School Psychology and the Nigerian Cultural Situation

Abstract

For more than 40 years, efforts have been made by successive governments as well as agencies, organizations and individuals in Nigeria to ensure the provision of adequate services for the psychological development of the Nigerian schoolchild. There is a department in the federal Ministry of Education charged with this specific function. Many psychologists and guidance counsellors have been trained to serve in schools. Test materials appropriate to school pupils have been produced. Seminars and workshops are frequently organized to examine some school-related adjustment problems. However, certain cultural factors that can impede school psychology services do not appear to have received adequate attention yet. Perhaps the most important of these is the average Nigerian's inadequate conception of causality, which makes him believe that his problems are always caused by things and people outside of himself. The recommendations put forward include the need to relate what goes on in school to the realities of life in the larger society outside school, and the need for an enlightenment programme aimed at developing in Nigerians a more scientific concept of causality.