FORMAL EDUCATION’S IMPACT ON COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT
ABSTRACT
This study looked at the influence of formal education on the Umuabi community of Enugu State’s Udi Local Government Area. Three research questions were raised and answered in order to do it properly. The following subheadings were used to review related literature to this investigation. They are as follows: the definition of education, the introduction of format education in Nigeria and other areas of the world, the role of formal education in community development, and public attitudes about formal education.
The research method is a survey. Umuabi Community is the focus of the research. The study’s population included 220 teachers and 220 students. The study’s sample size was 25 people. The questionnaire is the data collection instrument. Two professionals from the school of Science education validated the instrument. The questionnaire was used to collect data. A decision rule was used to assess the data.
The findings revealed that Umuabi instructors and pupils predicted positive outcomes in the social, economic, and political lives of Umuabi people, as well as beneficial outcomes on growth patterns and positive action as a result of a missionary visit to Umuabi. As a result of the study’s findings, the conclusion was drawn that three people were the brains behind the origin of formal education in Umuabi, education came to Umuabi through churches and accommodated schools, and the Catholic Church was the first church established in Umuabi.
CHAPITRE ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 The Study’s Background
Every government attempts to accomplish development for the benefit of its citizens through investment. According to Nyerere (2006), development is the extension of man’s consciousness and thus his power over himself, his surroundings, and his society. Ofuebe (1992) defined it as a phenomenon in which individuals and societies interact with their physical, biological, and inter-human environments, transforming them for their own benefit and passing on lessons learned to future generations to enable them to improve their capacity to make further valuable changes.
Development must be dedicated to improving people’s overall well-being, but it can only be meaningful if the people for whom the development is intended appreciate and comprehend the value of the services provided.
As a result, Sesay (1997) observes that development can be energy-sapping, time-consuming, and a waste of effort and resources if the people receiving development services are kept underdeveloped to the point where they lack understanding of the value of the services provided and thus do not care to maintain and sustain them.
It is clear from the preceding that progress is only meaningful when it is sustained. As a result, the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) defined sustainable development as development that meets the requirements of the present without jeopardizing future generations’ ability to satisfy their own needs. Individual and societal growth must be integrated into sustainable development.
According to the International Council for Formal Education (2006:89), the core of sustained and integrated balanced development is to accomplish social, economic, and political justice that leads to mankind’s liberation and therefore eradicates such scourges as mass poverty and mass illiteracy. As a result, it is clear that every nation is concerned with delivering sustainable development for its population.
Nigeria is a developing country with communities that are still severely undeveloped. According to Eboh, Okoye, and Ayichi (1995), around two-thirds of Nigeria’s 85.5 million residents still live in an estimated 97,000 rural settlements. According to UNICEF (1990), the lives of the people who reside in these areas are marked by poverty, suffering, illness, and underdevelopment.
Their income remains poor, and agriculture, their main source of revenue, has been declining due to a lack of technology. Despite these disadvantages, these villages continue to play an important role in the nation’s development. According to UNICEF (1990), the rural sector of the economy employs around 70% of the country’s labor force and produces 90% of the food marketed and consumed in Nigeria.
Despite all of the development programs and plans implemented by the colonial and Nigerian governments to develop the rural sections of the economy, most communities remain underdeveloped. According to Koinyan (1991), the low state of development reflects cumulative policy neglect and inadequate planning from the colonial period because there was no systematic development program; rather, development policy was an extraction of surplus from communities to suit imperial priorities. According to Nwosu (1990), those living in rural areas remain poor and continue to face underdevelopment. He goes on to say that their poverty is not due to a lack of natural endowments, but rather to a lack of opportunities to fully utilize their rich natural gifts. One of the most important ways to build potential is through broad-based education.
People’s intelligence must be applied to development; thus, education must be used to empower people for development. All development attempts will be futile unless intellectual development occurs. Human capital as a development strategy is based on this premise. People must be encouraged to use their brains to help themselves develop. Education has now become a requirement for progress. Education is a tool for changing the systems and ideologies that keep people submissive.
People can acquire access to resources, participate in decision making, gain control over their lives, increase self-esteem, and improve their societal values and image through education. These are favorable conditions for growth. In support of human capital development, Nyerere (2006:78) states that “people cannot be developed; they can only develop themselves.”
Man develops himself by his actions, making his own judgments, growing his own knowledge and skill, and fully participating as an equal in the life of the community in which he lives.” According to Wolfensohn (2000), South Korea, Malaysia, and Mexico have provided significant evidence that broad-based education is connected with a wide range of measures of well-being, including greater production and competitiveness, as well as social and political growth. Education is a fundamental human right that liberates the human intellect from ignorance and servitude for the goal of growth.
If education is a development tool, formal education, a subset of education, has the ability to contribute to development by empowering individuals politically, socially, and economically. According to Omolewa (1981) and Aderinoye (1997), formal education is a structured and sequenced learning process meant to suit adults’ perceived needs.
According to Nzeneri (2002:7), formal education emphasizes lifelong learning, education as a process and agent of freedom, a tool for adjustment, individual and national growth, cultural awareness and integration, conscientization, and group dynamism.
He went on to define formal education as “any education given to adults based on their social, political, cultural, and economic demands or issues in order for them to completely respond to changes and obstacles in their life and society.” Adults can improve themselves socially and economically through formal education, allowing them to actively participate in the development of their communities.
This research will help to establish the strategies that the Formal Education Programme will use to achieve sustainable development. Various hurdles or problems that can stymie the Formal Education Program’s ability to achieve community development will be explored. Lack of proper roads, illiteracy, low income, unemployment, poor electrical supply, deteriorated environment, lack of portable water, and a lack of adequate political institutions and expertise are all difficulties in communities.
The Nigerian government has recently made significant investments in education. However, it is discouraging that these investments are primarily in primary, secondary, and higher education, ignoring adult and non-formal education. In terms of manpower, finance, collaboration, and methodology, the Nigerian government’s capacity to develop initiatives that respond to the needs of formal education has steadily declined.
Against the backdrop of Nigerian community underdevelopment and the critical role of education in general, and formal education in particular, in the development of these communities, the researcher intends to identify specifically what formal education can and has done in achieving community development.
1.2 Problem description
Udi Local Government Area, one of Nigeria’s local government areas, has failed to achieve sustainable development. This local government, comprised of different settlements, continues to exhibit major indicators of underdevelopment.
Some of the general signs of underdevelopment highlighted in the study’s background include unemployment, a lack of good roads, an inefficient communication system, illiteracy, low income, a lack of portable water, a degraded environment, insufficient technical skills, low agricultural productivity, a lack of adequate political structures and knowledge. This has made life difficult for the residents of the towns. Despite all previous governmental institutions and initiatives, these indications of underdevelopment have remained.
Education, in the form of human capital development, plays an important part in the growth of any area or community. As a result, governments have made significant investments in formal education at all levels and in all forms in order for formal schools to create the necessary workforce for development. For a long time, formal schooling got a pittance of government investment in education.
This is mostly because individuals, especially governments, are unaware of the benefits of formal education in attaining communal development. As a result, it is now the study’s problem to clearly and precisely identify how formal education might be effectively utilized in accomplishing community development.
1.3 The study’s goal
The overarching goal of this research is to discover how formal education can be used to promote community development. The precise goals are as follows:
To analyze the characteristics of Udi Local Government formal education participants.
To determine the role of formal education in attaining community development.
To identify the techniques that formal education can use to achieve community development.
Identifying the barriers that prevent formal education from attaining community development.
to investigate potential solutions to them
1.4 Research Issues
What criteria distinguish formal education participants?
What role does formal education play in attaining community development in Udi Local Government?
What strategies may formal education use to achieve sustainable development?
What are the obstacles to community development that formal education faces?
How can these issues be addressed?
1.5 Theories
At, the null hypotheses listed below were tested.
The researcher assigned a significance level of 05.
Hypothesis 1: There is no statistically significant difference in the mean judgments of formal education instructors and participants on the extent to which formal education utilized the stated strategies or methods for community development.
Hypothesis 2: There is no statistically significant difference in the mean ratings of formal education instructors and participants about the problems that formal education faces in attaining community development.
1.6 Importance of the Research
This study’s findings will be relevant in a variety of ways. It will benefit both professors and students in formal education programs. It will allow them to assess the extent to which formal education is used to achieve community development. It will also allow them to contribute to future formal education directors for higher efficacy.
It will also benefit Udi Local Government Area and other local governments that have formal education programs. The study’s findings will inform local government administrators on the critical role formal education plays in the development process. This will cause them to pay more attention to formal education through improved funding, personnel development, and program organization.
It will also benefit governments at the federal and state levels. The study’s findings will be eye-opening for individuals in government since they will assist shift their perception of formal education as a disorderly program. It will provide students with an understanding of the true importance of formal education in sustainable development.
This will allow them to pay more attention to formal education and, most likely, grant formal education equal importance with other types of education. This can be accomplished by sufficient funding and supervision of formal education programs, as well as policy evaluation.
It will be significant for curriculum developers in formal education. Knowing the extent to which formal education is used in sustainable development will allow curriculum developers to determine how far formal education has progressed in its search for development. This will assist them in reviewing the curriculum in key areas where they are inadequate and, if necessary, designing new curriculum to promote the use of formal education in development.
The study will also be useful to policymakers. It will enable them to critically examine current formal education policy and assess the need to make the policy more relevant and stronger than it is now.
Finally, it will benefit the wider public by helping to modify people’s misconceptions about formal education. They will understand the relevance of formal education in development and will provide the necessary support to help formal education thrive.
1.7 The Study’s Scope
The research determined how we may best use formal education to achieve community development. The study was limited to Enugu State’s Udi Local Government Area. It discussed the characteristics of formal education participants, the contributions of formal education to community development, the strategies formal education programs can use to achieve sustainable development, the barriers that prevent formal education from achieving community development, and how these barriers can be overcome.
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FORMAL EDUCATION’S IMPACT ON COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT