CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE PROBLEM
Actually, following the established fact that the Nigerian nation was being colonized by the Britain, Nigerian educational system was constructed on a remnant of the three ‘Rs’ as brought by the British government, -these include: READING, WRITING AND ARITHIMETICS. The formation of the Nigerian academic system consciously omitted the most vital or important educative valves. The fourth ‘R’ which was termed reasoning or thinking has been considered by many scholars as being a formality.
Obviously, we teach our children how to write, read and do arithmetic in our schools and these values are entered in all our curricular. But very unfortunately, the most essential valence or ingredients of education – that is reasoning is conspicuously absent in the school curriculum.
In Nigeria, no teacher teaches our children how to think and reason under a certain condition within a given period of time. Both in secondary schools and tertiary institutions, there is no text book whereby the ‘principles of good reasoning and thinking are put in place for people’s use.
It is interesting to note that the private institutions in Nigeria have the good intention but since the force of pre-established curriculum of the country limits them which compels our educative system to that mere values of writing, reading and arithmetic – thereby ignoring the most important ingredients of education called reasoning and thinking – they (the private institutions) fell into the same academic pit with public schools.