IMPACT OF FORMAL EDUCATION ON COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT
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IMPACT OF FORMAL EDUCATION ON COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT
ABSTRACT
This study looked at the effects of formal education on the Umuabi village in Enugu State’s Udi Local Government Area. Three research questions were posed and addressed in order to accomplish it successfully. The following sub-headings were used to review the literature review connected to this investigation.
The significance of education, the introduction of formal education in Nigeria and other parts of the world, the contribution formal education makes to community development, and the perceptions of people towards formal education are listed below.
Survey research methodology is used. Umuabi Community is the study’s subject. 220 teachers and 220 pupils made up the study’s sample. 25 people made up the study’s sample. Questionnaires are the tool used to collect data.
Two professionals from the school of Science education validated the tool. The questionnaire was used to gather data. Decision rule analysis was done on the data.
The findings indicated that Umuabi instructors and pupils anticipated favourable outcomes for the social, economic, and political lives of the Umuabi people, favourable outcomes for growth patterns, and favourable actions as a result of missionaries’ visits to Umuabi.
As a result, it can be concluded from the study’s findings that three individuals were responsible for the development of formal education in Umuabi.
Education also arrived in Umuabi via churches and schools, and the Catholic Church was the first place of worship to be founded in Umuabi.
CHAPITER 1
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background Of The Study
Every government works to grow their country for the benefit of their people by making investments. According to Nyerere (2006), development is the growth of a person’s consciousness and, consequently, of his or her ability to control their environment, their community, and themselves.
It is a phenomenon, according to Ofuebe (1992), in which individuals and society interact with their physical, biological, and inter-human environments to change them for the better. Lessons learned during this interaction are then passed on to future generations to help them improve their capacity to effect further beneficial changes.
Development must be committed to enhancing people’s overall wellbeing, but it can only accomplish this goal if the people it is intended for recognise and value the services provided.
Accordingly, Sesay (1997) points out that development can be draining of energy, time-consuming, and wasteful of resources if the people for whom it is being provided is kept underdeveloped to the point where they do not understand the value of the services provided and as a result do not care to maintain and sustain them.
From the aforementioned, it is clear that development is only worthwhile when it is continued. Thus, according to the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED),
sustainable development is defined as development that satisfies current demands without jeopardising the ability of future generations to satiate their own needs.
A holistic approach to individual and societal development is necessary for sustainable development. International Council for Formal Education (ICAE), (2006:89),
notes that achieving social, economic, and political justice that leads to the liberation of mankind and does so by eradicating such scourges as mass poverty and mass illiteracy is the essence of sustained and integrated balanced development. It follows that every country is preoccupied with ensuring its residents’ sustainable growth.
Nigeria is a developing country with some of the world’s most underdeveloped communities. Two-thirds of Nigeria’s population of 85.5 million, according to Eboh, Okoye, and Ayichi (1995), still reside in an estimated 97,000 rural settlements.
The lives of those residing in these communities, according to UNICEF (1990), are marked by destitution, suffering, sickness, and underdevelopment. Their income is still poor, and because of a lack of mechanisation, agriculture, which is their main concern, has been declining.
Despite these disadvantages, these groups continue to play a crucial role in the growth of the country. Additionally, according to UNICEF (1990), 90% of the food sold and consumed in Nigeria is produced by the population, who also employs around 70% of the country’s work force in rural areas.
The majority of the time, the villages remain underdeveloped despite all the development programmes and strategies that have been implemented by the colonial authority and the Nigerian government to develop the rural sectors of the economy.
According to Koinyan (1991), because there was no systematic strategy for development and instead, the development policy was an extraction of surplus from the communities to suit imperial aims, the low state of development indicates cumulative policy neglect and bad planning from the colonial period.
Nwosu (1990) also asserted that rural residents are impoverished and continue to endure underdevelopment. He goes on to say that their lack of natural resources is not the cause of their poverty,
but rather a failure to properly utilise their priceless natural resources due to a lack of potential. Broad-based education is one of the main ways that the potentialities can be fostered.
There is a need to empower individuals for development through education since people’s intelligence must be used to advance development. All efforts towards progress will be ineffective without intellectual growth. This is the guiding principle of the use of human capital in development.
People need to be inspired to use their brains to help themselves grow. At this time, education becomes a must for development. Education is a tool for altering the systems and ideologies that maintain individuals in subservient positions.
People can improve their society values and reputation through improving their access to resources, participation in decision-making, control over their own lives, and self-respect.
These are development-friendly circumstances. Human capital development is supported by Nyerere (2006:78), who states that “people cannot be developed; they can only develop themselves.
Man develops himself by his actions, his ability to decide for himself, his expansion of knowledge and skill, and his full involvement as an equal in the life of the community in which he resides. According to Wolfensohn (2000)
South Korea, Malaysia, and Mexico have provided us with ample evidence to show that a broad-based education is linked to a variety of positive outcomes, including an increase in a country’s productivity and competitiveness as well as social and political advancement.
Education liberates the human intellect from ignorance and servitude for developmental purposes, and it is a fundamental human right.
If education is a tool for development, then formal education, which is a subset of education, has the ability to promote development by giving people more power in the political, social, and economic spheres.
According to Omolewa (1981) and Aderinoye (1997), formal education is a planned and ordered learning process made to cater to the demands of adults. According to Nzeneri (2002:7), the emphasis on lifelong learning, education as a process and agent of emancipation, a tool for adjustment,
for the growth of oneself and the country, for cultural awareness and integration, for conscientization and group dynamism, is put in formal education.
Formal education is an empowerment strategy through which adults can uplift themselves socially and economically to enable them to fully participate in the development of their communities.
He went on to define it as “any education given to adults based on their social, political, cultural, and economic needs or problems to enable them to adjust fully to changes and challenges in their lives and society.”
The formal education program’s strategies for achieving sustainable development will be decided by this study. There will be a discussion of various obstacles or issues that could prevent the formal education programme from achieving community development.
shortage of proper roads, illiteracy, poverty, unemployment, insufficient electrical supply, deteriorated environment, shortage of portable water, and inadequate political institutions and knowledge are a few of the issues communities face.
In recent years, the Nigerian government has made considerable investments in education. It is disappointing, nevertheless, that most of these investments go towards formal primary, secondary, and postsecondary education while neglecting adult and non-formal education.
The Nigerian government’s ability to carry out initiatives that address the demands of formal education has gradually declined in terms of manpower, financing, cooperation, and technique.
The researcher wants to pinpoint specifically what formal education can do and what it has done in achieving community development in light of the underdevelopment of Nigerian communities and the crucial role that education in general and formal education in particular plays in the development of these communities.
1.2 Statement Of The Problem
One of the local governments in Nigeria, Udi Local Government Area, has not yet achieved sustainable development. This local government, which is made up of several settlements, continues to exhibit significant underdevelopment.
Some of these overarching indicators of underdevelopment that are evident in the study’s context include unemployment, poor access to transportation, a communication system that is ineffective, illiteracy, low income, a lack of portable water, inadequate access to healthcare,
a degraded environment, a lack of technical skills, low agricultural productivity, inadequate access to electricity, and a lack of adequate political structures and knowledge.
The residents of the villages now have a very difficult quality of life as a result. These indications of underdevelopment have persisted despite all previous governmental frameworks and agendas.
Education plays a crucial role in the process of development of any place or community in the form of human capital development. Because of this, governments have made significant investments in formal education at all levels and in all forms, enabling these institutions to provide the workforce required for development.
The government’s involvement in education has always only been a small portion of formal schooling. The fundamental reason for this is that everyone, including the government, lacks a thorough understanding of how formal education can help communities grow.
Given such, the challenge of this study is to clearly and precisely identify the ways in which formal education might be used to achieve community development.
1.3 Objectives Of The Study
This study’s overarching goal is to determine how formal education can be used to promote community development. The following are the precise goals:
To learn more about the traits of Udi Local Government participants in formal education
to determine how formal education contributes to community development.
To ascertain the methods formal education may employ to promote community development.
To determine what obstacles prevent formal education from fostering community development.
To investigate potential answers to the
1.4 Research Questions
What traits do those enrolled in formal education possess?
What role does formal education play in the development of the community in Udi Local Government?
What methods may formal education use to promote sustainable development?
What obstacles does formal education encounter in its mission to promote community development?
How may these difficulties be lessened?
1.5 Research Hypotheses
The researcher examined the following null hypotheses at the.05 level of significance.
The mean judgements of formal education instructors and participants on the degree to which formal education embraced the specified strategies or methods for attaining community development did not significantly differ.
Hypothesis 2: There is no statistically significant difference in the mean judgements of participants and instructors in formal education about the difficulties that formal education faces in attaining community development.
1.6 Significance Of The Study
This study’s findings will be important in a variety of ways. Both teachers and students in formal education programmes would benefit from it.
They will be able to assess the degree to which formal education contributes to community development. Additionally, they will be able to contribute to the efficacy of future formal education directors.
Additionally, Udi Local Government Area and other local governments that operate formal education initiatives will benefit from it.
The study’s conclusions will help local government administrators understand the important role that formal education plays in the process of development.
This will encourage them to pay more attention to formal education through improved programme organisation, finance, and staff development.
Additionally, both the federal government and state governments will benefit from it. The study’s findings will enlighten the eyes of individuals in government and transform their perception of formal education as a disjointed endeavour. They will gain understanding of the true function of formal education in sustainable development.
They will be able to focus more on their formal education as a result, and formal education will likely gain parity with other forms of education.
They can accomplish this by providing formal education programmes with proper financing, managing those programmes, and reviewing policies.
It will be important to those who create curricula for formal schooling. The curriculum designers will be able to assess the degree to which formal education has achieved development by knowing the amount to which it is used in sustainable development.
This will assist them in reviewing the curriculum in pertinent areas where they are inadequate and, if necessary, in creating new curriculum to make it easier to use formal education for development.
Policy makers will also benefit from the findings. They will be able to evaluate the current formal education policy objectively and decide whether it needs to be strengthened and made more relevant than it is at the moment.
The general public will also benefit from it since it will help correct the negative perceptions that many have of formal schooling. They will be aware of the value of formal education for growth and will provide it with the support it needs.
1.7 Scope of The Study
The study identified the best ways to use formal education to promote community development. The study was limited to Enugu State’s Udi Local Government Area.
It discussed participant characteristics, the role of formal education in achieving community development, strategies formal education programmes can use to achieve sustainable development,
obstacles that stand in the way of formal education achieving community development, and how to overcome these obstacles.
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