The following factors have been found to influence learning at home and in the school.
Types of Family and Students’ Academic Performance
Essentially, different types of families have been discussed in the previous chapter. Three major types of family are nuclear or monogamous, compound or polygamous and traditional or extended families. Studies performed by people proved that each type has its influence on the academic achievement of a child.
Many research studies have indicated that children from nuclear families perform better in school than children from the compound or polygamous families (Ajala & Iyiola, 1988). The following reasons are responsible for this:
1. The children have more time for their studies in most cases because there are less possible to send them on errands. The reverse is the case in a polygamous family.
2. Children from polygamous and broken homes have tendency to be social deviants due to lack of adequate supervision and care.
3. Since there are more people in a polygamous family, they exert a lot of pressure or influence on the child. If it happens that a lot of such influences are bad then this will adversely affect the child.
Family Size and Position in the Family
Family size refers to the number of children in the reference family. The larger the family the less the attention and devotion of each child by the parents and the more the difficulties encountered by the parents in meeting the needs of the children both physically and emotionally particularly in this austerity period when the prices of food and commodities are skyrocketed. No wonder the federal government of Nigeria is making a move to limit the number of children by a female to four. It is a good move in the right direction although the populace themselves are regulating child bearing due to the present economic conditions. The fewer the family the better is the ‘rule’.
The position a child occupies in a family equally plays a significant role in his development and academic achievement. generally, the first child enjoys most particularly among the middle class and the ‘rich’. The parents are excited and determined to give him all he needs. They are generally over-protected and have tendency to become spoilt due to the type of family they come from. Due to some of the facts stated above, some of them that are undetermined achieve low academic excellence.
In few cases, particularly among the ‘poor’, they labour seriously to achieve academic excellence and hence pave way for those behind them. The last born are generally ‘rotten’ in that they are adequately provided for not only by their parents but equally by their brothers and sisters. The mere fact that their brother is a lawyer and their sister is a doctor; blindfold them to the extent that they themselves will not work hard. In other words, they are relaxed by their elders’ achievements. However, there are exceptional cases to this.
No comments:
Post a Comment