Publishing for mother tongue-based bilingual education in Ghana: politics and consequences

Abstract

One often cited challenge to effective mother tongue-based bilingual education (MTBE) in multilingual countries like Ghana is the difficulty of developing curriculum and instructional materials in many languages. To explain this situation, factors such as shortage of writers and teachers in the local languages, lack of interest on the part of publishers in view of the wide availability of textbooks in multiple languages, as well as official support for dominant western languages, such as English, are cited. This paper discusses the veracity of these ‘challenges’, by examining pre- and post-independent governments’ efforts at material development to support MTBE in Ghana. The paper notes that, while most educational policies and reforms have emphasised the importance of MTBE, there has, in fact, been no concerted attempt to design and implement a language-in-education policy incorporating the urgent need to develop curriculum materials for MTBE. The paper attributes this to the lack of political will, economic reasons and the general misconceptions about MTBE.