THE ATTITUDE OF SECONDARY SCHOOL TEACHERS TOWARDS TEACHING IN THE RURAL AREASÂ (EDUCATION PROJECT TOPICS AND MATERIALS)
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
According to John Dewey, education helps in the formation of fundamental attitudes of imagination, desire and thinking which is strictly correlative with culture in its inclusive sense. Rusk sees education as help in the development of each unit in the society to maximize his potentials, abilities and also to enable one contribute meaningfully to the growth of that community and share its accomplishment. Education is therefore the key to modernization and development. The introduction of Christianity was followed by western type of education and its was a common strategy that as soon as a situation was established one of the first facilities to be provided was a school to which they tried to recruit young ones who would be more easily attracted. The school was to train manpower who would successfully serve as catechist, interpreters, clerks, court messengers etc. to enhance their evangelical activities. The first missionary school was established in Badagry, a rural area in Lagos State in 1942 by Thomas Birch Freeman of the western Methodist missionary society.
Since the missionaries were in control over these schools before the government involvement, schools in the rural areas were adequately staffed and the teachers were doing their jobs effectively. Those rural are villages or communities characterized by the smallest of their population, poor housing or accommodation, the existence of untrained roads and low level of commercial activities. The occupation of the people is agriculture and they are handicapped by poor health care delivery, non-availability of portable water and electricity, inadequate transportation and communication system. With the above characteristics playing the rural areas, teachers posted to such areas started to protest their posting in favor of urban centers that are characterized with basic amenities not found in rural areas. Some teachers started to give flimsy excuses such as family separations, road hazard to remain in the urban schools. Some influenced the posting to urban centers through lobbying. These led to mass rural-urban drift, thereby creating vacuum in the numbers of teachers left to teach the less privilege students in the rural schools. The state government now took it upon themselves to post or transfer teachers from urban areas to rural areas and from rural areas to urban areas. This measure did not work out because most of the concerned teachers always find their ways to remain in urban entre4s where all their basic and social needs are met. Those who are lucky to be in the urban centers developed the sit tight syndrome.
The question now is ‘do we allow the rural schools to be phased out because of the negative attitude teachers are having towards them’? or will the government create a conducive and enabling environment in the rural areas to attract teachers to their school? It is therefore pertinent to identify the attitude of teachers towards teaching in the rural areas particularly in Uhunmwode local government area of Edo State.
