Imperatives of Practical Skill Acquisition in 21st Century Schools

The development of adequate skills and competencies is an important characteristic of Vocational Education programme in any levels of the Nigerian education system. In support of this, one of the National Educational Objectives stated that the acquisition of appropriate skills, abilities and competencies both mental and physical are important for all Nigerians to live and contribute to the development of their society (Federal Republic of Nigeria - FRN 2004).

Consequently, the National Educational Policy document (2004) states that the Nation’s educational activity should be centred on the students in order for them to acquire maximum skills acquisition for self-development and fulfilment in the labour market.

Regrettably, due to some barriers, the level of practical skills acquired by these students, compared with the demands of the labour market and technological advancement, is nothing to talk about. This explains why most employers of labour in this nation and abroad believe that the products of vocational education are half-baked and unusable without further training (Ekpenyong, 1988).

It is against this background that this article explore techniques for improving skills acquisition in schools and how that could affect sustainable development in Nigeria and to recommend ways of reducing such impediments. 

In deed, Vocational Education is defined as that education that provides skills, knowledge, competencies and attitudes necessary for effective employment in specific business occupations.

According Udo (2008) it is a comprehensive activity-based educational programme that is concerned with the acquisition of practical skills, understandings, attitudes, work habits and competencies that are requisite to success in a chosen business occupation while skill is defined by Ekpenyong (1988) as the ability to use one’s knowledge effectively and readily in execution of performance; technical expertness, a power or habit of doing any particular thing competently.

He opined that this definition is stressing that a skill is based on using knowledge expertly; the objective of which is to bring that knowledge to maximum level of competency. Hence maximum skills acquisition involves that ability to perform any given tasks with ease, competently and expertly without much stress and sweat.

On the other hand, impediments refer to barriers, hindrances and obstructions to maximum skills acquisition in Vocational Education programme while World Commission on Environment and Development Report – Our Common Future (1987) defines sustainable development as that development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of the future generation to meet their own needs.

In deed, people who are concerned about sustainable development suggest that meeting the needs of the future generation depends to a large extent on how well the present-day decision makers can balance social, economic and environmental objectives when making decisions today (The World bank Group, 2001).

By acquiring practical skills to the level of automaticity, recipients of Vocational Education can impact positively on these objectives so as to boost sustainable development in Nigeria.

IMPORTANCE OF SKILL ACQUISITION IN NIGERIA 

According to Okorie and Ezeji (1988) the acquisition of the requisite skills is a means of increasing the productive power of any nations. Consequently, they added that the Nigerian society should recognize the fact that every citizen should be equipped to contribute effectively to the welfare of the country.

The acquisition of such practical skills is important because when efficient and skilful hands are employed in any fields of human endeavours, high productivity is usually achieved. Economically, maximum skills acquisition by Vocational Education students and others will help to enrich the Nigerian society and in this way, tend to make possible sustainable development.

Okorie and Ezeji (1988) opined that a rich nation is one that is capable of meeting the economic, social, moral and political needs of the citizenry. Nigeria as a nation will enjoy sustainable development if Vocational Education students in particular and all other students in general acquire maximum skills acquisition and competencies in their specialties.

Furthermore, politically, practical skills acquisition tends to promote personal and national greatness. Okorie and Ezeji (1988) pointed out that the behaviour of an individual in a society or the behaviour of a nation in a community of nations may be influenced by the skills and competencies possessed by that individual or nation.

Socially, the acquisition of maximum skills helps a person to provide amusement, happiness, love, affection and enjoyment to other individuals as well as the entire nation at large. It also helps to reduce criminal activities such armed robbery, kidnapping, and other social vices among the youths.

To students, maximum skills acquisition helps them to be engaged in productive work either for themselves or for employers of labour. This enables students to qualify for and hold productive employment as well as increases their productivity and earns more remuneration.

Other importance of acquiring maximum skills and competencies includes: it reduces the drop-out rates among the Nigerian youths, it helps to make the youths intelligent users of the products of technology as well as the most reliable vehicle for economic prosperity and diplomatic supremacy of the Nigerian nation.

These benefits of maximum skills acquisition are still there if students will think twice and change their negative attitudes towards it and turn to develop themselves sufficiently in the skills and competencies inherent in Vocation Education programmes of their institutions.

In fact when students fail to acquire maximum skills from the programme, this in turn affects sustainable development negatively. The three components of sustainable development are explained below:

According to Oxford University Press (1987), the Social Aspect of sustainable development looks at issues that impact people’s lives directly and that either helps or hinders the process of improving the quality of lives. From the diagram above, the social aspect of sustainable development includes elements such as services, household needs, industrial growth, agricultural growth and efficient use of labour.

In Nigeria, the curriculum contents of Vocational Education equip the recipients with skills and competencies in direct and personal services, and other commercial services and business activities that help men and women to carry out productive processes that contribute to sustainable development.

Apart from that, Vocational Education skills and competencies of accounting, marketing, ICT and entrepreneurship tend to support industrial and agricultural growth and household needs by creating employment opportunities for households, thus enhancing sustainable development in one way or the other.

Economic aspect of sustainable development highlights the system that determines how limited resources needed to improve people’s lives are distributed and used. The Vocational Education curriculum contents of economic education impart Vocation Education skills and competencies in social mobility, cultural preservation, empowerment, participation and equity.

In deed, the recipients of Vocational Education are equipped with Economics curriculum objectives which emphasize economic literacy, prudent management of limited resources, respect for the dignity of labour and acquisition of economic knowledge for solving the economic problems of the society. Consequently, the students are indeed equipped with all the above economic knowledge and economic understandings.

However some of them lack interest in the subject matter, hence the level of skills and competencies acquired are poor. The implication of this is that although roughly equal numbers of boys and girls who chose to study economics during their tertiary education level, yet the level of skills acquired would not be sufficient to contribute to sustainable development.

Lastly, the environmental aspect of sustainable development looks at how the natural resources both renewable and nonrenewable that make up our surrounding can help to sustain and better the lives of the people.

In deed, the acquisition of maximum skills and competencies by students of the programmes help them to be engaged in the tapping and conversion of natural resources to the form that satisfy the needs of the Nigerian people nationwide.

IMPEDIMENTS TO PRACTICAL SKILL ACQUISITION AMONG STUDENTS

Efforts to improve the standard and quality of acquisition of skills and competencies inherent in Vocational Education courses to maximum level seems to be slowed down by a number of factors such as students low interest in the skills and competencies, curriculum structure, inadequate personnel, inadequate equipment and facilities for the teaching and learning of the skills, inadequate material resources for training and others.

Many students have very low interest in the skills and competencies inherent in Vocational Education courses. This has made them to develop poor attitudes towards the skills and competencies inherent in the Vocational Education courses. Because of such negative attitudes, the personal interest and willingness to concentrate and acquire maximum level of skills expected of them are not there.

One of such negative attitudes is failure to sit down and make wise use of their time and energy in acquiring maximum skills for self-development and fulfilment. This is because time is a critical matter in everybody’s lives.

Consequently, students fail to find time to engage themselves in practical exercises in courses such as in accounting, typewriting, word-processing, and shorthand to mention just but a few. When assignments and home work are given in any of the subjects listed above, it is often discovered that about ninety percent of the Vocational Education students in the class did not find time and/or take time to do it.

Such students fail to take their studies seriously as they often come late to the lesson and even when they know that they are terribly late, yet they would be listening to pop music/other music or talking to people with their phones. A careful examination shows that they put more efforts in playing with their mobile phones and in making calls than they do with their studies.

In fact, many students often left practical subject lessons to stand outside to distract others. A great majority of them does not consider the length of time spent outside the classroom for such unruly behaviours neither do they consider that they have lost quite an important part of the lessons.

In view of the utilitarian nature of maximum skills acquisitions, students should cultivate the habit of working hard, commitment and dedication to studies in order to achieve maximum skills acquisition needed by the employers of labour.

In deed many business students who enrol for Vocational Education programmes do not show commitment and dedication to their studies because they are often attracted by very many unimportant issues during their studies. Such unimportant issues range from peer group pressure to friendship issues and joining the group of students popularly known as NFA – No future Ambition.

The latter group can be said to be students who do not worry or who are not concerned about their poor performances at their varsities. All business students should regard hard work, commitment and dedication to studies as the sole reason why they are in school. When they are driven by such forces, they will discover that they are breaking new grounds in their area of specialties and that they are acquiring maximum level of skills expected of them by labour market.

Furthermore, all business students should be determined to overcome the poor reading culture prevalent in the Nigerian society. In fact without a strong determination to overcome it, they will not be able to read their study materials and textbooks intensively and extensively. Globally, very many Nigerians are often associated with poor reading culture.

In fact, there is a dictum among the people of colour, that if you have something worth millions of dollars to be given to Nigerians, then hide that inside a textbook and give it to the Nigerians to read and discover it, they said they are sure the Nigerians will never read the textbook to discover that treasure.

Poor reading culture has affected the fabrics of our society so much so that many Nigerian students are held captive to it. Intensive and extensive reading is very pertinent because it equips the readers with all the information and knowledge required for success in the acquisition of Vocational Education skills and competencies.

However, many Nigerian students hate being given voluminous materials to read and in this way miss out the knowledge, skills and competencies that go with such materials. Some of them will even nickname the lecturers trying to involve them in intensive and extensive reading exercises as a way of discouraging them.

Such students forget that a well-read student is bound to do far better than a poorly read one in all facets of life. Another issue that affects maximum skills acquisition among students in particular is their refusal to use their money to buy material resources for their own training.

In deed, most of them prefer to use their money to buy expensive smartphones/gadgets and recharge cards to phone their parents, friends and relatives at the expense of their studies. They forget that there is no substitute for having the correct textbooks, and other necessary materials when it comes to learning a skills to the maximum level of it.

Students should remember that having a personal laptop nowadays can help them to obtain knowledge, skills and competencies in information, and communication technology which in turns will help them to secure a lucrative job in the labour market.

In disregard of this, students prefer to use their money to go for anything that does not help them to learn business subjects/skills at all. The other issue about the negative attitude of students is their unwillingness to change their thinking and behaviour positively. It is common place that one hundred (100%) percent of students’ success in life or in their studies is dependent on positive attitude to whatever they are taught.

In deed, the willingness to change positively their attitudes and behaviours help the students to acquire maximum skills expected of them for the labour market. Unfortunately, many students are often unwilling to change their negative attitudes.

In fact, a majority of the students in our schools and colleges are often unwilling to concentrate and study the skills content of business-related subjects to maximum level. For example, in the teaching and learning of typewriting, many students only want to operate the typewriter or computer keyboards with two or three fingers instead of their nine fingers.

When teaching the students that they should use their nine fingers to type so that they could achieve maximum skills level, those who are used to operating the keyboard with two or three fingers would remain adamant and would be unwilling to change.

Consequently, such students would not be able to achieve maximum skills level for the labour market. The next issue to discuss here on impediments to maximum level of skills and competencies needed to enhance sustainable development in Nigeria is that students do want to be hardworking enough in their chosen careers.

It is quite unfortunate that many students choose to study a particular subject and yet to refuse to work hard enough to acquire enough skills expected of them. In fact often times, when teachers want their students to become serious and very hard-working in their studies; such teachers are often called nicknames by those lazy students.

A majority of the students would not appreciate the efforts of their teachers who want them to be hard working for wellbeing in the future; instead they looked at them as being wicked, cruel and not cooperating with them.

RECOMMENDATIONS AND CONCLUSION 

Based on the above impediments to maximum skills acquisition, the following recommendations are made:

• Students should be willing to cultivate keen interest in the skills and competencies inherent in the programmes. They should also determine to be more industrious and to show appreciation to teachers who could make them to work harder. They should learn to do away with poor reading culture and be prepared to read and practise intensively and extensively. 
• The students should be seriously committed and dedicated to their practical contents of their programme. Students should learn to do away with all forms of dishonesty. Furthermore, provision of basic facilities, equipment and material resources for the teaching-learning of Vocational Education subjects should be made available. 
• Proper investment should be made towards boosting the teaching and learning materials in Vocational Education in our schools and colleges. As it equips the recipients with firm-specific, industry-specific and general skills and competencies, this article therefore appeals to all students to make sure they acquire maximum and sufficient skills and competencies that will help them to live and contribute to sustainable development in Nigeria. 

The writer therefore lists the following techniques as a means of improving skill acquisition:

1. Establishment of more skill acquisition centres, where students could go and acquire skills of typewriting, shorthand, accounting, marketing, salesmanship, etc.

2. All facilities and equipment required for the business occupations are to be put in place in order to enhance training in all the business skills.

3. Guidance and counselling units should be put in place in all the centres and colleges so as to create career awareness to the trainees.

4. Teachers of Vocational Education departments should be trained and retrained so that they will update their training to fill the gap between school training and the industries.

5. Establishment of functional skill acquisition centres for intensive and extensive practice before graduation and

6. Establishment of a special scheme whereby interested out-going students will be supplied with a take up equipment and loan to enable them start their own skill-acquired businesses. 

REFERENCES

BBC English and HarperCollins Publishers (1992) BBC English Dictionary, A Dictionary for the World. London: HarperCollins Publishers.

Ekpenyong, L. E. (1988) “Vocational Content in the National Curriculum for Nigerian Secondary Schools: How Industry Can Help?” The Vocational Aspect of Education Vol XL (106) 57 – 62.

Federal Republic of Nigeria (2004) National Policy on Education: Lagos: NERDC Press.

Okorie, J. U. And Ezeji, S. C. O. A (1988) Elements of Guidance, Vocational and Career Education. Onitsha: Summer Educational Publishers Nigeria Limited.

Osuala, E. C. (1998) Foundations of Vocational Education (4th Ed.) Onitsha: Cape

Osuala, E. C. (1987) A handbook of vocational-technical education for Nigeria: Anambra State, Nigeria: Pacific Publishers.

Oxford, Oxford University Press(1987) From the World Commission on Environment and Development’s (the Brundtland Commission) report Our Common Future.

Oxford Popular School Dictionary (2002) Oxford Popular School Thesaurus, Tested in Schools, The Student Support Centre. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Telsang, M. T. (2007) Industrial and Business Management. New Delhi: S. Chand and Company Limited.

The Worldbank Group (2001) Website: http//www.worldbank.org/depweb/sd.html

Udo, M. P. (2008) Principles and Methods in business education. Jos: Calvary Press.

Udo, M. P. (2012) Gender Dimensions in the teaching and learning of VBE in Nigerian senior secondary schools. Unpublished PHD Thesis submitted to the University of Leeds, Leeds, England.

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