Language Day
held at the forecourt of the Collage of Language Education of the
University of Education, Winneba (UEW), Ajumako Campus.

The celebration was on the theme: “Inclusion and Through Education:
Language Counts”

He said the persistence of marginalization and ethno-nationalist agitation
fifty years after independence and comparative evidence from outside
Africa, showed that a policy of neglecting our linguistic diversity did not
work.

Dr. Opoku-Mensah said, evidence shows that suppressing and actively
discouraging the development and expression of Africa’s linguistic
diversity, has not created the desired national unity and development, and
this is particularly so in the education sector.

“The continuous use of very few languages, has not created cohesion or
successful educational outcome, rather and using the case of Ghana’s
language policy in education, the choice of eleven official languages has
actually served to increase agitation for inclusion by the other
languages,” he said.

He said in effect, while the selection of 11 languages is a very good
start; a critical assessment of this policy reveals some problematic issues
of marginalization and exclusion, with implication for educational outcomes
and national cohesion in Ghana.

He said there is the urgent need to establish national unity within this
pluralistic environment, adding that this is a challenge to which
Universities and Organization have to respond to important celebrations of
events, and cited the mother’s day in other to remind ourselves about the
continuous marginalization of some of our language policy in education.

Dr. Charles Owu-Ewie, Vice Dean of the Faculty of Language Education of the
University of Education, Winneba, Ajumako Campus, said the establishment of
the National Education Policy, will go a long way, while using their mother
tongues, they can read the English language and understand it well while
writing their examinations.

Prof. Asiedu Addo, Head of the Mathematics Department of UEW, who deputized
for the Pro-Vice Chancellor, said Education and Culture are inter-related,
and they should be allowed to move together, as other countries in the
sub-region have done towards the growth of their mother-tongues.

http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/regional/artikel.php?ID=348979


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