CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
The national policy on education defined education as a process through which a society attains changes: economically and otherwise usually for the better.
Looking at education as we have it today one can see that we have attained social and cultural changes, but economically we are, we no where. Thus the Western education tended to ignore our traditional education whose main guiding principle was functionalism or “Jon oriented emphasis”. It also combined physical training with character building and manual activity with intellectual training. These have persisted till date.
Education as an instrument of change should serve as an aid to the solution of societal problems. But it would appear that after all, western education has not the magic that it is supposed to have in solving our economic problems than it created. It has so far enabled us to achieve political independence yet such social problems like stealing, cheating, gross indiscipline etc with the outcome of unemployment and under-employment, the school dropouts, the never do wells and the like. All are products of our present system of education instead of forming the base for our technological development after 49 years of independence, the country is still a consumer oriented economy instead of production oriented economy.
India and China (countries thought to be in the third world) are enjoying their present economic status today’s because their education was and still is vocational oriented.
According to Philip Stoke Commission (1922) education as applied in Africa had been too literary and two classical to be useful, that at the end of the school courses, the school leaves were not fit to meet any of employed as clerks. He also said that there had been over production of those who can read and write undersupply of those who can till and repair.
According to hi the first step in adapting education to the needs of the society was to realize that Africans live both in urban and rural areas and so need agriculture for the urbans.
One can see from the above that the importance of education is its position as an instrument of change and development. This gave rise to the educational research going through a phase of great expansion and more so today it is the centre of educators and politicians (during the days of politics) themselves to involve a system that will clear itself some authorities then suggest that recourse could be taken to “Vocational education”