Dr. Kweku Mensah Mawutor, a lecturer at the University of Professional Studies, speaking on the Good Morning Africa Show on Pan Africa TV on December 9, said though he is an Ewe, he supports the initiative to use 'Twi' as the medium of instruction in the various schools of the country.
Dr. Mawutor stressed that, “research has shown that most of the countries that have developed did so using their mother tongue as a medium of instruction in their schools. He cited Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Malaysia, Japan among other countries whose educational systems are vibrant because they use their mother tongue.”
According to him, 'Twi' language is the most popular in the country, and hardly will you go anywhere in Ghana and not meet people speaking it. To support his point, Dr. Mawutor told a story of how he had roamed a market in Navrongo for more than thirty minutes without chancing on someone speaking their native language; all the people he had encountered spoke Twi.
So, 'Twi' should be used as a national language, maybe a second national language, means of instruction in our various schools in Ghana.
China, for instance, chose one local dialect such as “mandarin” as the national language to foster national unity and their development. In Africa, Kenya switched from early years teaching in the national languages of English and Kiswahili to local tongues.
In support of Dr. Kweku Mensah Mawutor’s opinion, children are so excited and motivated when they are taught in their own language, they work even beyond what the teacher asks. It is fantastic.
In this perspective, a friend of mine who blended English and local language to teach found that “pupils learn better in their first language, the language of the heart, which is not learnt but inherited from their parents,” he finds.
Additionally, the mother tongue is the language of home, of play, of comfort and comprehension. When the students begin to interact with a teacher in the mother tongue, they visibly loosen up.
Choosing a local language as a national language will go a long way to end the tribal sentiments and foster nationalism and unity. But, talking about mother tongue education as a means of instruction in our schools will be difficult to implement in a country such as Ghana with multiple local languages — the choice of which can inflame ethnic and political tensions.
How many Twi teachers will be ready to be posted in our villages in the North and Volta Sectors to teach? What impact will it have on the pupils, precisely, the pupils of “non-Twi” speaking regions? will it rather slow the cognitive development of those pupils?
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Dr. Kweku Mensah Mawutor