From Family Cloth To The Classroom Wall

Willis records Nea Onnim No Sua A Ohu used broadly to promote education and continual self-improvement, applicable to a child in school as readily as to an adult acquiring a new skill, a range of application he notes is unusually wide even for the corpus's more general character symbols, since most Adinkra designs, Duafe or Mpuannum among them, are tied more specifically to an age, a gender or a social role than this one is. Its documented modern use includes prominent display in Ghanaian schools and educational institutions specifically, a direct institutional adoption that gives it a continuing, visible public presence Willis distinguishes from symbols whose modern reproduction is largely commercial or purely decorative rather than tied to an educational mission the symbol's own proverb states directly.

Willis records this institutional adoption giving Nea Onnim No Sua A Ohu a documented continuity of use from its older role on personal and family cloth into a distinctly modern, public educational context, a transition he notes few of the corpus's other symbols have made as cleanly or as visibly. Willis records banners and printed material bearing the symbol displayed in classrooms and on institutional stationery as part of this documented educational adoption.