THE ROLE OF FORMAL SCHOOL IN PROMOTING ENTREPRENEURIAL CAPACITIES IN NIGERIA

THE ROLE OF FORMAL SCHOOL IN PROMOTING ENTREPRENEURIAL CAPACITIES IN NIGERIA

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1       BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

Entrepreneurship capacities are increasingly recognized as important drivers of economic growth, productivity and employment, and as a key aspect of economic dynamism. Recent dimensions to entrepreneurship have necessitated the need for formal education for entrepreneurs. There has been consequent rapid increase in the numbers of schools (primary, secondary and tertiary) all over the world. The continuous expansion in the educational and other training institutions is part of the quest for entrepreneurial capacity building. As indicated earlier changes in manpower needs induce appropriate reactions from the human resource development agencies.

Formal education according to Bassey (2006) is a process of acculturation through which an individual is helped to develop his potentials and maximum activation in order to achieve self-fulfillment and happiness. Ajuzie (2005) sees education as an essential part of the society process employed to train the human beings to be functional and to adopt the behavioral patterns by the same society. Education is also an ever- present phenomenon in each phase of human civilization however diverse its nature in each era (Ekwosi, 2012). Embedded in these views is the role education plays in training human beings. The role of education in entrepreneurial capacity development cannot be over emphasized. Some people even see the importance of education in human development to the extent of presenting education as playing a complementary role in creation of human beings, hence they assert that God initiated creation and education completed it.

The whole value of an individual that gives him his worth and determines his relative position in his society is a function of his education no matter the type. According to Amao-keinde (2000), education, as a process, embodies all forms of activities that fit an individual for social living. It helps to transmit culture from generation to generation. The desire of every society is that the individuals in the society get developed towards the overall development of the society itself.

The school takes upper hand in the process of entrepreneurial development of the members of the society (Ajuzie, 2005). No society can exist and maintain continuity in norms and values without one form of education or the other. That a human being is different from a beast is as a result of the training (education) he received growing in human society imbibing the norms and values of that society. The need for proper education in the area of business management has led to the introduction of entrepreneurship education into the school curriculum.

THE ROLE OF FORMAL SCHOOL IN PROMOTING ENTREPRENEURIAL CAPACITIES IN NIGERIA