Parental and teacher attitude to girl-child education and economic empowerment

Abstract

This study investigated how parental and teacher attitude to girl-child education affect her economic empowerment. The study is built on the premise that attitude can determine how emancipated and economic empowered the girl-child becomes when educated (and, or otherwise). It is also hinged on the assumption that functional education, in the provision of such basic life skill facilities as home management/food and nutrition, internal decoration, crafts and handiwork, washing and laundry, sewing (i.e. fashion and design), weaving of cloths, dyeing of cloths and perhaps, music, would give more money to the girl-child, and that when this happens, she would be more emotionally fulfilled. The descriptive survey design following the multi-stage sampling technique was employed to pick participants from the thirty-six states and the Federal Capital City (Abuja), Nigeria for the study. Through a random table of selection, six local government areas each from ten States were picked by way of automation while twelve primary schools, with the alternate facilities for Child-Friendly (i.e. UNICEF-Assisted Schools) and non-assisted category of the ten baseline states each were used. The simple random method was utilized to select one thousand, seven hundred and sixteen (1,716) primary school teachers along with 3,756 parents as the participants for the study. While the age range of the school teachers are between 18 and 57 years (x = 39.64, SD = 11.3) , that of the parents range 29 and 63 years (X=48.31, SD= 17.2) respectively. The Life Skills Education Sub-Scale (LSES), the Teachers' Perception of Pupils Attitude to Schooling Scale (TPPAS) adapted from SAGEN/01/TQ/03A (I.E. teachers' Questionnaire) and the Parents' Attitude Scale to Girl-Child Education (PAS) adapted from SAGEN/01/PAS/14E were the research instruments used in the study. The simple descriptive statistics of relative frequency counts was utilized for analysis. The findings showed among others, that out of the eight listed Life Skills and Survival Programmes, Crafts and handiwork (80.6%) ranked highest as schools subject being taught in schools. Preparation for local food (i.e. home management and food and nutrition) showed that only (17.3%) of schools had instructions. Weaving of cloths and Dyeing are (10.1%) and (4.8%) indicating their poor emphasis. Sewing only had (3.1%) participating schools having instructions on the curriculum. It further showed that 61.3% of the primary school teachers perceived that girls do not have much interest in schooling. Overall parent's' attitude to girl-child education is least desirable especially when compared to the education of the boy-child. The implication is that while the girl-child is narrowly educated and is exposed minimally to Life Skills education, she may be perpetually perhaps, regarded as an object and a gullible member of the family who may have little or no right to sustainable economic life. If that happens, she may also be mentally stressed and psychologically dwarfed for life.

International Journal of emotiaonl psychology and sport ethics Vol. 8 2006: pp. 34-57