ABSTRACT
The study investigated the “Effects of broken homes on academic performance of secondary school students in Udege Development Area of Nasarawa State”. One hundred and seventy-five (175) students and eighty-six teachers were used as respondents. The instruments used in collecting the data or information was the questionnaire constructed by the researcher and validated by the project supervisor. The data collected were analyzed by the used of simple percentage and descriptive analysis with chi-square test to test hypothesis. The results indicated that broken homes have negative effects on academic performance of the secondary school students, arising from the findings recommendations were made.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.0 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY
A home consists of a father, a mother and children. That is to say that, a man and a woman agree to legally stay together as husband and wife for the purpose of procreation. While a broken home is divorce or separation, annulment of marriage or disunity between married man and woman (husband and wife).
It is doubted in some quarter that a home plays no better role in academic performance of children especially in the secondary school system. Since a home consists of father, mother and children, it means that children do not just appear from a vacuum but are product of other people (husband and wife). These people do not bear these children to watch them but to help them become men and women on themselves. In this regard, they play some roles to ensure that their children attain some set goals.
Among the roles parents play are:-
a. Feeding: - the feed these children right from their childhood at home and while in school.
b. Clothing:- they cloth them including school uniforms games uniforms or outing personal wears etc
c. Shelter:-the parents provide houses to them, even the hostels or accommodations they use in schools, parents pay for them.
d. Health care:- the parent adopt measures to prevent and the children from being infected by diseases and it already sick, they ensure that adequate treatment is administered for the recovery.
e. Training:- parents are the first teaches, who teach the children the acceptable norms and values of society while the school (teachers) only improve from that.
f. Schooling/sponsorship:- it is the parents who determine which kind of education their children shall acquire. The type of school, from nursery to secondary school up to tertiary institutions they are the ones to sponsor.
Others include the types of job, marriage’s etc. though they may sometimes not choose but stand to advice the children on the right paths especially if the parents are literate.
In spite of the vital position of parents in the lives of the children, some couples may like to break or separate allowing their children to live their lives in its tough side as orphans because of lack of instability and unity between them. But what are the causes of these instabilities and disunity between couples? The lord God in Malachi 2:16 mentioned one which is putting away; that is, when the position of one of the couples is neglected or not given due respect during decision making and other things if results to disunity between them, other ones according to pell (1977) are :-
i. Maltreatment at times on the side of husband or wife
ii. Frequent quarrelling or misunderstanding and unforgiveness between couples
iii. Malfunctioning or sterility of the husband due to sickness
iv. Extra marital s*x outside matrimonial homes
v. Parental interference
vi. Poverty
vii. Bareness or too many miscarriages by the wife especially in African societies that take child bearing as the only reason for marriage some of the women in this categories are sometime called witches by the husband’s relations and if these accusation continues it lead to separation of these couples.
viii. High bride price etc.
Should couple passing through some of these experiences separate or divorce? What will be the effect on their children?
A children when rightly pushed out of the mother’s womb into the cold, strange world, his first feeling is fear and discomfort. It is not surprising that he cries. Unfortunately, quite a number of parent decide to bring children into the world for which they do not possess corresponding capability of caring and nurturing to become responsible in life due to unstable home or separation. The assumption of divorce or separation is always traumatic for the children who will suffer psychologically; socially and economically. They are described as half-orphan’s i.e. children with divorce parents. For they usually experience life very close to that of orphans hence they lack essential part of parental care either that of a father or that of a mother. It is interesting to observe that majority of students with torn uniforms in the school are found to come from broken homes.
Broken home may lead to feeling of insecurity in children, that continue throughout their childhood and consciences. They are also liable to any kind of misfortune that will arise especially in our society where the issue of s*xual promiscuity which lead to AIDs, bogglary and robbery on highway and many other social vices if students are sent out of school for school fees, drop out from school or are truants, a large number is discovered to belong to this class of students.
Students that sometimes turn out to be out laws, indulging in crimes like examination malpractices absenteeism, prostitution and many more when interviewed would be discovered to be children that grows under divorced, broken and separated homes or single parent-hood.
One then wanders, if these children (students) face this material hardship and do not follow the same pattern of training with those from intact families, what becomes of their academic performance. Does it affect or not their academic performance in school. It is view of this aberration that the researcher embark on this research to find out the effect of broken homes on the academic performance of students so as to ascertain the dearth or otherwise of this condition and prefer ways to reconcile the matters to enhance total development in the society.
1.1 PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
The purpose of this research is to identify:
a. The effects of broken homes on the academic performance of senior secondary one (S.S. One)
b. The effects of broken homes on academic performance of male students in the senior secondary schools.
c. The effects of broken homes on academic performance of female students in the senior secondary schools.
1.2 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
This research attempt to educate the immature and irresponsible couples with various are of knowing ‘what’ and ‘how’ divorce affects the academic achievements of their children in secondary schools.
It will serve as a guide to the single youth (unmarried) intending to go into marriage to know what entails in establishing a family. It will also serve as a step to any researcher who may like to carry on the same work any time.
1.3. HYPOTHESES
As regard to the topic of the research, the researcher is having the following tentative assumptions in mind that will enable him dish into the relationship between broken homes and academic performance of students in secondary schools.
i. Lack of care occasioned by broken homes affects students academic performance in the terminal examination.
ii. Students from broken homes usually respect classes or courses over and again more than those from the intact families.
iii. Children from broken homes usually lack essential school materials such as text books, exercise books etc more than those from intact families.
1.4. RESEARCH QUESTIONS
Concerning the topic of the study, the researcher has these question in mind which he wants to find the answers:-
i. What are the possible causes of broken homes Udege development area?
ii. How does the broken homes affect the society (i.e. school society)?
iii. What are the effect of broken homes on academic performance of secondary school students?
iv. How can we assist or help to improve academic performance of students from broken or divorce families?
1.5. DELIMITATION OF SCOPE
This research work on “the effects of broken homes on the academic performance of students in Udege Development Area of Nasarawa state” is a work intended to cover all students from broken families at all level of studies in Nigeria and beyond.
However due to cost of logistic and time to carry out the studies and the impossibility of getting all these students in Nigeria and the would for studies the researcher delimits the scope of the work to cover only schools in Udege development area as case study. The findings from the sampled schools (case study area); shall be drawn and generalization made to cover all other areas in the country and beyond.
1.6. LIMITATION OF STUDY
In the course of this study, the researcher encounter serious of obstacles. Among these include lack of funds:-the work was capital intensive moving around to collect and collate data involved a lot of money which the researcher do not have enough. Insufficient time for sampling out the data, health hazards occasioned by stress from over work.
Apart from the above barriers, the researcher is not aware of bias from respondents interviewed on the topic and could therefore have affected this work in one way or the other.It is in view of this that the researcher limits the work to cover only S.S One students in Udege Development Area for easy study.
OPERATIONAL DEFINITION OF TERMS
BROKEN HOMES: -Separation of either the husband or the wife from matrimonial (married) house.
SINGLE PARENT:- A person who looks after their child or children without a partner (husband or wife)
ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE:- How well or badly the students earn results from studies in the school.
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