Stakeholders seek to improve quality of civic education

Civic education in schools is important because it helps students understand how government works and to become good citizens. It also provides adequate knowledge to citizens on how to influence government or participate in decision making processes. However, student’s civic education in most parts of the country was said to be lagging and many people […]

Civic education in schools is important because it helps students understand how government works and to become good citizens. It also provides adequate knowledge to citizens on how to influence government or participate in decision making processes.

However, student’s civic education in most parts of the country was said to be lagging and many people have limited engagement in civic education. Again, the civic education that schools currently offer certainly leaves much to be desired.

 

Both governments and non-governmental organizations have initiated moves to improve civic education in schools. 

The Executive Secretary, National Education Research and Development Council (NERDC), Professor Ismail Junaid, said the essence of including civic education in the school curriculum was ‘to inculcate patriotism in the minds of Nigerian children.’ He said civic education would remove prejudice in the minds of people regarding other people and regions and develop the feelings of nationalism among them.

 

He said the Council will start impact assessment analysis to determine the level of students understanding of the subject.   

An organization – Riplington & Associates, said it was making efforts to improve the teaching of civics in schools. The organization aims to use qualitative and quantitative data to aid their educative work in Nigeria and Africa. It is implementing a project titled “promoting quality civic education in the country.”

The project was being implemented in three pilot states of Borno, Enugu and Kano over a period of one year. The project will among other things examine the current slide in civic education implementation in primary and secondary schools and assess the overall quality of civic education curriculum and the teachers responsible in teaching it.

It recently organized a ‘national stakeholders’ consultative meeting on promoting quality civic education in the country’ in Abuja.

Those in attendance include representatives of federal ministry of education, state education commissioners, organizations and students.

The Director, Abiola Sanusi, said at the meeting the project, supported by Open Society Initiative for West Africa under DFID funded-programme ‘Deepening Democracy in Nigeria 2’ was meant to strengthen democratic governance in Nigeria.

She said the group recently concluded a series of state consultative meetings in the three pilot states to sensitize and raise awareness of stakeholders about the project on promoting quality of civic education, noting that “this included school visits that afforded us the opportunity to interact with students and staff. In addition, we have had advocacy meetings with NERDC and NCCE to sensitise them about the upcoming project.”

She said the meeting was an opportunity to discuss an issue of mutual interest with participants from the three states and the FCT on civic engagement, national development, values, the role of young people under 18 and the education system.

She said there was the need to improve the behaviour of youth through ensuring that civic education provides that opportunity for young people to identify moral bankruptcy and ethical vacuums, and to be equipped to do something about them.

A former director at the Office of the National Security Adviser, Dr. Fatima Akilu, said as the world becomes more globalized, the Nigerian society has become more stratified with political, ethnic, tribal, and religious divides becoming more pronounced. She said “from Boko Haram sect, to the Joint Niger Delta Liberation Front, an insular sense of identity is at the heart of conflict in our nation.

“Failings in our education system have played a significant role in hardening divisions.”

She emphasised that the national curriculum in Nigeria was broad and robust on paper but was not being implemented effectively, adding that current interventions in the education sector often focus on infrastructure.

“There needs to be a greater focus on the content and quality of the education provided. To effect significant and sustainable change, infrastructure development must be coupled with enhancements to teaching methodology and lesson content,” she said.

According to her, building the capacity of teachers was essential to improving the quality of education and the academic experiences of students but providing quality education alone was not enough.

“Civic education should be incorporated across teaching, building understanding amongst students on their rights and responsibilities, the duties and powers of the state, and political and civic decision making. Quality civic education is vital, and can help to define and strengthen national identity, as well as foster citizenship that prepares young Nigerians to take up the mantle of visionary leadership,” she said.

In the end, the meeting observed that delivering civic education curriculum remains a vital mechanism for teaching young people about their rights and civic duties to function appropriately in the society and that the school was a refuge for inculcating civic education in young people based on the social crisis in society.

This makes school driven civic education delivery very important. Also, it observed that civic education was made a compulsory subject in Nigerian schools in 2011 through the implementation of its curriculum.

However, there was a key gap as it was accepted without a general debate and several concerns were not addressed. For example, teachers are not well informed on how to transfer such knowledge.

The meeting resolved that students needed to be very well taught about nations’ history, founding fathers and their efforts, and vision for our country while civic education content should be geared towards promoting the value of democracy and highlighting the personalities of some eminent citizens.

The meeting agreed that sensitization on citizen’s rights was a key component of civic education curriculum and should be taken seriously. This would enable pupils, students and adults to understand their rights and that of others. The capacity of teachers too, needed to be developed through training in civic education. Teachers have to lead exemplary lives to fully inculcate civic education in their students.