THE NATIVE HAS ARRIVED: LIFE ORIENTATION LESSONS THROUGH AKAN IDIOMS TO SECURE THE FUTURE AND MAINTAIN IDENTITY

Abstract

 In struggling to make ends meet and to put food on the table most parents of today hardly spend time with their children, as in most cases they either live far away from home or leave at dawn and return at dusk. This socio-economic reality of contemporary life makes life orientation, in general, and guidance and counselling in particular, a crucial aspect of school education for the youth of today, who are the leaders of tomorrow. Most students in schools today face psycho-social problems, which may not only hinder their progress in their studies but can also negatively affect their adjustment to the school environment and the society at large. This justifies an intervention by the school through individual and group life orientation sessions. For a long time, guidance and counselling or life orientation in general have been an important subject in the school curriculum of Ghanaian schools, but this subject has always been based on Western assumptions, values and methods of child upbringing which might not necessarily be suitable for the African context. This article contends that there is no better time than this era of African renaissance for ‘the native to arrive’ in the education arena to provide guidance and counselling lessons to the African child through indigenous idioms to secure their future and maintain African identity. Akan indigenous knowledge in the form of idioms can play an important and effective role in guiding and counselling students for better adjustment to the school environment, in order to improve learner performance and enable them to make better career choices to reduce unemployment. Idioms are powerful social, cultural and moral expressions used in everyday speech in every home and community to guide and educate people. As a cultural artefact, idioms relate to life situations and can therefore, be an effective method for teaching life orientation to students since they may easily understand them. Using some existing guidance and counselling theory as its framework, this paper discusses selected Akan idioms that can be effective in life orientation lessons in the African classroom to address some of the major socio-cultural and psychological challenges facing many students in Ghanaian schools today.