CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

 Education has been viewed by scholars based on their perception of what education is about. Castle (1995) sees education as what happened to us from the day we were born to the day we die (2000) defines education as a weapon for combating ignorance, poverty and disease, as a bridges between confusion and comprehension, as a dam for conserving man’s store of civilization and for generating the power to move to greater civilization, as a means for transporting man from a state of intellectual subservience to a state of intellectual sovereignty. In a nutshell, education is all round development of an individual, intellectually, morally and mentally, so that he will be useful to himself and the society he belongs.

        It is assumed that broken homes retard the progress of those children from such background in that both parents are not on ground to direct and guide the child towards the achievement of educational goals. It is arguable or believed that children from broken homes are more likely prone to poor academic performance. A child may become a victim of broken home as a result of divorce or separation of the parents. When this happens, this child is entrusted to other people that are different from his parents. This person is expected to play the role of a surrogate parents despite his/her commitment of his/her own children without any empirical evidence, it is very clear that nobody will treat a child who is entrusted to his care the way he/she will treat his/her own child. By this token, the child is always confused and frustrated under the leadership style of style of step-father or step-mother. The frustration of a child knows no bound. At home under surrogate parents he is discriminated and suffers some psychological deprivations, he carries the same emotional frustration to the school. Instead of listening to the teacher and taking down notes, he is more often occupied with the intimidation discrimination and deprivation he/she is facing at him. As such, he has little or no inte5rest in the learning materials, as classes are ought to be attended and comprehensible in the course of subject taught presented at school.

Apart from frustration, dissemination, discourage and deprivation, the child may also be malnourished and segregated by surrogate parent (i.e. mother) who feel that she is wasting the family resources in the child she did not give birth to the child may lack the necessary school materials and in most case, may grudgingly allow the child to be attending school while that child may not be given the necessary things that are vital for acquisition of knowledge since he know that, he will be punished by the teacher for lack of learning materials, he may result to play truancy.

        Single parenthood has been found to adversity affect the learning situation of human being particularly the children that is to say, children who are reared in homes where parents are separated or divorced are most likely to be faced with sleep disturbance in class while learning and become irritable, fearful, aggressive and withdrawn (Cole and Cole 1993, Vander Zanden, 1980). Studies further confirm that children in one parents household not only do or perform poorly in school because they tend to lack self-control, but also become disruptive in the classrooms, instead of paying attention to what is being taught in class, they are busy disturbing others who are ready to learn. In addition, it is also reported that two years immediately after a mother’s marriage break up, the mother exercise less control over her children than she did before (Hetherington, Cox and Cos, 1982).

  The problems children from broken homes are facing with the resultant failure in school is a serious affair that calls for the attention of all and sundry including the government.

The family is the child’s first place of contact with the world. The child as a result, acquires initial education and socialization from parents and other significant persons in the family. Agulana (2000) pointed out that the family lays the psychological, moral, and spiritual foundation in the overall development of the child. Structurally, family/homes is either broken or intact. A broken home in this context is one that is not structurally intact, as a result of divorce, separation, death of one of parent and illegitimacy. According to Frazer (2004), psychological home conditions arise mainly from illegitimacy of children, the label of adopted child, broken homes, divorce and parental deprivation. Such abnormal conditions of the home, are likely to have a detrimental effect on school performance of the child he asserts. Life, in a single parent family or broken home can be stressful for both the child and the parent. Such families are faced with challenges of inadequate financial resources (children defense find 2004). Schults (2006) noted that if adolescents from unstable homes are to be compared with those from stable homes, it would be seen that the former have more social, academic and emotional problems. Rochlkepartain (2003) is of the opinion that the family and its structure play a great role in children’s academic performance. Levin (2001) states that parents are probably the actor with the clearest un-dimensional interest in a high level of their children’s academic performance. To some extent, there is simple evidence to show the marital instability brings about stress, tension, lack of motivation and frustration obviously, these manifestations act negatively on a child’s academic performance.

Johnson (2005) asserts that children of unmarried parents /separated families often fail and are at risk emotionally. However, this may not be completely applicable in all cases of broken homes. Some children irrespective of home background or structure may work hard and become successful in life. Moreover, Ayodele (2007) stated that the environment where a child finds himself/herself goes a long way in determining his learning ability and ultimately his academic performance in school.

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

 The family has enormous amount of influence on the education of the child both directly and indirectly. In the pre-school or formative years of the child, the home discriminate transmit culture and knowledge to the child correcting him where he goes wrong and directly him in other various aspects of his life in the society. The problem for broken home are:

1.      Divorce caused by maltreatment from the man, lack of proper care for the family, charge of adultery.

2.      Marriage without mutual consent, lack of true love non reciprocal love, parental disagreement.

3.     Inter-family misunderstanding – childlessness, disrespect and disloyalty for husband relations, lack of respect for each other, interference from both parties family members.

The cases of broken home are very common the cases range from voluntary separation, desertion, ejection, divorce etc. These broken homes have really caused a setback in the education of the children born into these families.

OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

The main objectives of this study is to examine the effect broken home or marriage has on the academic performance of students, the specific objective are:

1.     To investigate how broken home affect the performance of children from such homes.

2.     To intimates parents with the problems associated with broken homes in order to minimize separation and divorce.

3.     To make useful recommendations and suggestion to the teachers on how to help students from such background to learn better.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

The following research questions will guide the researcher while conducting the research to obtain a valid result.

1. To what extent does a broken home affect academic achievement of pupils?

2. How does maltreatment from step-parents contribute to the student’s academic performance in school?

3. What measure are the teachers taken to help their students from a broken home?

4. Does the government have any plans to reduce the increasing rate of broken marriage?

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

The rate of marriage failure is on the increase in our modern society. As the saying goes ‘when two elephants fight on the grass, it is the grass that suffer’. What becomes of children born to such a family is nobody’s concern. It is therefore persistent that a timely study be carried out in order to give useful suggestions and recommendation to teachers on how to help such unfortunate children to learn properly in school so that they can come out with a good academic performance in school for themselves and be useful to the society as well.

        As a matter of fact, many institutions like UNICEF, Ford Foundation and others have shown genuine interest and concern for western children in similar conditions like those in Africa. The impact of these aforementioned organizations has not been felt in most parts of Nigeria as a nation. It is therefore necessary that a radically guided research of this nature be carried out in this part of the world. 

   This study will however expose teachers to the problems discussed and its effects on education, with a view to working out modality of helping student from such background to learn better. And finally this research will serve a reference to those who has it in mind to conduct similar research.

SCOPE OF THE STUDY

The study covers the entire public secondary schools in Nigeria, but due to limited time and insufficient fund to travel around samples were taken from all the secondary schools in Alimosho local government area in Lagos state, Nigeria.

DELIMITATION OF THE STUDY

The research encountered different problems that were beyond their control in the process of making this research. One of such problem is inaccessibility to enough information. Another problem is the difficulty in getting accurate information due to sensitive nature of the problem under investigation. Insufficient fund, limited time and, some students were reluctant to respond to checklist due to its social inclination are also part of the problems encountered by the researcher.