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.