A PAPER PRESENTED AT THE 2012 ANNUAL
NATIONAL CONFERENCE, AT ENUGU STATE UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY (ESUT)
ENUGU STATE
FROM
EBONYI STATE COLLEGE OF EDUCATION, IKWO
Abstract
Education as an effective and veritable
instrument can be used to bring about redress. It is as well one of the
greatest investments that a nation can make and use for quick development of
its economic, political, sociological and youth empowerment.
One of the major
reasons for the clamour of entrepreneurial education in Nigerian schools today
is to re-position our education system in order to make innovation effective in
the market and else-where for youth empowerment. Entrepreneurial education
studies cannot guarantee youth empowerment in the near future if effective
strategies for teaching it are not observed and followed. This paper discusses
entrepreneurial education system in Nigeria and suggests effective ways which
are here to be followed if it must contribute to social reengineering and youth
empowerment in Nigeria.
Introduction
The Entrepreneur is a crucial facilitator in the
process of economic development. It is a term broadly used to denote the
innovative, modern, industrial business leader. Entrepreneurial itself is an
innovation and creativity at the highest level and brings into existence the
hitherto unknown. It further brings about conception of ideas, data collection,
policy formulation, career formation, financing, training and development among
others. It embodies risk-taking on commercial ventures with a view to making
profit in return for investment (Okeke: 2009).
Entrepreneurial studies empowers youths with more
functional skills and potentials which prepare them to search for change
respond to it, and exploit it as an opportunity. Such empowered youths should
be encouraged to establish small-scale businesses for self-reliance. They
should take advantage of their developed talents to be originators of profitable
business ideas known as innovation, which Schumpter (1800) in Ballis and Smith
(1984:75) in Okeke (2009). Identified as the single function that constitute
entrepreneurial. The youths should place more emphasis on the ability to gain
command of and combine resources in a new way that would be profitable.
Entrepreneurial education for youth empowerment is therefore a life-long
process that lead to an informed and involved citizens having the creative
problem solving skills, scientific and social literacy, and commitment to
engage in responsible individual and co-operative actions (Nnabuo, 2009). This
type of education enables people to develop the knowledge, values and skills to
participate in decision about the ways things are done individually and collectively,
locally and globally which will improve the quality of life now without
damaging the planet of the future (Nwankwo, 2009) Entrepreneurial education
programme, if religiously implemented can guarantee youth empowerment in
Nigeria. This paper therefore focuses on the purposes of entrepreneurial
education and its relation to youth empowerment in Nigeria, Entrepreneurial
education programme implementation strategies for social reengineering and
youth empowerment are also discussed.
Purpose of Entrepreneurial Education
The National policy on Education
(NPE, 2004), stated the goals for tertiary education among other things is to
“acquire both physical and intellectual skills which will enable individuals to
be self reliant and useful members of the society, promote and encourage
scholarship. To achieve these aims and to contribute to national development
according to Okebukola (2001), the universities are required to diversify their
programmes for the development of high level manpower within the context of the
needs of the economy. Entrepreneurial education in Nigeria as in other parts of
the world is to empower the citizen to rise above the boring jobs of the past,
create more jobs of interest for themselves and for productive employment. UNESCO
(2002:9) saw the purpose of entrepreneurial education to include:
Educating
individuals for, and about business, providing a planned continuous learning
experience meant to equip individuals to fill up effectively three roles:
Making available and distributing goods and services as workers. Making use of
the products themselves as consumers and Embarking on wise socio-economic
decision as citizens. Disseminating career information to students that relate
to their interests, needs and abilities to occupational opportunities in
business, creating educational opportunities for students preparing for careers
in field other than business, thereby acquiring business knowledge and skills
needed to function effectively for instance, being able to handle effectively
both oral and written communications, and to develop interpersonal and human
relation skills.
The objectives and intents of entrepreneurial
education as noted above are not unachievable but laudable. But for them to be
achieved, its implementation programme must be effective. There are many ways
of implementing the entrepreneurial education programme for youth empowerment.
Entrepreneurial Education and Youth
Empowerment
The practical importance of entrepreneurial education
to youth empowerment rests in the attainment of a self-reliant nation. For
instance, one of the goals in the national goals of education in Nigeria is the
building of “a united, strong and self-reliant nation” (Federal Republic of
Nigeria, FRN, 2004:6). The concept of self-reliance anchors on individual and
collective feelings even on the urge for self-preservation through the
independent use of available human and material resources to meet up with
individual and groups needs. Entrepreneurial education should not only create
self reliance in its beneficiaries but should equip them with the necessary
tool to be up and doing as to make the youths become useful members of the
society. Entrepreneurial education is looked upon to provide certain traits on
the beneficiaries which will enable them perform certain tasks on their own
without interferences. Such traits will give the recipient of entrepreneurial
education some level of confidence and independence. The issue now is “what is
entrepreneurial education.
Entrepreneurial Education
The nation’s economy is bleak; unemployment is
everywhere and everyday thousands of graduates are being turned into the labour
market. Nwankwo (2009). The above challenges have culminated in the renewed
interest of the government in self-reliance. The high rate of unemployment
among products of the education system has been attributed to their lack of
skills and competence required in the field of work. The National policy on
Education (NPE 1970) stated the goals for tertiary education among other things
is to “acquire both physical and intellectual skills which will enable
individuals to be self-reliant and useful members of the society, promote and
encourage scholarship. To achieve these aims and to contribute to national
development according to Okebukola (2001) the universities are required to
diversify their programmes for the development of high level manpower within
the context of the needs of the economy. Entrepreneurial activity is one of the
major areas of vocational education. This area from the look of things have not
received adequate attention and publicity Anioke (2005), The area is often
confused with trade as, a branch of commerce entrepreneurial activities differ
from trade because it is all encompassing more than trading activities.
Entrepreneurial activities involve self-centred activities. It has to do with
owners of small business firms, who have chosen to assume risk, identify
business opportunities, assemble resources, initiate actions, and establish
organization to satisfy market demands. This activities involve coordinating
other factors of production and its accompanying risk or uncertainty,
Entrepreneurial activity engenders a feeling of personal responsibility and
accountability for results. How well managers have performed the entrepreneurial
task of directing, setting and mapping out strategic, development plans can be
appraised from the angle of whether.
These conceptualization can be summed up thus:
v Identification of important opportunities.
v Decision making as to the opportunities to explore,
promote and establish the business enterprises.
v Aggregation of the scarce resources required to
production and distribution.
v Organization and management of human and material
resources for the attainment of the objectives of the entrepreneur.
v Risk bearing
v Importation
With the above you can see why entrepreneurs behave
differently from others. Entrepreneurship is not only for skill acquisition
sake, but for creating employment for self and others. The word can further
mean persons who undertakes/leads military expedition. In another development
the word entrepreneur has its root and origin in France and literally is
translated to mean “between – takers” or “go – between” it can further lead to
the development of small, medium and sometimes large scale businesses based on
creativity and innovation. From this juncture we can now go to look at
entrepreneurial education.
Entrepreneurial education can be looked upon or seen
to be a carefully planned process that eventuates into the acquisition of
entrepreneurial competencies. The learner is equipped with skills on decision
making, acquisition of new ideas, ways and styles of raising and maintaining
conversations and establishing relationships in business. Entrepreneurial
education relates to what Adamu (2005) refers to as the four pillars of
education – learning to know; learning to do; learning to live together and
learning to be.
Objectives of Entrepreneurial Education
According to Osuala in Paul (2005:18) entrepreneurial
education has been stated to meet the following specific objectives:
“To provide
meaningful education for the youths to be self-reliant and encourage them to
derive profit and to be self independence or self employed. To provide
graduates with enough training that will make them to be creative and
innovative in identifying new business opportunities. To provide college
graduates with enough training in risk management; to make uncertainty bearing
more possible and easy. To give the young graduates training and support to
establish a career in small and medium sized businesses. To provide the
graduates with training in skills that will enable them meet the manpower needs
of the society. To stimulate industrial and economic growth of rural and less
developed areas. To provide business enterprises both small and medium the
opportunity of recruiting graduates who will be trained and tutored in the
skills relevant to the management of small business centre. Entrepreneurial
skills will help unemployment problems among college and tertiary institutions
graduates in Nigeria”.
Entrepreneurial
Education in Nigeria
A large scale rapid national survey in 2004 sponsored
by National Universities Commission (NUC) and Education Trust Fund (ETF) to
determine the needs Nigerian graduates are failing to meet in the labour
market. The result show that of 100 individuals and 20 organizations visited,
Nigerian science graduates are rated 44 percent as average in competence, they
were also rated 56 percent as average in leadership skills, 44 percent as
average in creativity. On needed skills like literacy, oral communication,
information technology, entrepreneurial, analytical, problem solving and
decision making 60 percent rated them as poor, Nwankwo (2009), the data is seen
to explain why there has been very obvious increase in unemployment rate, one
of the reasons given was that these graduates were unemployable.
The graduates were further seen to exhibit the
following weaknesses according to the NUC/ETF (2004) report:
* Poor control and classroom management
* Low subject knowledge matter
* Lack of computer knowledge skills
* Poor English language communication
skill
* Lack of sense of professionalism
* Lack of self reliance and
entrepreneurial skills
* Poor attitude to work
The
success of entrepreneurial education to any extent depends on a sound and
proper implementation.
Entrepreneurial Education Implementation
Strategies for Youth Empowerment.
In
other to guarantee youth empowerment the following strategies should be
religiously observed:
Increase in linking or bringing schools
together: Coming together makes
learning useful. This coming together shows how students feel cared for and
also how they (students) too care about their school (Whitlock, 2006).
According to Nwankwo et al (2009) students
who perceive positive support or caring from individual adults in their schools
or who perceive their teachers and school administrators as creating a caring,
well structured learning environment in which expectations are high clear and
fair are more likely to be connected or linked to school.
Sympathetic learning guidance: Learners should be sympathetically guided in
building their awareness and personalities within their own experiences. They
should be protected from situations they cannot act intelligently on their own,
protected from fears and anxieties. Should be given sufficient protection for
security and status on various levels, be made to conquer problems and envelop
self-reliance. According to Burton (1958) in Nwankwo (2009) the learners need
guidance from teachers and consultants who know and understand the problems of
growing personality; who see learning as a developmental process. Guidance must
be free from domination or coercion.
Observation of differences in learning: The teacher should be knowledgeable about his class
pupil. This became necessary because learning patterns in students are not
uniform and equal. There are slow and quick learners respectively. Varieties of
teaching models should be adopted to cater for their abilities and interests to
suit their levels of maturity, rates and levels of grasps. The teacher should
ensure that the under listed stages are observed and followed, to suit his
teaching mechanism.
a) Age
of the learner
b) Their
mental, physical, social levels and development
c) Children’s
interest and needs
d) Content
and lesson objectives
Transfer of learning in teaching: According to Nwankwo (2009), transfer to new tasks
will be better if in learning, the learner can discover relationship for
himself and if he has experience during learning of applying the principles
within a variety of tasks. Teaching should encourage transfer of learning
through pointing out the similarities and differences in ideas and issues,
emphasizing on the possibilities for transfer, proper organization of the
lesson, topic or unit, and ensuring that materials learned in class are seen to
be interesting, meaningful and purposeful by the learners.
Cooperative/group learning: A learner centred approach system where students are
grouped in about five with a teacher assigned to guide is referred to as
cooperative learning. Okolodile (2009:3) had this to say, this kind of learning
offers the students opportunity for effective learning experiences which
translate to knowledge explosion and distribution among students whether gifted
or slow learners. Green (2004), further saw this as a kind of learning
characterized by learners’ participation, academic achievement, social skills
acquisition and economic success.
Learners Active Participation: Teaching should provide opportunities to explore,
question, construct, provision for mistakes, freedom to develop creative
contributions. It has to encourage active participation of the learner.
Learners should be involved in class activities, to facilitate learning
activities. Children learn more in doing, as an active process, there should be
a good deal of interaction between the teacher and teaching materials. The age
of the learner and developmental levels should be taken into cognizance to
match the situation in learning activities, it goes to make a learner/child see
the relationship between what is done in school and what they do at home.
Recommendations
The current situation whereby people make career
choices without recourse to the manpower needs of the nation has to be
monitored so as to direct the youths to entrepreneurial studies for self
reliance, in further recommendation Nwankwo (2009) added viz:
·
Teachers should
not only care about their students, the teaching environment should be friendly
and encouraging;
·
The teaching –
learning processes should be students’ centred and activity based;
·
Teaching
environment should be democratic with the teacher acting as knowledge
facilitator;
·
The classroom
experiences should relate to the learners’ previous experiences so as to
encourage transfer of knowledge; and
·
Teachers should
use different learning experiences so as to benefit all classes of
learners.
Conclusion
In line with the intense, objectives and purposes,
entrepreneurial studies is a giant educational programme of study.
Entrepreneurial studies and skills are very important for youth empowerment and
development. This becomes clear because if the study is religiously observed
and implemented it will make one self-reliant. Successful practice of entrepreneurial
studies requires possession of sufficient abilities, motivation and attitudes
which complement the disposition to take risks. Entrepreneurial studies
reinforces common traits such as a strong desire for independence, a strong
will to succeed and a practical outlook and skill in human relations as
veritable parameters to youth empowerment, as already discussed and documented
in this work.
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