INVESTIGATION INTO PRIMARY SCHOOL TEACHERS ATTITUDE TO WORK

INVESTIGATION INTO PRIMARY SCHOOL TEACHERS ATTITUDE TO WORK
 
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1      BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
The ultimate realization of education depends on the teacher as he will ultimately be responsible for translating policy into action and principle into practice in his interactions with students. Teachers have critical role to play in education reform.  For meaningful and effective actualization of education therefore, good instructional strategies are required, work and devotedness to duty. In virtually all works of life today, be it in the business, public service or the profession, morality and conscious have been neglected. Greed, selfishness and deceit, have become the order of the day. Nothing goes by the proper or excepted channels of behavior to work to achieve their means of livelihood.
People’s attitude to work and even to one another has becomes so enegetic and poised only towards the mass acquisition of materials health the issue of job satisfaction or services to humanity has become to many purely secondary and not to be reckoned with. This development of lack of real interest, business and dedication to work in the average Nigerians of today is treatable. Therefore, the teacher’s attitude towards work had been a major concern. According to Bello and Awalu (2008), Nigeria schools have failed in their role in developing functional skill in the students. The increase in the rate of unemployment among school graduates is a clear indication of the nature of the product of our teachers. It is the general opinion that no educational system can rise above the quality of its teachers.
In other words, the teacher’s quality is an index of the educational development of any nation, Alhaji Shehu Shagari, at the convocation ceremony of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka on March 7, (1982) said, among other things that; “the attitude of Nigerians to work is the worst in the world, if only every Nigerian is prepared to do an honest day’s work, Nigerian world achieve wonders”.
Pathetically, this national sickness trends to make an in-road into the teaching profession – a noble profession, since after the civil war, the average man in the street laments pathetically over the apparent fallen of standard of Education in our society. 
Public opinion lames the situation on the attitudes of teachers’ toward work. This ugly situation seems to the researcher, indeferable in the present circumstance of ever increasing number of trained and qualified teachers in our schools. President Shehu Shagari said that; “Reflecting on the quality of Education given to our children, one is tempted to believe that teacher attitude to work needs critical re-appraisal. Against this background, the researcher wishes to investigate the attitude of the teachers  to work in primary schools in Enugu Local Government Area of Enugu State.