Rationale for Teaching Profession

By its very nature, teaching possesses two very appealing traits. First, it deals with the young, with those whose minds and characters are forming. It is a privilege to be entrusted with the task of facilitating the growth and development of the younger generation. The teacher shares the parents' responsibilities and joy of direct involvement in promoting the healthy and balanced mental and moral life of
children. Indeed, teaching is pre-eminent among the callings in its opportunities for cultural and moral services. Second, teaching provides opportunities for intellectual development. It brings those who pursue it into intimate contact with books, experiments, and ideas. It stimulates the desire for increased knowledge and for wider intellectual contacts. Actually, no teacher can be really successful in performing his duties unless he is intellectually curious. Since literature, science, and the arts are taught in schools, the teacher's continued advancement in some or all of these fields is desirable. Thus, in teaching, intellectual development is not a sideline. It is something which fits directly into the demands of the work.

The material rewards that teaching brings are not the chief reasons for going into it. The remuneration of teaching is relatively modest but reasonably sure and steadily increasing.

Historical Development of Teaching Profession in Nigeria

The development of teaching as a profession in Nigeria should be considered from the standpoint of the first criteria of a profession, that is training and certification. The truth is that proficiency in every art - whether it be painting, music or teaching – involves training, but also needs more than training. Training cannot produce genius, but genius can come from training. Teaching has its techniques as much as any other art and the process of acquiring those techniques is training (Jeffrey, 1971). Training is part of the professional preparation of teachers for his job.

One of the major problems of the country‘s educational system as a whole is the dilution of the teaching profession by untrained men and women. Fafunwa (1974) reported that the first teacher – training college was established by the church missionary society (C.M.S.) in Abeokuta in1859, and was known as ―the training institution‖. The school was moved to Lagos in 1869 when the European missionaries were expelled from Abeokuta. In 1896 it was moved to Oyo to become St. Andrew‘s college, Oyo. The Baptist mission also founded the Baptist training college at Ogbomosho in 1897. The Wesleyan Methodist missionary society opened an institution for the training of catechists and teachers in Ibadan in 1905 with four pupils. By 1918, the number had risen to twenty and the institution became known as Wesley College, Ibadan. In 1892, hope Waddell (training) institute was opened with a dual purpose:

(i) to train young school leavers in various trades and (ii) to train teachers and preachers.

In the northern part of Nigeria, the training of teachers started with the establishment of the Nassarawa School by the government of that region in 1909. By 1948, the total number of teacher training colleges assisted by the government had risen to fifty - three with a student - teacher population of 3,026. In 1932, the Yaba higher college started a three-year course for teachers. When the college was merged with university college, Ibadan, twenty-one of the transferred students were in education. The University of Ibadan, in order to train untrained graduate teachers, embarked on one-year course for graduates leading to a diploma in education in 1957-8 session. In 1961 it started a one-year associate-ship course for selected grade II teachers who would take over the headship of primary schools after the successful completion of their study. All the stated effort above is geared towards making teaching a profession. The report of the Ashby commission (set up in 1959) proposed a bold plan for university programmes in teacher-education.

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