The Relevance of the Primary School Curriculum to the Future Roles of Rural Girls in the Silt! Area: It’s Impact Upon Their Dropout
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Date
1997-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
One of the major funct ions of the school curriculum is to provide the knowledge, skills ~md experience which are rdcvant 10 the contexts of the actual life of the students. [n view of this, the purpose of this study is to examine the relevance of the primary school curriculum to the futllrc roles of rural girls in the Silti area and to assess its impact upon their dropout. To this dTect 21 rural primary schollls were selected as sources of information from three worcdas that are inhabited by Silti people. Within these schools all the teachers, school directors, and female students of grades J through 6 were taken as actual sources of iltlormation. In addition, from the neighbouring villages of the sample schools, a total of 324 parents and community members were included in the s,m1ple population. Questionnaire, interview and classroom observation were the c1at,·, collection instruments used in the study. The rcsults of the study idcntified marriage as the only practically available status of life to which the largest majority of female graduates and dropouts from rural Silti primary schools are joining. Yet the results reveal the mismatch between what the girls are exposed to in their primary school curriculum ,md most of the major roles which the girls are required to play in thcir marricd lill:. The centralizl,d nature oCthe primary school curriculum and teachers' failure to utilize the major instructi onal considerations that are essential for the enricl1\11ent of the meaningfulness of the lessons taught are thc two prominent reasons for the inelevance of the curricu,lum to the purpose under-discussion. Moreover the results of tlus study have identified curricular irrelevance as one of the three major reasons (next to early marriage and intensive labour at home) for the dropout of rural Silti girls from primary schools.
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Curriculum to the Future Roles