Retain System Of Medium Of Teaching - Atukwei Okai

Mr Atukwei Okai, Secretary-General of the Pan-African Writers Association, has said that the directive to schools to use English as the medium of teaching at the early stage of schooling will not be in the interest of the child.

"The old system of teaching in Ghanaian languages is better", he said in comments on the directive in an interview with the Ghana News agency in Accra at the weekend.

"The age-long system and practice whereby the child studies the local language of the area he finds himself or herself should not be only maintained but must be seriously promoted in the context of reaching out, as a people, to the modern world".

Mr Okai said using the local language was the surest guarantee for getting rooted in the country's cultural heritage and "it is non-negotiable".

"Before we take a flight to the unknown, into the unfamiliar, we must first have our feet firmly planted in our linguistically psycho-cultural foundation".

He said the child has greater chances of getting to know, getting to understand, and contain the world at large when he or she was given a "healing grounding in knowledge in his or her culture and primary world".

"We must value our own, we should never turn our back on ourselves; that amounts to danger and psychic tragedy," he added.