PLATONIC AND KANTIAN MORALITY AS BASES FOR TEACHER QUALITY IN THE NIGERIAN COLLEGES OF EDUCATION

Abstract

Teacher quality is an important factor affecting the standard of education. The achievement or otherwise of the educational aims and goals can be traced to the quality of the teachers. Research findings have shown that quality of teachers has been on the decline in Nigeria. Teachers have been implicated in various acts of immoralities, like student molestation and examination malpractices. This has been partly traced to poor quality of pre-service teachers turned out by the Nigerian colleges of education. Previous studies largely focused on interventions aimed at promoting teacher quality, with little emphasis on understanding the philosophical underpinning some educational theories such as Platonic and Kantian moralities. These theories emphasise teachers being role models to the learners. This study was therefore designed to examine the idea of morality from the Platonic and Kantian perspectives, with a view to identifying values that can enhance teacher quality. Plato’s Idealism and Kant’s Moral Theory served as the framework, and the interpretive design was used. Texts were purposively selected because of their thematic concern with the practices and moral values in education. Texts used were: Friere’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed (POO), Pan Tock’s Education and Values (EAV), Hirst and Peter’s The Logic of Education (TLOE) and Lassa’s Teacher Production (TP). Also, Plato’s Republic (R), Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals (GMM), Bamisaye’s Concept of Responsibility and its Implication for the Nigerian Educational System (ARINE), Barrow’s Moral Philosophy for Education (MPE) and Babarinde’s Education for Self-Reliance (ESR) were interrogated. Speculative, historical and prescriptive methods were adopted and texts were subjected to philosophical analysis. The current education, given to pre-service teachers in colleges of education, has taken the form of narrative character (banking method) where teacher sees teaching as if it were motionless, static, compartmentalised, predictable and non-moral-laden. Moreover, the nexus between education and morality is that it must be value laden, innate (affective and cognitive) and transformative for it to serve its true purpose as revealed by POO and TLOE. For the teacher quality to be achieved, their cognitive and affective perspectives must be developed as demonstrated in TP. The cultivation of responsible moral outlook does not naturally develop in man, therefore, must be consciously inculcated in colleges of education pre-service teachers which is the focus of ARINE, ESR, R and GMM. Critical intervention shows that elements of moralities such as duty, excellence, responsibility, self-reliance and respect for persons need to be inculcated in teacher’s preparation in order to produce efficient teachers that can uphold the morals of the society. A new philosophy of education that emphasises cognitive development as well as development of morality in terms of respect for persons, duty, responsibility and freedom in Plato and Kant’s philosophies is needed to foster quality teachers in Nigerian colleges of education. For these to be achieved, teacher education programme in the colleges of education should target all-round development of the pre-service teachers by focusing not only on cognitive and psychomotor domains, but emphasise the affective domain which will promote morality among the teachers.