TRADITIONAL AFRICAN PERCEPTION OF EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION IN NIGERIA: IMPLICATIONS FOR EDUCATION IN NIGERIA
ABSTRACT: This research study investigates and evaluates the traditional African perception of early childhood education in Nigeria, noting its implications for education in Nigeria. The work tries to explore the relevance inherent in African traditional philosophy for childhood education. It is no doubt that every society’s educational system is sustained by certain philosophic outlooks and early childhood education including other levels of education in Nigeria are not exempted. Noted that before western education in Nigeria, there had been an already existing philosophy of African indigenous education, this educational philosophy was relevant enough to have met the needs of the growing African societies. The system of education was highly pragmatic and geared towards a philosophy of functionalism and productivity. It was seen as the life of the society; the curriculum although not written but was comprehensive. The learners were taught the core virtues and values of the society and moral education was at the peak of it all. It is against this background that this work explores the philosophical implications of this system of education for Nigerian educational theory and practice. These implications are discussed in this work, under the epistemological, metaphysical and axiological imports, noting the reasons why the Nigerian system of education should engraft such into her school system, and the relevance also to the Nigerian society at large. This work also discusses some major challenges of early childhood education in Nigeria and the factors bringing about these challenges. The work, therefore, makes use of four basic research questions. As a philosophical research, it makes use of theoretical research design and the philosophical tools of analysis for the analysis of the data. It furthermore carries out an in-depth and critical analysis and discussion of the research questions and finally, based on the discussion, it proffers relevant recommendations and makes suggestions for further studies.
GET RELATED PROJECT TOPIC IN EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION
CHAPTER ONE
1.1 Background to the Study
As in many parts of Africa, Nigeria today is bedeviled with criminality and problematic behaviors such as vandalization of public property, kidnapping, ritual killings, corruption, robbery, examination malpractices, fraud, divorce, lack of respect for law and order and a host of other anti-social behaviors. This country has witnessed violence of serious dimensions such as violent conflict in the Niger Delta, as a result of the skewed revenue sharing formula and accumulative tendencies of public officers at all levels of the government; political, ethnic and religious violence resulting to wanton destruction of lives and properties, Boko Haram insurgency in the North-east with devastating consequences on human lives, and socio-economic sabotage that threaten Nigeria’s continued survival as a nation (Enweremadu, 2014). Other aspects of violence in this country include domestic violence such as rape, acid attacks, molestation, wife battery, etc which have been on a nationwide increase in the past three years from 21% in 2011 to 30% in 2013 (CLEEN Foundation, 2014).
From the above exposition of some of the situations in the Nigerian society, one is compelled to ask, if the Nigerian society has been this way from the onset. It may be said that the Nigerian society before colonialism, was a peaceful society, marked with generally accepted value systems which were transmitted or shared through the traditional system of education, and were obtainable as early as from the infant stage of the child’s development. This calls to say that the shared values became necessary and were compulsory parts of the child’s life that he must imbibe since these values guided him into being not just a functional citizen of his society, but a patriotic and peaceful citizen to whom developing and enhancing peaceful co-existence in his society was a priority. Thus, the traditional education of the child was a major medium of enculturating the child into his societal values, morals, culture or ways of life; it was a medium of grooming a child in a holistic way as against what we have today in the Nigerian school system and society at large.
In every modern society, it is believed that education is the key to national development and there is a need to maintain every level of education especially the pre-primary stage because it is the bedrock upon which all other educational levels are built. Once a child misses that early stage where he comes to terms with how the society ought to be, it becomes difficult for the child to get back to the basics.
In the task of education, the transmission of human values is central. This is as a result of the fact that the younger ones of the human race cannot successfully survive to maturity or engage fully in adult life except they assimilate some vital beliefs and lifestyles about the world around them. An important medium for which this can be made possible is the enculturation process of education. In primitive societies, initiation into adulthood provides a ready-made mechanism for the transmission of knowledge. In such traditional societies, the need for instruction in tribal ceremonies, initiations and apprenticeship systems, may have covered spontaneous education with a thin veil of deliberateness and organization. What happens in such less civilized societies is a situation where early childhood education is not a major consideration. So, education is neither systematic nor given major consideration. In order words, cultural values may have been passed on by way of oral tradition (Omatseye, 2011).
In traditional African societies, the immediate and extended families as well as the community to which the child belongs carried out most activities associated with child-rearing practices. It was ensured that children were provided with adequate love, care, and security, especially in the early formative years. Within the families, the social, emotional, physical and intellectual needs of the child were provided. But in this present generation, due to the sociological and economic changes, which are rapidly leading to modernization and urbanization, the traditional role of the family towards the education of the child, has been severely supplanted by a more organized pre-school arrangement known as kindergarten, crèche, or nursery school.
At the rudimentary level, it could be said that the motive behind early childhood education could be described as teaching the pre-schooler the non-instinctive means of survival. This is to ensure the perpetuation of human values, even though the universal principle of education among human beings is yet too simple. This is because living in itself goes beyond the mere satisfaction of basic drives. In effect, education goes beyond teaching the beginner how to survive. It teaches him the way to appreciate the ways of life and values of the older generation. A child, far from being born into a vacuum, finds himself in a social and cultural maze, a human environment. The people in this environment begin at once to mold him so that he will respectfully follow their ways (Charles, 2009). In this manner, the information considered essential for both individual and group survival is taught the child, once he is old enough to understand. While this is quite valid, reasoned judgment would suggest that the transfer of cultural and social values from a group of adults to preschool children is not quite an easy task; the reason being that at birth, the child is as naked culturally as he is physical. More so, cultural and social values cannot be inherited through the genes or genetically. The argument is that since the cultural and social values of a society cannot be transmitted genetically, they must somehow be acquired through learning, and the use of intellect. Thus, the average child can be taught to conform to the norms of any human society.
The concept or idea of traditional African early childhood education can be traced back to the period of an African child’s education, before colonialism; that period the child is born into an African home and all through his education and training process. The arrival of the child into an African family was seen as a great occasion. It was celebrated with fanfare and merriment. The naming ceremony was conducted in full view of all the members of the extended family, relatives, and friends. Special rites were performed and the child is given names. The education of the child started from infancy just as in any European, Asiatic or American society. The baby is fed regularly, mostly through breast milk, and weaned at the appropriate time, although this practice differed from one ethnic group to another. However, all African societies trained and educated their children in toileting, eating, socialization, and general behavior. At this initial stage, the child was more intimately involved with his mother than the father.
In a polygamous family, there were other ‘mothers’, who took it as part of their duty to minister to the needs and education of the child; but even then, the real mother carried the final responsibilities. The father was out most of the day and the mother stayed at home with the child. Hence, she was sensitive to everything that happened to the child and ministered to his needs (Uzoma, 2014).
The education of the child in an African setting was done by everyone in the society, beyond the immediate parents and siblings of the child. Thus, the holistic education of the child was the sole responsibility and priority of the members of the society. Every child between the ages of one and six was curious and watched the gestures of the mother, including her expressions. The child was educated in the art of communication through his language and other communication gestures; he was made to understand what it meant for his mum to smile or frown at him, and other gestures through eye contact. As the child learned to walk, all breakables were removed from his path least he stumbled on them or broke them in the course of play. As the child grew older, he became even more curious about things around him; he gradually recognized that there were other worlds outside his mother’s orbit. He learned to manipulate things, playing with toys or other objects that were easily accessible to him. To restrain him from doing certain things, outright threats or taboos were introduced to him by his parents or siblings (Uzoma, 2014).
Between the ages of four and six and sometimes earlier, in some families, the grandparents, uncles, and aunts became involved in the education of the child. The child was told stories, taught the art of respect for and obedience to elders and peers or age mates (a vital aspect of traditional African education), code of behavior, and history of the family or the ethnic group. He was taught to explore his environment, by observing the adults in their activities; he then was expected to imitate them. He intuitively jumped, climbed trees, danced or performed a balancing act, seeing that his older siblings did so. This enabled the African child to discover his limbs and in no time, the uses of those limbs. As part of the early childhood education of the African child, he was allowed unlimited access to the stimulating world of African music and dance, unlike his European counterparts. This he did by carefully observing the adults and with time, he learned to fall in step. These infinite varieties of African child dance movements offered him one of the best media for physical exercise; the dance and the music also encouraged team-work. He was also taught the relevance of his metaphysical world and how to reverence God and the other minor gods. He was taught the various roles each played in his life. He was also taught taboos and different festivals and their relevance to his existence.
Traditional African childhood education, to a greater extent, encouraged and emphasized character training. Indeed, it was the cornerstone of African education. In fact, J.A. Majasan in his study of Yoruba education identified character training and religious education as the two main objectives of Yoruba education and showed that other objectives were pursued through the later (Uzoma, 2014). Everyone in the traditional African society wanted the child to be sociable, honest, courageous, humble, preserving, of good repute and conduct at all times. Hence all hands were on deck since the child was not seen as belonging to his parents alone but to all, especially since if he was to become a menace to the society, all and sundry would suffer for it. In this manner, the information considered essential for both individual and group survival was taught the child, once he came of age to comprehend.
The government of the Nigerian society has abandoned the education given to pre-schoolers in the hands of private school owners to solely manage. This has given rise to a lack of uniform educational activities in the business of child-rearing, unlike the traditional setting where the education of the child was a general priority. The Nigerian society to an extent now sees values as subjective, no more objective and this has affected the quality of education given the child. This lack of uniform practice can be largely credited to the government’s lack of interest in this bedrock or crucial aspect of Nigerian child’s education. Education given the child is no more of a holistic value especially since some of the curriculums used in such ECCD centers are borrowed from either British or American curriculum, making the educational system across-breeding system of education. The quality of education given the child in the traditional African setting, was a holistic one; one which aimed at grooming the child intellectually, morally and skill-wise. That is to say that the education of the child then, has knowledge, skill and character contents. It also promoted the cognitive, psychomotor and affective domains of learning. The present education of the Nigerian child highly aims at promoting intellectualism (Epistemology) where the child is taught the art of reciting, rote memorization, counting, and reading. He is also taught through play which somewhat promotes the psychomotor skills, but the case of character development, morals and values even though are taught the child but are not placed at the forefront of the child’s education. The axiological and metaphysical aspects of the education of the child, which used to be in the traditional Nigerian setting are now shown lesser attention against what it used to be. That moral aspect of the child’s education is still not given much attention. After all, education is meant to be a tool for peacebuilding, good governance and better leadership, national development, etc. It is on this same score that the education of the child is expected to educate the child on the relevance of living a moral life, to ensure peaceful co-existence in the Nigerian society, to ensure good leadership strategy, to ensure a developed society. All of these can be achieved if only there can be a borrowing of the ideas of traditional African ideas on education. Hence, education planners in Nigeria are to revisit the school curriculum content for the education of the Nigerian child, do a borrowing from the ideas of African education and engraft them onto the present western ideas of early childhood education content, to make products of sound moral conducts, and values (axiology) for a better nation.
With this background, this research work tries to take a critical look at the concept of early childhood education, with particular reference to traditional African education for its implications for education in Nigeria, western ideology of early childhood education, the role of the Nigerian government in the business of early childhood education, to restore the educational processes from what it is, to what it ought to be.
1.2 Statement of the Problem
Nelson Mandela said that education was the most powerful weapon to change the world. True, but the issue with this statement is that, while education is now seen as a tool for scientific change, it is gradually losing its original purpose which includes majorly, the transmission of social and moral values. Education in Nigeria is no more fully for the transmission of values; it is about an exclusive transmission of intellectual information. Education without moral values, as useful as it seems rather to make man a more clever devil. Traditional African education, one must say, had such essential ingredients as morals, humility, non-violence and co-existence or communalism, tolerance, simplicity, cleanliness and health, self-control, accepting the importance of self-realization and the search for absolute truth. These ingredients added values to the type of education given to the child. However, the type of education the child gets today is majorly about intellectualism which to an extent has given rise to some of the present social challenges bedeviling the Nigerian society.
Early childhood education to a larger extent, does not go beyond simple acts of reading and writing, whereas it is a stage where the child is ripe and ready to be enculturated into his societal norms, morals, and values. Recognizing the need for the child to acquaint himself with the values, skills, and knowledge of his society, the child is expected to conform to social norms, which tend to aid social development, peaceful co-existence, and unity in diversity. This calls to say that the child’s social and cultural values can be transmitted to him through his early childhood education as was the case in traditional African society. However, today in some major Nigerian schools, it is boldly advertized that the curriculum used is either Cambridge, British or American and Nigerian parents flood such schools probably out of ignorance, social class recognition or better still, because some of these children may be opportune to study abroad, hence they need to be used to such curriculums. But does that curriculum cover the Nigerian needs or social situation?
Again, it is no secret that early childhood education in Nigerian society receives little support from the government. The only possible attention it receives is on the paper through the National Policy on Education. In terms of implementation, it is a “no go” area. Being the foundation of all levels of education if not properly managed, makes the other levels of education weak. Today in the Nigerian school system, the government tends to prioritize primary, secondary and tertiary levels of education, to an extent, with no due attention for the foundational level of education. Hence, one is forced into believing that if not mainly but to a greater extent, the challenges being faced in the school system and the society at large, acquire from such negligence. The care and management of early childhood education in Nigeria is to a greater extent left under the care of private school owners, and this has become a lucrative source of wealth to these owners, not considering the very essence of early childhood education, from the traditional African societies, and the eyes of great philosophers of education and their ideas on early childhood education. This, one may say, is sabotage to the Nigerian system of education especially since these private school owners manage the school activities the way they seem right due to lack of supervision from the government. Hence, this research will critically see how possible it will be for care and attention to be given this level of education.
On these scores, therefore, this research will bring the Nigerian early childhood school practices home. It will highlight the very importance of emphasizing ideas of traditional African education in ECCD centers. Although these ideas are there in the early childhood curriculum there is the need to put them at the forefront of the experiences of the child. These ideas will be seriously emphasized (epistemologically, axiologically and metaphysically) and how they can help tackle the prevalent needs of the Nigerian child especially on the area of moral development.
1.3 Aim and Objectives of the Study
This study aims to evaluate critically, the traditional African perception of early childhood education and its implications for education in Nigeria society. Specifically, the objectives of the study are as follows:
- To examine the traditional African philosophic thoughts of early childhood education in Nigeria.
- To ascertain what the challenges of early childhood education in Nigeria are.
- To determine the implications of neglecting traditional African early childhood educational values, for the Nigerian society.
- To evaluate the implications of traditional African perception of early childhood education, for education in Nigeria.
1.4 Research Questions
The following research questions are used as a guide to the study. They are:
- What are the traditional African philosophic thoughts of early childhood education in Nigeria?
- What are the challenges of early childhood education in Nigeria?
- What are the implications of neglecting traditional African early childhood educational values for the Nigerian society?
- What are the implications of traditional African perception of early childhood education, for education in Nigeria?
1.5 Significance of the Study
This study draws attention to the need for the understanding of the philosophical implications or relevance of the traditional African philosophy of early childhood education, to educational theory and practices in Nigeria especially its early childhood education program. First, the study is significant for the enhancement of policy decisions about early childhood education in Nigeria, concerning promoting the Nigerian social and moral values, for national development and quality education for the Nigerian child. Second, it can help make early childhood educational practices in the country, uniform with one value orientation, especially concerning some philosophic proposals on how early childhood education should be. Third, the study will enable early childhood education to be prioritized in Nigerian levels of education. Fourth, the study can ultimately help make early childhood education to be seen and used as a vital tool for the transmission and propagation of the Nigerian value system to her citizens. Hence, this study will be significant to owners of Early Childhood Care and Development Education Centres, the government, and the Nigerian society at large.
1.6 Scope of the Study
The research study focuses on the traditional African perceptions of early childhood education and their implications for education in Nigeria. To this end, therefore, it covers all aspects of early childhood educational theories and practices in Nigeria.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Title Page i
Abstract ii
Table of Contents iii
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the Study 1
1.2 Statement of the Problem 7
1.3 Aim and Objectives of Study 9
1.4 Research Questions 9
1.5 Significance of Study 9
1.6 Scope of Study 10
CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW
2.0 Introduction 11
2.1 Conceptual Framework 11
2.1.1 The Concept of Early Childhood 11
2.1.2 Early Childhood Education 14
2.1.3 Pre-School 16
2.1.4 Child Care 16
2.1.5 Child Rearing Practices 17
2.2 Philosophy of Traditional African Early Childhood Education in Perspective 19
2.3 Theoretical Framework 21
2.3.1 Plato’s Early Childhood Educational Theory 21
2.3.2 Plato’s Stages of Education 22
2.3.3 Plato on Moral Ethics 23
2.3.4 Plato’s Aim of Education 23
2.3.5 Friedrich Froebel’s Early Childhood Educational Theory 23
2.3.6 Froebel’s Influence on Childhood Educational Theory 25
2.4 A Philosophical Analysis of Early Childhood Education 28
2.4.1 The Idealistic Theory of Early Childhood Education 30
2.4.2 The Idealist Curriculum and Pre-school Learning 35
2.4.3 The Progressive Theory of Early Childhood Education 38
2.4.4 The Experimentalist Theory of Early Childhood Education 49
2.4.5 The Humanistic Theory of Early Childhood Education 58
2.5 Appraisal of the Literature Review 60
CHAPTER THREE: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
3.0 Introduction 62
3.1 Research Design 62
3.2 Sources of Data 62
3.3 Methods of Data Collection 62
3.4 Method of Data Analysis 62
3.4.1 Speculative Mode of Philosophy 63
3.4.2 Prescriptive (Normative) Mode of Philosophy 63
3.4.3 Analytic Mode of Philosophy 64
CHAPTER FOUR: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
4.1 Traditional African Philosophic Thoughts of Early Childhood Education in Nigeria 65
4.1.1 Early Childhood Educational Thought in Pre-Colonial Nigeria 69
4.2 Challenges of Early Childhood Education in Nigeria 75
4.3 The Implications of Neglecting Traditional African Early Childhood Educational
Values to the Nigerian Society 82
4.4 Implications of Traditional African Perception of Early Childhood Education for
Education in Nigeria 88
4.4.1 Epistemological Implications of Traditional African Early Childhood Educational
Practices for Education in Nigeria 89
4.4.2 Metaphysical Implications of Traditional African Early Childhood Educational
Practices for Education in Nigeria 102
4.4.3 Axiological Implications of Traditional African Early Childhood Educational
Practices for Education in Nigeria 109
CHAPTER FIVE: SUMMARY, CONCLUSION, AND RECOMMENDATIONS
5.1 Summary 116
5.2 Conclusion 117
5.3 Recommendations 117
5.4 Contribution to Knowledge 119
5.5 Limitations 119
5.6 Suggestions for Further Studies 119
References 120
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