Keep English language as medium of instruction in schools – K.B Asante

Retired Ghanaian diplomat, Dr. KB Asante has advocated strongly for English Language to be maintained as the medium of instruction in Ghanaian schools.

While there are some arguments against the use of English as a major language in education by some technocrats and educationists, there is also a great deal of pro-English sentiment.

The Minister-designate for Education, Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh taking his turn at vetting Tuesday cited reasons explaining why the choice of English remains favorable and practical in the global sense.

“Under the presidency of the Blessed Osagyefo, this same policy of instructing pupils in their mother language arose. He even went about setting up an institution in the University of Cape Coast and he went further than that to decide and decided that Akan will be the language in this country. Just begin to think you designating Akan as a national language. I don’t want to think about that at all, and it is not surprising it failed. Besides we don’t train people only for Ghana. We train ourselves to become globally competitive,” the Minister-designate said.

Corroborating the position of the Minister designate on the debate on Anopa Kasapa on Kasapa 102.5 FM, Dr. K.B Asante said although there is the perception that English is the language of Ghana’s social elite, and as well the language of modernization, it is advisable to “use English as we are doing now and let us learn both.”

He said since English is the official language there is no harm in teaching in it throughout even in the elementary schools.

“At schools we can teach in English language, our fathers and our grand fathers did that and they were not that bad. Let us go back into history;let us find what happened and come to the conclusion that you can teach in English language but that does not mean you get rid of the local language.”