Education at its basic is the acquisition of knowledge, socialization and moral development—and it doesn’t matter the language in which teaching is done, these important elements would be achieved.
Therefore, the call for Ghana to cut off the usage of English as a medium of instruction in our schools is interesting with a recent comment from Ghana’s Minister of Education-Prof. Jane Naana Opoku Agyemang giving prominence to the discussion.
In places like China, South Korea, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands and others, teaching is done in languages they perfectly understand—while they strive to learn English as a subject. In Ghana, teaching is done in English, while the student learns the same English.
The problem is obvious; how do you understand something being taught in English when you do not even properly understand the English, the medium of instruction? And this is one of the fundamental problems of our educational system.
I have studied alongside students from China, Russia and South Korea and even though their English were below mine, they managed with the help of translations to score excellent marks each time there was an assignment. They would mostly translate what is being taught to their own language which they understand better and then re-translate back.