Deviant behaviour and its consequences on the academic performance of students

Introduction

Deviance in school can be explained as any act of students’ behaviour that tends to deviate from the laid down rules and regulations guiding such an institution. Therefore any act of bad manners, that disrupt the general welfare, security and survival of an established institution can be termed a deviant act. Such bad manners include the following; stealing, lateness to school, absenteeism, etc (Richard, 2009).

In Nigeria today, there appears to be a great concern about the lack of discipline in the educational sector. Every year a number of incidences of deviances and regular disturbances leading to violence and damage to properties have been witnessed in several post primary schools (Nwankwo, 1981).

Apart from the extreme form of deviance that catches newspapers’ headlines, there are other cases of truancy, indiscipline, drug abuse and other forms of deviance which are not reported in the newspapers. Deviant behaviours in schools have a particular importance because it relates to the orderliness of the future adults of the country. Hence for huge expenses on education to be profitably rewarded, deviance in schools must be controlled in the school system because effective learning can only take place under a conducive atmosphere (Onoyase, 2013). But to the surprise of everybody, this is not always the case. Acts of deviance, vandalism and lawlessness have almost become a way of life in our society today. The identification of these factors and its consequences on the academic performance of students is urgent if the educational system in the country has to survive.

Conceptual framework

According to Merton (1960), deviance is any act of behaviour that violates social norms and is usually of sufficient security to warrant disapproval from the majority in the society. Deviance is the unwillingness to conform to the standards of behaviour of a particular society (Nwana, 1979). Macionis and Gerber (2010) views deviance as any thought, feeling or action that members of a social group judge to be conduct that violates definition of appropriate and inappropriate conduct shared by the members of a social system.

Michael, Branner, Sayette and Gaimes (2011), state that deviance is the process whereby actions, beliefs or conditions come to be viewed as deviant by others. He went further to say that deviant behaviour is relative to time and place because what is considered deviant in a social context may be non – deviant in another. A number of theories related to deviance have emerged within the past 50 years. So far, the most well known are;

Labelling theory

Labelling theory refers to the idea that individuals become deviant when two things occur;

• A deviant label is applied to them.
• They adopt the label by exhibiting the behaviour, actions and attitudes associated with the label.

This approach to deviance recognises its cultural relativity and is aware that deviance can result from power imbalances. But it takes the idea of deviance further by illustrating how a deviant identity develops through the application and adoption of labels. Labelling theory argues that people become deviant as a result of people forcing that identity upon them and then adopting the identity.

Labels are understood to be the names associated with identities or role-sets in society. They refer to identities that are known for falling outside of cultural norms. There are two additional ideas related to the labelling theory approach to understanding deviance. First, once a deviant identity is adopted, it is often the case that the past behaviours of the now deviant individual are re-interpreted in light of the new identity. The process of recasting ones past actions in light of a current identity is referred to as retrospective labelling. Another important element of labelling theory involves the idea of stigma. Stigma refers to the situation of the individual who is disqualified from full social acceptance because of some mark of infamy or disgrace or a label that is often difficult to hide or disguise. In summary, labelling theory argues that the application of labels to individuals is an important element leading to deviant behaviour.

Anomie theory

Robert Merton’s Anomie Theory of Deviance is based on the idea that deviance is a natural occurrence with societies but it is not natural in nature. The fact that different levels of deviance have occurred in different societies at different times, he concluded that it must be a reaction to environmental or social changes. Merton believed that the dominant culture of a society may set norms and goals that a person is expected to reach; else they are seen as slackers or failures. Not everyone is able to live up to this expectation but try to and the further their means are from their goals, the more strain they feel.

Conversely, there are situations where a person has little or no desire to achieve these goals. This strain causes an individual to take one of the five modes of adaptation to this strain. They are; conformity, innovation, ritualism, retreatism and rebellion. Merton (1960), defined this as an individual’s attitude towards the goals and the means to achieve these goals which may result to a deviant act.

Differential – associated theory

Mueller (1995) coined the phrase differential associate to address the issue of how people learn deviance. According to this theory, the environment plays a major role in deciding which forms people violate. In a nut shell, this theory postulates that people learn deviance from the people they associate with.

Adolescent and deviance

According to Mueller (1995), the adolescent year or stage seems to be the main force behind the attitude of students in secondary school. The problem of adjustment increase during the adolescent years, at this stage, the youth is trying to understand what and how he is and at the same time his relationship adults are the most ambiguous. He went further to say that the adolescent occupies a half-way house between childhood and adulthood.

According to Timothy (2009), it has been seen that some characteristics associated with juvenile delinquency are possibly related to innate factors but that the relationship between genetic factors and deviant behaviour is not straightforward or necessarily predictable. Some children are deprived of one or both of their parents through abandonment, hospitalization, divorce, separation or death. There has been considerable discussions as to whether it contributes to the development of delinquency and how? Even a short absence on the part of the mother could have a deleterious effect on the physical, emotional and social wellbeing of the child.

Mueller (1995) therefore classified factors which are responsible for deviation among students as mental health, emotional upset or stress as well as defence mechanism. Life in school in his view is full of competition and struggle to meet standards. Most of the time, the individual is on stress and so he must develop appropriate ways of coping.

Deighton (1991) stated that adolescents feel challenged by unsuitable rules and regulations. At the secondary school level, when young adults begin freeing themselves from their parents’ authority, a negative list of rules and regulations may actually be taken as a challenge. He therefore becomes uneasy and rebellious about the rules and regulations that do not make sense to him. The author attributed causes of deviance to many factors among which are ignorance either because the rules have not been stated or because it is so general and ambiguous. Others include difficult subjects, parents’ attitude as well as lack of motivation on the part of teachers to arouse interest.

School guide and deviance

Turner (1973) explained that schools are part of the continuances of a civilized society. This has been developed by the efforts of millions of men over the years. In his view, the increase in deviant behaviour among secondary school students is due to school failure in many ways. The failure can be seen as the sense of giving identification; another can be in passing literacy and morals in preparing them for the society they wish to enter. Consequently, when the school fails to channel properly the energy of vigorous youngsters, they tend to develop behaviour contrary to good or acceptable behaviour.

According to him, authoritative attitude has found its ways into teachers who do not realize the danger of their approach. He went further to explain that the large schools will inevitably increase disciplinary problems because staff and students may not know one another very well due to the school population. The author also blamed parents for the deviance of their children in school. In his view, behaviour is seen as the concern of parents, while education is that of the teachers. This view can be questioned on the ground that attitude arise from the home and influence the behaviour and performance of children at school. Similarly, school culture can influence the behaviour of students at home.

Ozigi (1978) writing under school rules and regulations and discipline also outlined some possible symptoms and causes of deviance among students. According to him, the symptoms of deviance are easily recognizable but the causes are subtler.

The symptoms are for example; students’ demonstration, mass disobedience, deliberate breaches of school rules, drug abuse, stealing, truancy, absenteeism, persistent lateness, bullying and general unrest. Causes of deviance include such factors as ineffective teaching, authoritarian method of administration, harsh school rules, the influence of home and society, unsatisfactory curricula and poor result in examination. In addition, there is also the factor of poor communication between the school administration, staff and student. Hence deviant behaviour should be checked objectively through its causes and not simply its symptoms.

Forms of deviant behaviour

Richard (2009) claimed that the general population determines deviant behaviour. This determination of deviant behaviour also depends on the individual. Deviant behaviour by own connotation means any act contrary to established pattern of socially acceptable behaviour.

The following are list of behaviours which are considered educationally as deviant behaviour;

1. Dishonesty: This is characterized with impersonation and all forms of examination malpractices.
2. Disobedience: It includes unwillingness to carry out particular orders, putting on wrong uniform and sometimes wearing unapproved sandals.
3. Truancy: This involves a student staying behind for some days or weeks even after school has resumed. It consists of dodging classes and unauthorized movement from school.
4. Assault and insult: This is students’ show or lack of respect for constituted authority and regular fighting.
5. Sexual offences: This includes abortion and sexual activities within the school compound.
6. Stealing: This could be taking of other students’ belonging without permission.

General factors of deviance

Ezewu (1981) said that the school is a social organization and as such it has got his established patterns of behaviour expected in the form of rules and regulations which governs the official action of the principals, teachers, students and other group of personnel that work in it.

In his book, he place adolescent age of the secondary school students between 12 – 18 years. At this stage, the adolescent is neither a child nor an adult. It is a stage characterized by active physical and social development. It has been described as a period of stress and strain by psychologists.

He further says that we have already considered the school as one of the most important agents of socialization. For the school to carry out its functions effectively, the physical environment should be appealing and attractive to students. In most schools today, accommodation is a critical problem. The schools are overpopulated and poorly equipped.

His approach to the factors responsible for deviance is realistic one as he examined both the teachers and the students. The school according to him is a social system comprising of rules and regulations governing the personnel in it. In his definition, he included the teachers, students and non-academic personnel. He also identified the period of adolescent as being between 12 – 18 years and saw it as a period of stress and strain. It is noteworthy that this definition emphasizes that the educational environment should be appealing/attractive to students and finally highlighted the problems of over-population, poor equipment and insufficient staff.

Ezewu’s definition is all embracing but appears not to be specific as it fails to identify the causes of stress and strain either from family background or peer group competition or moral laxity on the part of the student.

Causes of deviance

According to Onoyase (2013), it is not enough to identify what constitute deviant behaviour but it is equally important to know the causes of deviant behaviour among students. We may need to examine the causes from three perspectives i.e. the age of the student, his personality and the role played by the society in making the student deviant.

1. The age: For those who study psychology, they know that most of the secondary school students are adolescent and so their behaviours are based purely on physical development. The girl notices certain changes in herself which are indications that she is now matured for sexual activities as far as the boy is concerned, the appearance of pubic hairs is a sign that he is no longer a boy but a man and he is also interested in having a girlfriend. This may lead the boy to steal money in order to meet up with adults, but the fact that the adolescent now sees himself as an adult, he engages in taking alcohol and smoking of cigarettes and Indian hemp. The adolescent in most cases regards the adult as being against him and he sees the adult’s attempt at correcting him to mean reducing him to be a child. The adolescent reacts violently to this type of situations. This may be the cause of riots and demonstrations in our present day secondary schools.
2. The student’s personality: Individual differences come in here because identical twins may not develop the same characteristics of an adolescent at the same time. They may not react to social occurrence in the same manner. Sometimes, you find out that two students may be faced with financial problem and may be tempted to go and steal, the first may give in but the second may not. Again there are situations where some students have engaged their teacher in a fight, but others would not, furthermore, some students are known for breaking rules and regulations of the school but others are not. The individual personality may be held responsible for the differences just discussed.

Situation factors are important in shaping students’ behaviour. The school is different from the child’s home. If the student adjusts properly to the school by abiding with all the rules and regulations he will live in peace with others in his new environment. The failure on the part of the student to adjust will result in;

• Playing truancy or keeping away from school
• Attacking teachers and other students
• Engaging in smoking and drinking.

3. The society: First, we have to recognise that the school is part of the society and whatever is going on in the society must affect the school. The teachers’ status in the society is very low because of his economic position, both parents and students who are materialistic therefore look down on the teacher. The materialistic upbringing of some students must have been responsible for some girls in the secondary school engaging in sexual activities in order to acquire the “beautiful things” of the world.

Nwankwo (1981) opined that the major causes of deviant behaviour in our post-primary institutions are;

1. Family background: A child’s family background affects his learning either positively or negatively depending on the situation. Parents greatly affect their children’s behaviour. Children are like sponges; they absorb or model everything a parent does and incorporate what they see into their own lives. Negative examples can be detrimental to a child’s development and can lead to deviant behaviour. Children who grow up in a violent home where both parents always engage in a tussle are more violent and rebellious.
2. Bad administration: This is rampant in schools owing to lack of qualified educational managers; there are several misunderstandings between head-teacher and staff. This may at times lead to open combat and students would be listening and imitating them.
3. The teacher’s personality: The teacher’s personality at times to the students does not portray him to be a kind of teacher to emulate for his carefree and reckless life in school. Some teachers go to the extent of smoking cigarettes in the school. Some even get drunk and behave irrationally in class when teaching. The irrational behaviour of many teachers leads to lack of mass co-operation on disciplinary action in schools. This occurs when there is no mutual relationship and understanding among the teachers. Some teachers want to maintain discipline in school while some would not because of their infidelity with the female students, so they would want to cover the deviant behaviour of the students in the school thereby increasing the problem.
4. Inappropriate method of teaching/overcrowded classrooms: Even at modern times, most teachers still adopt the teacher-centred instead of the student-centred method of teaching. When this is done, how would you think that deviant behaviour and indiscipline would not be the talk of the day? If deviant behaviour is to be wiped out in our schools, overcrowded classrooms should be avoided. This would help teachers to be able to identify each student with his/her name and kind of behaviour. It would also allow for proper monitoring of the students. Where there is no breathing space, most of the time instead of listening to their teachers, they would be fighting themselves because of where to settle down.

Rivilin (1961) maintained that some of the roots of adolescent misbehaviour in schools are to be found in the society to which the adolescent lives. According to him, war, depression, inflation and unemployment are bound to affect adolescent either directly or indirectly by the effect they have on their families. In other words, stressing the effect of the peer group on indiscipline, he maintained that learning in school situation is always accomplished in groups’ context. The importance of the group in individual learning in social adjustment indicates the necessity to understand the structure and behaviour of groups of adolescent. This enables the teacher to see the positive and negative impact of peer groups on indiscipline.

He holds that frustration in the home environment which can lead to delinquency or deviant behaviour. Children frustrated at home environment finds it easier to cheat in examination so as to make it possible for them to leave their parents’ house. The frustration could start when their social and vocational process are blocked by their parents economic and social status.

Okoye (1960) in his contribution agreed that deviance arises from the environmental circumstances and home upbringing to which the child was exposed to before coming to school. Morrish (1972) asserted that the effects upon the society of persistent exposure to spectacles of violence and crime are almost impossible to assess. He maintained that potentially aggressive and maladjusted youngsters find violence on the screen particularly fascinating.

According to Nwankwo (1981), one of the easiest ways of getting everybody involved in school activities is to let information flow up and down the channels of communication. The inability of the school to provide the physical and social needs of the students is also responsible for deviant behaviour among students. This means that poor administration is capable of disrupting the life of school, the more crucial to the causes of acts of deviance in secondary schools is the period of adolescent which our youths reach while in secondary school.

Deviance and academic performance

According to Jessor, Bos, Vanderrryn and Costa (1995), whether or not a student is considered to be a deviant has an impact on academic performance. The relationship between deviant behaviour and academic performance is a reciprocal one.  They also conducted a study looking at the risk factor that can affect deviant behaviour stating that when controlling for demographics of gender, ethnicity, socio-economic status and grade cohort, they found that low grade point average is a significant risk factor linked to deviant behaviour. This supports the idea that having a low grade point average can be a risk factor that leads to deviance.

In their study of the pathways between self-esteem and academic performance, Liu, Kaplan and Risser (1992) found that self-esteem had a significant negative impact on deviance, which had an inverse direct effect on motivation. This is directly tied to academic performance. Thus, deviant behaviour has an indirect effect on academic performance through motivation.

Kasen, Cohen and Brook (1998) found that anti-social behaviour, the risk of dropping out and committing a crime all decline with higher academic performance.  They stated that within high school settings, there is a high proportion of deviant youths and this negatively affected their academic performance claiming that this drop in academic performance is related to the occurrence of deviance. Their study shows that those who are deviant do not tend to attain test scores as high as those of student who are non-deviant.

Strategies to control students’ deviant behaviours

According to Onoyase (2013), deviant behaviours among secondary student are as a result of three basic factors, that is, the age of the student, his personality and the influence of the society. Nothing seems to be strange in deviant behaviour of a student. The only thing is that the behaviour does not agree with the rules and regulations of the school. Teachers should not regard deviant behaviour as a serious offence; rather, such a student should receive proper attention of the guidance counsellor.

The following should be done;

1. Teachers should avoid the use of complete authority in handling deviant behaviour since it is an adolescent problem;
2. Enough facilities should be provided in the school where the adolescent can make use of his surplus energy;
3. Schools should endeavour to formulate few rules and regulations. Efforts should be made to get students represented in the school’s disciplinary committee;
4. Since the students are under the care of the teacher, the teacher is expected to show good example to them. His authority and discipline over the students should personal rather than official;
5. There should be co-operation between the home and the school so that the teacher will know the student’s home background. This will enable the teacher to solve problems of deviation in the student;
6. Parents’ show of concern for their children’s welfare is crucial;
7. The admission exercises in our schools are defective to the extent that students who are not academically sound are admitted. This type of students results to cheating in examination. Our admission exercise therefore needs overhauling;
8. There is need to take seriously the teaching of social studies and religious instruction in our secondary schools;
9. Our elders need to maintain the standard of what they value in the society. A situation where our elders emphasise a particular standard and do a different thing entirely must be viewed seriously. The school needs to maintain the standard it preaches.

References

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