The history of the state's treatment of these languages in education is fascinating. Of course, the first schools in Ghana, begun by colonial powers and missionaries mainly to educate children of Europeans, delivered instruction in European languages. Once England became the sole colonial power, the language of education became English.
This changed with Ghanaian independence in 1959. Unlike the United States, where states and even local school districts have a lot of control over curriculum and educational policy, Ghanaian schools are governed by the national Ghanaian Educational Services (GES). This centralized system has lots of implications that seem extraordinary to those of us teaching in the U.S. For instance, teachers are assigned to their jobs by the GES at the federal level, so a new teacher may be assigned to a school at the other side of the country from where she lives. Another reality of the centralized system is that new presidential administrations can bring about sweeping policy changes. We saw that played out during our time in Ghana, when two classes of students--the third- and fourth-years--were preparing for the end of high school, because the new government of John Mahama had decided that secondary school should be three years and not four.
The status of indigenous languages in the schools has been determined by this federal control as well.
For many years after independence in 1959, Ghanaian schools educated the very young--Kindergarten through third graders--in their indigenous languages. Children who had access to schools became literate in their home languages or in some related indigenous language before instruction was exclusively delivered in English beginning in the 4th grade. This multi-lingual approach created a population of educated adults who were at least somewhat literate in two languages and who could speak multiple languages: their own indigenous language; Twi or Fante, two of the dominant indigenous languages; and English.
Then, in 2001, the government adopted an English-only policy for education and indigenous languages disappeared as languages of instruction in schools, officially at least. Ekem told us that there was already a generation gap appearing between older folks who were literate in local languages and younger folks who were only developing literacy in English.
Another switch occurred in 2007-08, when the federal pendulum swung back toward multi-lingualism. Once again, the GES policy is that Kindergarteners through 3rd-graders learn in their local language and have English as one subject, then shift to English exclusively in the 4th grade. Local languages continue to be a required subject through junior secondary school and an elective subject in high school. Study of an indigenous language is required of university students.
BUT the GES only recognizes 11 local languages when there are many more in Ghana, so this still means that there's some homogenization of language going on through schooling. In addition, there are problems finding enough teachers in some local languages. Theoretically, though, the GES has returned to the research-supported policy of establishing literacy in a student's indigenous language before introducing instruction in English.
These are the policies and some of the history. In my next post, I'll share some of my admittedly limited observations about how this linguistic diversity plays out in Ghana.
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| In this school timetable from Katapor Junior High School in the Central Region, you can see both local languages ("Ghan. Lang") and English ("Eng Lang") as subjects the students study each week. French is also on the schedule as a third language--there's a push to learn French since almost all of the countries bordering Ghana are French-speaking. All the other courses--science, social studies, etc., are taught in English. |
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