Introduction
Primary education is the foundation a child requires in his or her educational pursuit. The quality of primary education a child gets would determine his performance in secondary school as well as tertiary level. It will equally affect his or her life after school. As such, the importance of primary education cannot be over-emphasized (Ayodele, 1992).
It is in this regards that Malotyre and Clark (1996) opined that the attitude of parents determine the quality of education their children or wards receive in primary school. They further opined that positive attitude of parents have positive impact on their children’s performance and ambition that help in raising knowledge and increasing understanding and facilitate academic progress through the involvement of parents towards their children’s academic activities. On the other hand, negative attitude of parents towards their children education have a negative impact on their academic progress leading to poor academic performance and consequently the withdrawal of such children from school. This makes the children to take to the street and become nuisance to the society.
However, Obodochi (2003) opined that most parents in the rural areas of Nigeria are careless about the primary education of their children as such they put up negative attitudes towards their children’s education at all level. This is so because most rural dwellers in Nigeria are more interested in achieving short term immediate development of their children as such prefer sending their children to learn vocational trade or assist them in farm work. But parents in urban areas have a positive attitude to the education of their children and wards owning to their perception above education and the value they attach to education and it affects the future of their children.
It is in this regards that Wilkinson (1997) stated that the perception of the value of education to a large extent determines the attitude of parents towards their children.
Conceptual framework
According to Malotyre and Clark (1996), parents are adult male and female responsible for the training and upbringing of a child. This includes a child given birth to be the parents and the ones under their care who they do not directly give birth to. This includes young relatives, adopted or fostered children. Okoh (2003) says that the way in which parents behave or act towards their children education can be positive or negative depending how such parents perceive or value their children education.Parents who do not value or know the impact of education of children upbringing tend to be careless about their children and treat issues relating to their education casually, or in some cases give deaf-ear to it.
However, parental attitude towards education may determines a child enrolment and years of formal education be completed, in this regard Onuoha (2002) opined that to a large extent attitude are important in measuring household demand for schooling as well as other constraint militating against childhood education. In most cases parental attitude toward primary education are generally found to be favourable. This is owing to the importance most parents attach to education and its impact on the future of their children.
Furthermore Alaba (1996) observe that, difference in attitude help explain house hold enrolment decisions in primary schools in Nigeria. In areas where there is high primary enrolment, it means parent value primary education and as such show a positive attitudes towards their children enrolment but where enrolment rate is low then reverse is the case. However, parental attitude are most influence by cost of school and their income. This limits the participation of parents in the education of their children. Anotherfactor which influence parental attitude towards their children’s education is inadequate information to parents from their children school policy formation. This would affect parent decisions and make them participate in their children education effectively but if parents lack adequate information or access to their children school and are not in any way included in policy formulation in any way, this will lower morale due to lack of awareness and may affect their children can be negative or positive depending on how parents perceive or value education.
Causes of parents’ negative attitude towards their wards’ education
In Nigeria, as elsewhere parents perceive education as a ‘meal ticket’ parents want their children to attend school because of the prospects which education is felt to give their future careers in the civil services, education, business or the police. I don’t want them to become a farmer like me, said by parents in Rafi Local Government in Niger State (Abusdulrahaman, 2001).
For the most part, parents’ aspiration for their children remains one for which formal education was a prerequisite: medicine, law, engineering, nursing, clerical police, soldiering, business and other sphere of endeavours which require formal education remain their reason for sending their children to school. As a result, primary school education remains the key to actualize this aspiration. These parents send their children to acquire primary education in public private schools respectively. These days the income of parents determine the primary school their children attend; those with low income send their children to public schools while those who are average and high class send their children to private schools with better teaching facilities (Obodoechi, 2002).
Notwithstanding the general perception to the value of education, not all parents equate education with formal schooling. Many see informal education as a better opinion. This is the reason why most parents enrol their children in vocational training such as automobile, mechanic, shoemaking, tailoring, brick laying and other sort of skill acquisition outside formal education. It is a common sight in town and villages to see children of school age engaged in such tradesduring school hours. It is even common these days that Nigeria is witnessing high unemployment rate which has made graduate jobless. Some parents have lost faith in education that as the key to their children future. They would prefer giving them training in informal ways. In this regard a pastoralist commented as follows on the value of traditional knowledge. ‘In its ways, herding itself is an education children need to be given a means of livelihood from their youth, not when they are already old to learn nothing is more worthwhile than herding”(Emoma, 1997). The general perception about primary school education by parents is that it is the key to the actualization of their children future career while some other parents who have lost faith in education see primary school as time wasting instead prefer training them informally through various vocational trades.
Evaluation of parents’ involvement in their children’s academic work
Parents’ interest, support and involvement in their children’s academic work, facilitate learning in no small ways. However previous studies indicate that so many parents do not show interest support or involved themselves in their children academic work. This is more prevalent among parents who send their children to public schools. This is the reason why children who went through the public primary school system in Nigeria have low academic performance compare to their counterparts in the private school (Omega,1991). Similarly, Alhamdu(2003) opined that severe studies indicated that one of the reasons for low standard in public primary school was the lack of parental interest and involvement in their children’s academic work. He felt that if parents where more involved in their children’s academic work, they will be motivated to work harder in school. He attributed this lack of involvement to a number of factors. One was that, most parents have the attitude that academic work is preserve for the school and in particularly for the teacher and therefore reluctant or unwilling to become involved. Another reason was the many parents often have little time to spare from daily schedules to devote to helping or following up on their children’s school work. Other parents, on the other hand, have little or non-education themselves and therefore do not have the knowledge or skills required to help or monitor their children’s academic work. In many communities in Nigeria,there is no culture of parental monitoring of children’s school work.
However, Malotyre and Clerk (1991) noted that parental involvement is imperative, as parental involvement would play or have an impact on studies behaviour, attitudes, and aspirations they further go to say in regard to parents involvement there is a need to increase parents aspiration and raise awareness in education, increase knowledge in education increases understanding of the structure and function of education institutions increase awareness of the progress and participation of the child, increase involvement and improve participation between school and the parents.
Wiikinson (1987) state that Nigerian people are not interest in achieving long term ambition but short term immediate happiness for their child compare to parents in the Western World who vicar children in a way that could be correlated with investment. In this regard Eckerman (1985) pointed out that there is need to be a partnership between the school, the parents and the community. And the school must also be prepared to be involved and encourage parents to become involved. The school cannot expect parents to feel comfortable unless they have a role, a function, a purpose, or if the purpose is to simply work in the tuck-shop, then we can’t complain if there is only limited involvement. There must be a common agreement, a shared knowledge base, as well as clearly established recognition that each group brings variable expert knowledge to the sharing process. Avenue must be developed so that parents and teachers can begin to work on co-operative projects in some school relations; community involvement is a process rather than a project. It takes time and the process can easily be threatened by school staff changes, particularly changes in executive staff.
Saggers (1998) claimed that the attitude of parents towards formal education encourage their children to attend school even when such parents had no formal education. They believed that by gaining an education would lead to material rewards and status within the wider community. However Sagger(1998) findings suggest that parents’ involvement in their children primary school education is not encouraging in Nigeria. This is sequel to the daily schedule of most parents who spend most of their time on economic pursuit and give little or no time for their children’s academic work. It is imperative for parent to be involved in their children’s primary school education. This is so because such involvement foster better understanding and consequently increase the knowledge of the children.
However, several studies indicate that most Nigeria parents are not always involved in their children academic work. They only foot bills for the school, which is not enough. Extract moral lesson and evaluation of children becomes very imperative in the face of the declining standard of education in Nigeria. This is conformity with the view of Okoh(2002) who opined that parents should always ensure that check what their children are taught in school in order to ensure that they conform to the curriculum required for their children. Parents should also evaluate their children academic ability regularly in order to know their performance in school. This will help children to progress academically and meet up in school.
In spite of the importance of parental involvement in children’s academic work, the literature point out that most parentsin Nigeria are reluctant about their children academic work or are too busy pursuing other economic commitments.
Parental attitudes that militates against children’s primary education in Nigeria
According to Obodoechi (2002),the negative perception of education and its value by some parents are hindrances to primary education in Nigeria. For instance some statements made by parents during group discussions clearly point to the negative attitudes that many parents have toward educating their children.The following statement where all made by parent who participated in group discussion. ‘As a mother, I do not have difficult even though I do not go to school.’ Grandparents believed that girls are of no use educationally.They believed that they are meant for home and giving birth. ‘No matter how much education you give to a woman she will one day end up in someone’s kitchen and all her needs will be catered for”. However, other parents also expressed the belief that guys would take care of them in their old age. As such should be trained in the trade they know too well instead of taking chances by sending them to school. Afterall these days, educated people end up searching endlessly for jobs that are no longer available.
Furthermore, Ayodele(1992) opined that some parents considered some of their children less capable in term of their academic ability; they often receive less encouragement and are rarely challenged at home to strive to succeed in their academic work because less is expected from them. They also in turn expect less of themselves and are less confident of their academic ability performance were encouraged to work hard to succeed because more was expected of them.
Trokos(2007) opined that traditional practices also influence the attitude of parents which is detrimental to their children’s education. Many communities in Nigeria were reported to favour marrying off girls of primary school age still fairly young. In most cases, these girls drops out of school once they married to start families. In some communities, especially in rural communities, there is the practice of betrothing girls at a very young age, sometimes at birth and marrying them off in late adolescence. The practice of early marriage often therefore leads to the end of a girls’ formal education. In some other communities on reaching puberty (from upper primary), girls are expected to participate in initiation ceremonies aimed at preparing them for womanhood and marriage.
These ceremonies are often held during the school term and result in girls missing a considerable amount of school time participating in these ceremonies was said to affect girls’ participation in education in general. However, Ejambi (2001) opined that poverty affects the parents’ attitude towards the primary education of their children. He noted that, even in those communities where parents were aware of the importance and concerned about the education of their children, enrolment levels were still low, due to their inability to meet the cost of education.
He pointed the high cost of education coupled with deteriorating economy which has reduced the disposal income available to the families had made it difficult to provide education for children of low income earners. This affects parents’ attitude towards their children’s primary school education in no small ways. Another issue that further aggravated this situated is the fact that, especially in the rural areas, families tend to have a fair large number of children. The communicative effect of the financial requirement for providing education for such number of children often proved to be too much for such parents. This makes such parents to develop a careless attitude towards the primary education of the children.
However, it was noted by Edache (1989) that parents are of the opinion that there was a serious shortage of white collar job and other employment opportunities available for their children after school or the ones available do not pay much salary. As such they were reluctant to encourage their children to enrol in primary school in order to start a journey into getting a white collar job that the low quality of teaching sequel to poor teacher remuneration which discourage intelligent graduate taking up teaching job also made parents discourage their children from formal education to informal education.Negative perception of the standard of education has influence on poverty and traditional beliefs which militate against children’s education in Nigeria.
According to Obodoechi (2002), some parents were reported to be reluctant to send their children to school because of their belief that the standard of education in Nigeria has fallen and attribute this to the reason why most graduate are unemployable in the face of high unemployment in Nigeria. As a result of this, they will prefer sending their children to learn a trade than enrolling them in primary school. In some communities there are views that in co-educational schools as most primary schools in Nigeria, morals would be corrupted because of the falling standard. This is owing to the perception about negligence of duty by most teachers especially in public private schools. As such there is fear for physical and sexual safety of children in school due to cases of physical and sexual harassment and abuse from peers and teachers in the school. Where schools are situated long distance away, parents also worry about their daughters’ safety while travelling to and from school. This view was also the reason why many parents were reported to be reluctant to allow their daughters to attend extra-tuition after school as must cases the teachers involved are men and as these sessions are usually held in the evening, parent are reluctant to let their daughter attend such lessons.
However, the fallen standard of education has affected the quality of enrolment in the primary schools. Consequently affecting effective teaching and learning this as affected the quality of pupils produce from such institution and has affected the attitude of parents negatively. In this regard a parent said, that when he passed out from primary school he could read and write fluently but these days most of his children who passed out from primary school could barely read and write. This has made him to lose faith in the system of education obtainable in Nigeria (Okoh, 2003). The fallen standard of education affects the attitude of parents toward the primary school education of their children in no small way.
References
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Oboduechi, F. (2006). An evaluation of primary school enrolment in Nigeria retrieved May 15, 2011 from blast project. Website: http/www.blastproject.com.
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