When political correctness is sold as mother tongue for education reforms

E. Ablorh-Odjidja

September 03, 2014

To be blunt, the proposal to use mother language as a tool for teaching at basic grade level in schools in Ghana is an abject nonsense. In the current problematic midst of linguistic diversity in our country, this move is to ask for unnecessary trouble.

The mother language or tongue is important for social identity and culture formation for the child. But that is not the issue here. After all, the mother tongue can best be taught at home.

Gaining facility with the English language quickly must be the drive of education. It is worthwhile because English is the number one business language in the world and we compete with it as a tool on the global stage.

Advanced countries like China know this. With Mandarin as the most populous language in the world, China still pays special attention to English education within its system.

“It’s conceivable that by 2025 the number of English-speaking Chinese will exceed the number of people speaking English as a first language in the rest of the world… China has made educating its population in English a big priority,” reports IBJ.com.

But here in Ghana, downgrading English as a tool for teaching at basic grades is on the minds of our administrators.

The implementation of this idea will be disruptive, useless and unsettling.

For starts, there is not a single region in Ghana, no matter how the map is configured, that can boast of a single mother tongue.

The obvious option will be to go for the populous among the many spoken in that region. Think about how unsettling this move will be in the Accra region alone. And for what outcomes?

Meanwhile, the implementation of this new approach to education will delay the mastery of the English language, and consequently, everything else.

For kids from poor, semi-literate or illiterate homes, this move will be more disastrous, even as comprehension of the subjects taught in the new mother tongue becomes questionable. They will have no back up in English language lessons at home.

All this effort for a mother tongue that will ultimately yield way for the English language, anyway!

One would have thought that in a multi-ethnic society, where language is tied to the tribe, it would be wise to avoid this obvious hazard.

And even should we be bold enough to move this idea of a mother tongue forward to fruition, how then would it fare at center stage?

Note that no Ghanaian language is comprehensible to the world outside, except for those who live or were born in Ghana. Thus, the language is not only limited in geographic scope but also absent within the new world of computing.

On the contrary, the English language is useful everywhere.

Major works on human knowledge, or versions of them, exist in English publications. With the exception of the Bible, very little to none is published in any of our mother languages.

English is very practical for most occasions, while any of our local languages may prove problematic in its place.

Try writing a menu for state dinner, in any of our local languages, and you would experience the difficulty of the task.

Or attempt to translate a science treatise to your mother tongue. You are the expert already, good luck!

But why waste time in pursuit of education through a mother tongue?

It is good to feel pride for the mother tongue, but heck, we have had it since creation and the mark of it now is, we are left far behind in the acquisition of things that modern education brings.

With good grounding in English you gain easy and quick access to what already exists!

The obvious need today is to master the usage of the English language quickly and to gain fluency of it in a world that has no use for any of our own languages.

Using English at an early age speeds up the mastery process.

We are not asking to eliminate the mother tongue entirely, but to develop a bilingual facility, with fluency in the English language as the key desire.

To do this, we need quick access to the English language in order to operate on the world stage with confidence; and in achievements.

On one occasion in New York City, I sat uncomfortably listening to a prominent African-American civil rights activist propose to an audience the use of Ebonics to compensate for Hispanic demand for Spanish as second language in America.

The naivety of this activist was shocking to me. It was not apparent to him that comparing Ebonics and Spanish was not a viable exercise.

Every literature available to the world has its version in Spanish today. Unlike Spanish, Ebonics has yet to be seen in a single pamphlet published for grammar, let alone on any academic subject!

Later at a different time in New York City I was to watch with pride an old school principal of Accra High School, Mr. Alexander Nii Blebo Andrews, deliver an unscripted speech in English.

By the time he finished, there was none in the audience who doubted his command of the language and scholarly grounding in the classics.

No one mistook Mr. Andrews for an Englishman.

However, what are we now to make of the activist in New York City, except to observe that his proposal of Ebonics to Black America has the same ridiculous ring to it as the proposal for mother tongue usage at basic grades in Ghana today!

The mother tongue is a facet of our culture, but when we learn to operate well in English, we can quickly impress others on the outside with the good aspects our culture, as Mr. Andrews did.

Chinua Achebe wrote Things Fall Apart in English, but he was able to elevate the village of Umuofia to the level of any hamlet in a Shakespearian tragedy.

His characters, though written in English, were not hampered in bringing the wisdom of Africa, in proverbs, to the world.

Hanging over our shoulder as we discuss this problem of how to educate our children is also the immediate task of integrating an Africa divided by many languages and dialects.

West Africa alone has several languages. But there are only a few principal ones that cut across borders worthy of mention; English, French, Hausa.

English and French are already used as official languages in our region. English is ours. Let’s ground our kids in it, plus two other major languages that may spur integration instead of embarking on this useless experimentation in a divisive mother tongue.

The results of shoddy educational experimentations from the 80s are ripe in our society today: The pidgin English is king in the streets and on school grounds. Bad syntax plus more ring out in the media daily.

We have serial callers who have extended the limits of our poor English on to the radio airwaves, where pointless insults become instant political classics. Twiaaa…

At critical moments of presentations of ideas, we find ourselves frozen in thoughts, as we struggle for command of the English language we have hitherto not paid attention to!

There is urgent call for reform in our educational system, but we need to go back to basics: put proper structures in place, good teachers, more classrooms, disciplined kids in school uniforms, libraries, computer labs, healthy environments, play grounds, the enforcement of a well thought out curriculum and the insistence on the maximum number of years to prepare pupils successfully for tertiary education.

All the above can be done through the political will, exercised effectively and not through a wish for some political correctness, such as mother tongue usage at grade level.

The mother tongue approach is the surest way to promote illiteracy in governance for the future, if it is not here already.

E. Ablorh-Odjidja, Publsiher www.ghanadot.com, Washington, DC, September 03, 2014.

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