โ Scribed by Chikezie Emmanuel Ahia; Richard W. Bradley
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
The multifarious economic activities and developments, now going on in Nigeria, have caused social and cultural changes and challenges. There is a serious capitalistic quest for economic survival, sufficiency, stability, and surpremacy on the part of individual citizens. These changes have helped to shift the speed of the society to a higher gear and created emotional turbulence.
Such rapid changes force students, as members of the Nigerian society, to study under higher anxiety levels than was the case a decade ago. Ambitions seem to be getting out of control, and competition is reaching new teethgrinding and narcissistic heights. A disproportionate amount of societal pressure is directly, or indirectly, put on secondary students to make career choices. Yet they are not provided with adequate career information, counseling, and guidance. This has been linked to the high drop-out rate in some schools (Shaikh, 1976;Taiwo, 1968). Occupational ignorance helps to confuse and make realistic choice difficult. If the educational, vocational and personal counseling needs of these students are delineated and adequately addressed, there may be a reduction in student drop-out rate and unemployment (Obe, 1980;Ogionwo, 1972).
In recent years, the Nigerian government has called for the establishment of counseling and guidance services in all schools (Third National Development Plan, 1975 and National Policy on Education, 1981). There have therefore been temptations and attempts to 'do something about it' without a definitive determination of the needs and socio-cultural parameters for operation. If this continues to be the case, counseling and guidance programs that respond to speculations of needs rather than actual needs will spring up here and there. This also means that planning and choice of remedial processes and guidance activities may be misguided. So this study has sought to assess the educational, career and personal counseling needs and problems in a Nigerian secondary school with the objective of providing data needed for a meaningful establishment of counseling and guidance services.
This study has another significance. It was conducted in Kwara State, one of Nigeria's ten northern states, where no assessment of student needs has ever been
๐ SIMILAR VOLUMES
This study investigates the career guidance needs of 600 Black secondary school students. It also examines how Black secondary school principals perceive the guidance programs in their schools. The results indicate sixteen categories of career guidance needs which should receive priority in planning