Educating the Hand, Head and Heart for Sustainable National Transformation: The Challenge of Students’ Large Population in Nigeria Public Universities

Abstract

Education is a form of learning in which knowledge, skills and values are transferred from one generation to the next through teaching and research. The goal of any form of education is to help the recipient acquire knowledge, skills and values to enable him live a fulfilled and purposeful life. This paper titled ‘educating the head, hand and heart for sustainable national transformation: the challenge of large class size in public universities in Nigeria’ is a position paper aimed at highlighting the challenges of large students population working against educating the total individuals (students) in universities in Nigeria. In an attempt to do that some concepts were reviewed such as education, head-hand-heart model, importance of head-hand-heart, students’ population, state of students’ population in Nigerian public universities. Finally the challenges of students’ large population on educating the child were highlighted, among which are; poor concentration of students, ineffective teaching and learning, high cost school charges and fees, overuse of singular lecture method and involvement in corrupt practices. To maximally overcome these challenges, strategies on the way forward were proffered such as admitting students based on the stipulated number by National University Commission (NUC), adequate provision of educational resources and adopting proper teaching strategies among others. It was therefore concluded that when the strategies are implemented, educators can effectively teach a large population of students ensuring quality education that will lead to sustainable national transformation.