Members of the University community are hereby invited to an Inter-College Lecture Series by the School of Languages – College of Humanities
Topic: Harnessing Our Multilingual Heritage for National Development
Speaker: Dr. Gladys Nyarko Ansah
Date: May 2, 2019
Time: 4:30 pm
Venue: ISSER Conference Hall
Chairman – Prof. Samuel Agyei-Mensah (Provost, College of Humanities)
All are cordially invited
Abstract
Education has been linked to both human development and national development. This is so be-cause education (e.g. schooling, lectures on the virtues of punctuality) is believed to raise earnings, improve health, and add to a person’s good habits over much of his/her life time (Becker, 1993). In other words, education is regarded as a form of capital that supports economic growth and national development. Over the years, governments in Ghana have recognised this link between education, economic growth and national development and have committed national resources to several efforts at improving education with the hope of building human capital for national devel-opment. For instance, the Education for Accelerated National Development (1961-1966), the Kwapong Reform Committee for High Quality in Education for Growth (1967-1987), Basic Edu-cation for All (1987), Education in a Competitive Market driven Global Economy (2007-2016), and Free Senior High School Policy (2017), are major government policies that underscored the connection between education and national development. While these efforts may have yielded some results, e.g., increase in school enrollment, more access to education in general, more girls in school, higher literacy levels, etc, there is also an increase in carnage on our roads, filth on our streets and gutters, and non-working social interventions, among others which set Ghana back from being considered a developed nation. Why does our education appear not to be giving us the desired returns on all the investments governments have made in education over the years?
A UNESCO (2012) report has admitted that in linguistically complex communities, when devel-opment initiatives are implemented in people’s first languages or a dominant language and in a culturally appropriate way, the people are often able to create appropriate, sustainable solutions - they are empowered to make decisions that enable them become key actors in social intervention programmes. that benefit their communities. In this lecture, I focus on the role language plays both in education and in national development. I examine Ghana’s current (language in-education) pol-icy which makes English the only capital in the country’s linguistic market, and argue that the linguistic practices that emanate from such a policy neither support the pillars of human development nor create the enabling environment for the achievement of sustainable development for national growth in the country. In other words, I argue that Ghana’s current language in-education policy makes it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for many of the country’s human resources to achieve any appreciable level of personal development, a situation that renders the people more of a liability than an asset to the nation. I conclude by advocating a language (in-education) policy that builds upon the cultural and linguistic capital for a more effective/meaningful learning and proper human resource development which is a necessary tool for sustainable development and national progress.
Profile
Dr. Gladys Nyarko Ansah is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of English, University of Ghana. She holds a BA in English & Linguistics and Mphil Linguistics from the University of Ghana, Legon, a Master of Research in Cognitive Linguistics from the University of Brighton, UK, and a PhD in Applied Linguistics from the Lancaster University, UK. She has over 15 years teaching and research experience and has taught both undergraduate and graduate courses over the years. Her research interests are in applied linguistics including Second Language teaching/learning (par-ticularly teaching/learning English as a second language in Ghana), Language, Culture and Cog-nition, Metaphor studies, Language and Politics, and the sociolinguistics of bi/multilingualism (e.g., language in/and migration, language and/in health delivery in urban Ghana).
Dr Ansah has presented and disseminated her research findings in both conference (international and local) presentations and publication. she has been published by reputable journals and pub-lishers including Taylor and Francis, Routledge, Springer, Sub-Saharan Africa, John Benjamins, Ayebia Clarke and Nova Science Publisher. She has collaborated with colleague researchers from her own department, English, Education, French and Sociology and has served as PI on some of these funded collaborative research projects. She serves as an external examiner for one of Ghana’s public universities, a reviewer for several local and international journals, a member of the editorial board for a few international journals, and the current Assistant Editor for the Legon Journal of the Humanities.
Gladys Ansah is a member of the British Association of Applied Linguists (Special Interest Group-Africa), the Association for Researching and Applying Metaphor (RaAM) and the Linguistics As-sociation of Ghana (where she served as national Secretary in the past). She has served as a mem-ber on many boards and committees including the Teacher Education Curriculum writing Team (Ghana) in 2018.
Dr. Ansah is married with three young children and loves hanging out with children and music.
