Abstract
This paper discusses childhood education in pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial Nigeria, focusing on the impact of these changing phases on childhood education. It gives a brief definition of childhood and childhood education. It then goes further to discuss traditional childhood education in Nigeria before the coming of the Europeans with its aims, purpose, and content stressing functionalism as the main guiding principle. The aims and content of childhood education in colonial Nigeria are also highlighted focusing on the roles of the missionaries and the colonial government and the regionalization of childhood education after the Richards Constitution of 1946. The paper also gives attention to Childhood Education in post-colonial Nigeria (1960-2009) discussing the emergence of the National Policy on Education (NPE) in 1977 which was an outcome of the 1969 National Curriculum Conference, the Universal Primary Education (UPE) launched February in 1976 and, the Universal Basic Education (UBE) in September 1999. It then discusses the impact of these changing phases on childhood education in Nigeria such as; change in the purpose and scope of education, individualism replacing community participation, haphazard development and denial of access, rote-learning replacing the process of exploration, and discovery, etc. The authors, therefore, recommend among others that; there should be total decolonization of the content of childhood education to make it relevant to the needs of the society, enrolment figures should be devoid of politics for effective planning, community participation should be incorporated and, more and adequate infrastructural facilities should be provided in the primary schools.
Akanbi, G. O., Jekayinfa, A. A. & Gabriel, A. O. (2010). From traditions to letters: Impact of the changing phases on childhood education in Africa, the case of pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial Nigeria. International Journal of Research in Education. 2(8) pp.126-134.