CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
- Background of the study
Across the World, Education is a vital process in human development and environmental management. Education is a process of refining and preserving the collective values embedded in the culture of the society (Oyekan, 2000). By education, a network of worthwhile knowledge, skills and habit is passed on from one generation to the other for effective citizenship and collective benefit of the society. Education is a cooperative teaching-learning process of preparing an individual from birth and all through his or her life for happy useful living in the society within the culture and resource (Oyekan, 2000). It then follows that Education is a social service which ensures refinement of human behaviour in terms of his or her processes of reasoning, feeling and doing things in a happy expectancy. While education is a cooperative teaching-learning for effective citizenship and collective benefit of the society. Secondary school is a link between primary and tertiary institution where adequate knowledge for effective citizenship and collective benefit of the society and collective benefits of society is achieved.
Nwanana and Yengi (2009) have examined the cause of poor performance among university graduates. Some of these factors identified are intellectual ability, poor study habit, motivation, interest, psychoeconomic background, lack of vocational goals, low self-concept, status of parents, poor family structure etc. If for instance a child consistently falls or performs poorly in his or her examination, he or her presumably develop low self-concept may lack confidence to study or pass examination.
The importance of undergraduate students doing well in university has become a common concern for parents, teachers, counselors and psychologist. Parents devote a lot of resources to the children’s Education because they believe that good academic performance will provide a stable future for the children though many educational authorities have sought to find reasons for the downward trend in academic performance of undergraduate students to a combination of personal and institution factors. The personal factors include the level of individual intelligence, knowledge and ability while institutional factor are family or parental influence.
Family is the bedrock of any society, therefore, s stable and well-developed childhood can be guaranteed by a stable family. The current poor economic status of the country has exposed students to undesirable challenges that have negatively affected their academic performance in school, still Nigeria is yet to have a philosophy of Education when the economic status of the country is unstable. Home background is a collective terminology comprising of social class/status, economic status, family size, family structure and parent’s educational level, occupation and parenting style other factors pertaining to family life. Family background in the context of this study refers to family structure, parents occupation and parents level of education, by family structure is meant whether the family is monogamous or polygamous. Monogamous refers to a system owed to have only one spouse at a time while polygamy is a system which allows one to have more than one wife, as in Nigeria and many other African countries.
It is obvious that family has substantial influence on a child’s attitude towards learning while many other researchers have focused on the parentally educational qualification, parental occupation among others. The researcher is presuming that family size, parental marital status and parenting style can influence student’s attitude to learning. According to Salami and Alamode (2000), the existence of single parents in Nigeria is formally unknown and where there exist there are ignored as exceptional cases.
However now, there are far growing pattern within and beyond Nigeria. Although there are no available statistics of single parents in Nigeria,practical experience shows that there is an increase of single parents in Nigeria. Most single parents live on average or lower income than in fact families and at worst most constraint in consuming adequate financial resources to meet their children learning needs.in addition, since single parents must cope with the responsibility of work and child rearing, it may be more challenging for them to provide and maintain a supportive learning environment for their children (OECD/UNESCO, 2003).
Most studies have also discussed that parenting style is a potent factor in the learning attitude of the child. In homes where parents are autocratic and neglectful, children tend to be phobic and do not even dare to ask their parents question compared to democratic parents where these characteristic exists, these students are bound to develop a negative attitude to learning and it is this reason that have caused the researcher to carry out this study.
