Education is a crucial sector in any nation. Being a major investment in human capital development, it plays a critical role in long-term productivity and growth at both micro and macro levels. This explains why the state of education in Nigeria continues to be our national discourse at all levels.
Consequently, the implication of the declining quality of education at all levels has far reaching negative impact on a nation’s moral, civic, cultural and economic sustainability. For better understanding and easy grasp of the subject matter of discourse, it is important to briefly clarify and explain some key words which are Education and National Development.
What is Education?
Etymologically, the word education is derived from two Latin words “educare” and “educere” “Educare”, means to train, to form or to mould. In other words, it means that the society trains, forms or moulds the individual to achieve the social needs and aspirations. “Educere”, on the other hand means to build, to lead, or to develop. This is mostly favoured by the humanists who argue that the function of education is to develop the natural potentialities in the child to enable him function in the society according to his abilities, interests and needs.
Education therefore is seen as the total development of the individual child through acceptable methods and techniques according to his abilities and interests to meet up the needs of the society and for the individual to take his rightful place and contribute equally to the enhancement of the society. In addition, education is what each generation gives to its younger ones which make them develop attitudes, abilities, skills and other behaviours which are the positive values to the society in which they live.
Another concept to be explained here is national development. National development in this context can be seen as a state where a nation is succeeded in providing a source of living for the majority of its inhabitants and that in such society, premium is attached to elimination of poverty, provision of food, shelter and clothing to its members. In addition, it the multidimensional process which involves the sustained elevation of the entire society and social system towards a better or human life.
How is Education a Tool for National Development?
Firstly, the Educational sector breeds every other sector: through the educational sector, every other professions such as doctors, engineers, politicians, lawyers, accountants, business men and the likes are being trained. Consequently, this therefore means that, when the educational sector of a nation is faulty, every other sector is affected.
Secondly, education supplies the needed manpower for National Development: Education is largely perceived in Nigeria as an indispensable tool which will not only assist in meeting the nation’s social, political, moral, cultural and economic aspirations, but will also inculcate in the individual knowledge, skills, dexterity, character and desirable values that will foster national development and self-actualization.
From the definition of education given above, it is clear that education trains an individual to be useful in the society and to meet up the need of the society for national development. Therefore, it should be clear that without education, a nation cannot get the needed manpower for material advancement and enlightenment of the citizenry. The trained engineers, teachers, medical doctors, etc are all the products of education. This explains why it is argued also that the quality of a nation’s education determines the level of its national development.
Thirdly, education promotes social and group relationships: education trains individuals to relate to and interact meaningfully with others in the society and to appreciate the importance of effective organization for human progress. Here, the school system within the educational system fosters this development. The school brings people of different cultural backgrounds together for a common purpose. This promotes mutual co-existence among the different students.
Again, in the school system, there are official clubs and organizations in existence. Learners who participate in these organizations and clubs gain experience in working with others outside the individual organizations and to some extent in working and competing with outside groups with minimum friction and this goes a long way to promote national unity and peaceful coexistence which will lead to national development.
In addition, education also promotes the culture of productivity by enabling individuals to discover the creative potentials in them and apply same to the improvement of the existing skill and technique of performing specific tasks, thereby increasing the efficiency of their personal societal efforts. This therefore means that education teaches or trains people to be useful to themselves and the society they live.
By this, they have to be productive and discover their creative abilities and use this to perform specific tasks to attain self actualization.
Conclusively, education develops in individuals those values which make for good citizenship, such as honesty, selflessness, tolerance, dedication, hard work and personal integrity, all of which provide the rich soil from which good leadership potential is groomed. As already noted, education trains an individual to be responsible in the society; from this, it is clear that education gives moral training.
However it is sadden to see that despite all these facts about the importance of education to national development, the educational sector is dilapidating and begging for urgent survival. The crisis which has engulfed the Nigerian education sector centres on lack of proper funding, inadequate infrastructural facilities, inadequate staffing, little or no supervision, corruption and lack of mutual relationship among school head-teachers and community leaders.
Consequently, as stated earlier, the implication of the declining quality of education at all levels has far reaching negative impact on a nation’s moral, civic, cultural and economic sustainability.
At this point, it is important to realize that discussions on education and its reforms to make it contribute meaningfully to national development should gradually and systematically move away from a politicized to a more analytical approach that appreciates the complexities inherent in proffering genuine and workable solutions for revamping our educational system.
Individually and collectively, we must contribute our own quota to ensure that the educational sector at all level is revived back to normalcy; this is necessary because whatever quality of education that students acquired now, it is the same quality that they will use to impact our future children.
On this note, we thereby urge government officials, alumni’s of every schools and everyone who has benefitted from education in one way or the other to always in anyway encourage the teachers and support the academic activities of schools in their community. This they can do by giving scholarship award to outstanding students, helping to renovate dilapidated classrooms and provision of textbooks, exercise book to support the academic morale of students.
– Ozovehe Moses writes from Okene, Kogi State.
