ABSTRACT
This study investigated the
consequences of child abuse on students’ academic performance as perceived by
secondary school teachers in some selected secondary schools in Ilorin metropolis.
A total of two hundred teachers (200)
were randomly selected from the secondary schools. The instrument used for the
study is questionnaire which is designed for teachers in each selected
secondary schools. Two hundred copies of the questionnaire were distributed to
the respondents.
Statistical methods which include,
t-test and analysis of Variance (ANOVA) were used for the analysis of the data
collected. Results of the study revealed that consequences of child abuse on
students’ academic performance as perceived by teachers ranges from
psychological to mental, emotional and physical, it also has negative effect on
students academic performance which has adverse effect on the human capital
development of the country.
In the light of the research findings,
conclusions were drowned and relevant recommendations were made.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Title
Page i
Approval
ii
Dedication
iii
Acknowledgement
iv
Abstract vi
Table
of Contents vii
List
of Tables x
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
Background
to the Study 1
Statement
of the Problem 10
Research
Questions 12
Research
Hypotheses 13
Purpose
of the Study 14
Significance
of the Study 14
Operational
Definitions of Terms 15
Scope
of the Study 16
CHAPTER TWO: REVIEW OF RELATED
LITERATURE
Introduction 17
Who
is a Child? 18
Student
Academic Performance as affect by Child
Abuse
in Nigeria 20
What
is Child Abuse? 26
Forms
of Child Abuse 27
Indicators
for Identifying Victims of Child Abuse 42
Effects
of Child Abuse on Academic Performance 50
Effect
of Abuse on Sexuality 51
Summary of
the Review of Related Literature 53
CHAPTER THREE: METHODOLOGY
Introduction 55
Research
Design 55 Population of
the Study 56
Sample and
Sampling Procedure 56
Instrumentation 57
Psychometric
Properties of the Instrument 58
Validity 58
Reliability 58
Procedure
for Data Collection 59
Method of
Data Analysis 60
Scoring
Procedure 60
CHAPTER FOUR: RESULTS
Introduction 61
Demographic
Data 61
Hypotheses
Testing 69
Summary
of Findings 74
CHAPTER FIVE: DISCUSSION,
CONCLUSION AND
RECOMMENDATIONS
Introduction
76
Discussion
77
Conclusion
88
Counselling
Implication 90
Recommendations 92
Suggestions
for Further Studies 95
References
96
Appendix
99
LIST OF TABLES
Table
1: Distribution of respondents by
gender 62
Table
2: Distribution of respondents by
religion 62
Table 3: Distribution
of respondents by teaching
experience
63
Table
4: Distribution of respondents by
subject area 64
Table 5: The
mean scores and items ranking order
on
consequences of child abuse on
students’
academic performance 65
Table 6: Mean,
standard deviations and t-values
of
respondents perception on consequences
of
child abuse on students’ academic
performance
on the basis of gender 70
Table 7: Analysis
of Variance (ANOVA) results on
respondents’
perception on consequences
of
child abuse on students’ academic
performance
on the basis of religion 71
Table 8: Analysis
of Variance (ANOVA) results
on
respondents’ perception on
consequences
of child abuse on
students’
academic performance on the
basis
of teachers experience. 72
Table 9: Analysis
of Variance (ANOVA) results on
respondents’
perception on consequences
of
child abuse on students’ academic
performance
on the basis of subject area 73
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Background to the Study
All
children are born to grow, to develop, to live, to love and articulate their
needs and feelings for their self protection. Although growing up can be
difficult, most children and young people receive the love and care they need
to develop into healthy, happy, young adults. In their development, children
need the respect and protection of adults who take care of them seriously, love
them, and honestly help them to become oriented in the world. But some children
are hurt, neglected and used by adults or other children. Young children may
not be aware that what is happening to them is abuse.
Abuse
can mean different things to different children, and can happen once or many
times during childhood. It has been observed that such abuse on children has
adverse effect on their academic and intellectual performance. (Herbert, 1990)
child abuse is any behavior directed towards a child by a parent, a guardian,
other family members or another adult that endangers or impairs a child’s
physical or emotional health or development. Child abuse can take place either
as a physical abuse, Sexual abuse, Emotional abuse or Neglect.
A
child is physical abused when he/she is hurt or injured by parent or other
people. This could be by hitting, kicking, beaten by objects, throwing and
shaking of children and can cause pains, cuts, brushes broken bone and
sometimes even death.
Sexual
abuse is when children are forced or persuaded into sexual acts or situations
by others. Children might be encouraged to look at pornographic pictures, be
harassed by sexual suggestion or comments, be touched sexually or forced to
have sex against their wishes, emotionally children are abused when they are
not given love, approval or acceptance.
Childhood
maltreatment potentially has major economic implications for Nigeria schools
and for their students. Take for instance a conservative estimates suggest that
at least 8 percent of U.S. children experience sexual abuse before age 18, while
17 percent experience physical abuse and 18 percent experience physical neglect
(Flisher, Kramer, Hoven, Greenwald, Alegria, Bird, et al, 1997, Gorey &
Leslie, 1997).
Childhood
maltreatment and aversive parenting practices, in general, has the potential to
delay the academic progress of students (Shonk & Cicchehi, 2001). It
therefore has the potential to undermine schools’ ability to satisfy standards
of school progress entailed in the no child left behind legislation (U. S.
Department of Education, 2005), putting them at risk for loss of federal
funding. It also has the potential to adversely affect students’ economic
outcomes in adulthood, via its impact on achievement in middle and high school
(Cawley, Heckman, & Vytlacil, 2001; Heckman & Rubinstein, 2001).
Although
its potential impact is large, evidence of causal effects of abuse on
children’s longer term outcomes in school is generally lacking. The current
state of evidence for a link between childhood abuse (physical and sexual abuse
or neglect) and school performance is limited to negative associations between
abuse and school performance. On average, children who are abused receive lower
ratings of performance from their school teachers, score lower on cognitive
assessments and standardized tests of academic achievement, obtain lower grades
and get suspended from school and retained in grade more frequently (Erickson,
Egeland, & piñata, 1989; Eckenrode, Laird, & Doris, 1993; Kurtz,
Gaudin, Wodarski, & Howing, 1993; Kendall- Tackett & Eckenrode, 1996;
Rowe & Eckenrode, 1999; Shonk & Cicchehi, 2001). Abused children are
also prone to difficulty in forming new relationship with peers and adults and
in adapting to norms of social behaviour (Shields, Cicchtti & Ryan, 1994;
Toth & Cicchtti 1996). Although these examples of negative associations
between abuse and school performance are suggestive of causal effects, they
could be spuriously driven by unmeasured factors in families or neighborhoods
that are themselves correlated with worse academic outcomes among children
(Todd & Wolpin, 2003).
In
addition, not much of the previous evidence linking childhood maltreatment to
worse school performance generalizes well to older children in middle and high
school and to children not already identified as needing services. All types of
abuse may have serious and lasting effect on the child personality. A frequent
symptom of child abuse, neglect is under feeding which is the most common cause
of under weight in infancy (James 1992) people who abuse children come from all
ethnic religion, geographic, socio economic and Educational groups. Most
abusers are simply lonely, unloved, in mature depressed and angry person. Less
than ten percent of them are classified as psychotics or sociopath (James 1992).
Poverty and ignorance on the part of parents have sent small children into the labour
market. A child of seven or eight years and upward is engaged as house girls,
stewards, cafeteria restaurants and beer drinking palours. They are also
employed as baby sitters when themselves require such services. Some employers
of labour under pay them, make them do chores and other activities beyond and
above their physical power. Some house wives use them to prepare meal for their
families, they even go to the extent of leaving an eight years old house girl
to cater for a six month old or older children while the family is at work
between the hours of 7:30 am to 3:30 pm or 5:00 pm in some cases, such young
children are left in their care at night and evening when the couple attend
movies, shows, parties and other evening social engagements.
In
some extreme cases, some children are always engaged to attend to grinding
machines to grind pepper, corn, guinea corn or yam flour while some are loaded
with heavy items to hawk around the non- pavement streets maneuvering between
heavy traffic and competing with other minor hawkers to sell their wares. It is
easy for them to be knocked down by vehicles or their wares been stolen from
them or sales of the day snatched away from them.
There
are some critical situations where some Nigerians employ twelve to fifteen
years old female juveniles as prostitutes. They are used to promote their
business and win customers for them, money collected from such immoral practice
are gathered at the end of the day to the landlord or landlady who in turn
gives out commissions to the young innocent children.
Looking
at the society today education plays prominent role in the life of an
individual, it is believed that without education one is in total darkness, the
individual will be ignorant of the knowledge about him/herself, the society and
the world at large. No wonder, people all over the world are expected to strive
to acquire education especially in a country like Nigeria where great premium or
importance is placed on paper qualification/ certification (Ahmed 1996).
Education
has been generally acclaimed as a very potent tool for growth and development
of economic, political, social and human resources worldwide (Oshamehin, 2005).
This implies that, there is a global awareness of the importance of education
as the most predictable and significant instrument for sustainable human and
material development. Thus, Nigeria
like other developing countries in Africa,
being aware of the role and relevance of Education, adopted Education as an
instrument per excellence for all round development of the individual and the
nation (Ocholi, 1999). This fact is briefly highlighted in the National Policy on
Education (N.P.E, 2003 or 2004 Edition) with states that:
“Education
will continue to be highly rated in the national development plans because
education is the most important instrument of a change as any fundamental
change in the intellectual and social outlook of any society has to be
proceeded by an education revolution.”
From
this statement it is assumed that, the Nigerian society must have been well
transformed and illuminated by the golden light of education, but is surprising
that studies (Akinboye, 1985, Animba, 1991 & Okoye, 1991) revealed that the
laudable aims and objectives of education are yet to be fully achieved in Nigeria
because of the problems of child abuse which has a great consequence on
students academic performance some of these previous evidence linking childhood
maltreatment to worse school performance generalizes well to older children in
middle and high school and to children to already identified as needing
services evidence of the impacts of maltreatment on academic performance in the
general population of middle and high school students on schooling attainment
in the general education population and on economic outcomes in adulthood.
It
is on this ground that this research is carried out to further the study
particularly in selected secondary schools in Ilorin metropolis on the consequences of
child abuse on students’ academic performance.
Statement of the Problem
Child
abuse is not just a social problem; it is rather an intellectual and economic
problem which is evident in the performance of children in schools. In a
situation where over seventy percent (70%) of student that write the WAEC and
NECO cannot boast of five credit pass including Mathematics and English
Language, then education sector need to be looked into. A common feature of
some Nigerians in the twentieth century is to see and treat children the way
they want. They see children as some body who should be seen and not heard, children,
should be seen to and not capable to replying who should be abused and
neglected. The cultural traditional system continues to relegate the position
of children to the background without giving, them their fundamental human
right with dignity and the capability of growing and developing to adulthood.
(Kolade 2004).
The
impact of such cruelty on educational development of the children cannot be
over emphasized, such children if at all are provided with opportunity to
attend schools are bound to be failures, delinquent, lack conducive home,
environments and conducive relationship with peer group in the school.
Kolade,
Racheal & Fehintola (2004), carried out a research on the impact of child
abuse on student academic performance in secondary school in Oyun Local
Government of Kwara State, the out come of the research revealed that child
labour adversely affect student performance in school. To the best knowledge of
the researcher, there was however no specification as to the sources of the
data analyzed by previous researchers on the abuse of student, which is the gap
the researcher wishes to fill on the impact and consequences of child abuse on
students’ academic performance.
Also
Mbong (2002) in his work on implication of child abuse on the education sector
in Nigeria looked at how
child labour and abuse has adversely affected the education sector in Nigeria without
paying special interest on the children performance.
Research Questions
The following research questions were
formulated to aid this study:
1.
What is the consequence of child abuse
on student’s academic performance as perceived by teachers in Ilorin
Metropolis?
2.
Is there any difference in the
consequences of child abuse on the academic performance of students as
perceived by teachers on the basis of gender?
3.
Is there any difference in the
consequences of child abuse on the academic performance of students based on
religion?
4.
Is there any difference in the
consequences of child abuse on the academic performance of students based on
teaching experience?
5.
Is there any difference in the
consequences of the academic performance of students as perceived by teachers
based on subject area?
Research Hypotheses
The
following hypotheses have been formulated to guide the research study.
1.
There is no significant difference in
the perception of teachers on child abuse on the academic performance of
students based on gender
2.
There is no significant difference in
the perception of teachers on child abuse on the academic performance of
students based on religion.
3.
There is no significant difference in
the perception of teachers on child abuse on academic performance of students
based on teaching experience.
4.
There is no significant difference in
the perception of teachers on child abuse on academic performance of students
based on subject taught.
Purpose
of the Study
The
purpose of the study is to critically examine and evaluate the consequences of
child abuse on the academic performance of secondary school students as
perceived by teachers in Ilorin
metropolis.
The
specific objectives include:
1.
To draw out how children are abused.
2.
To show how child abuse impact on the
development of these students.
3.
To
study particularly how abuse affect the academic performance of students.
4.
To explore possible option of stopping
child abuse in Nigeria,
paying particular reference to Ilorin
metropolis.
Significance of the Study
The
finding of this research work is useful for every stakeholder in the Education
sector, the government, the parents, the students, the society, and the non-
governmental organization (NGO’s). It will help the government to enact laws
and polices that will prevent child abuse and ensure that those who indulge in
child abuse are punished and given orientation. It will also help the school management and teachers to easily
identify abused children and know what to do to help such abused students in
improving on their academic performance through guidance and counseling.
The
research will also help the parents to understand the danger of abusing their
children and provide them with impetus to achieve academic excellence. It also
helps the non-governmental organization in their advocacy against child abuse.
Above all, it helps the student to stand for their right and protect their
future by remaining focused and undistracted on their academics.
Operational Definition of Terms
Child Abuse: -
Refers to physical or emotional harm done to the children by parents or guardians.
Academic Performance:-
This is the degree of understanding the subject offered at secondary school
level as determined by the terminal examination or the result of the West
African School Certificate (WAEC) or National Examination Council (NECO).
Child: - A
child is a person who is under the age of 18 years and is still under the guide
of his or her parent.
Child Labour: -
Child labour is the systematic process of using children to work with little or
no compensation and consideration for their health and safety.
The Abused: -
Are the children who are physically, and emotionally maltreated and which
affect their intellectual, social and academic performance.
Scope of the Study
The
scope of the study will be limited to the analysis of the consequences of child
abuse on the academic performance of children in schools in ten (10) randomly
selected schools within Ilorin
metropolis of Ilorin South Local Government Area.
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