ABSTRACT

        This study investigated the influence of peer group on schools going adolescents in Ilorin East Local Government Area of Kwara State.

Four hundred primary schools adolescents were randomly selected to supply information on the research instrument tagged “Influence of Peer Group Schools Going Adolescents Questionnaire (IPGSGAQ)”. Simple percentage was used to analyse the personal information of the respondents while t-test statistical method was employed to test all the hypotheses.

The result showed that male and female adolescents perceived peer influence as having positive effect on children’s academic performance. Also, significant difference existed between young and older adolescents perception of peer influence on attitudes to class work.

Based on the result it was recommended that teachers should develop keen interest in child’s attitudes in other to identify deviations. In addition guidance and counselling services should be introduced in primary schools in the local government.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Background to the Study

        In every organized society in the world, the youth occupy a vital position not only in the implementation of community decisions and programmes but also in the socio economic, political and educational developments of the area. The society acknowledges the role of the peer group, there by attack certain responsibilities to it. Numerically, the youths are significant in the society, and traditions and practice indicate the level to which the society acknowledges the existence. Hence, the tradition from one age group to the other is usually held amides funfair and celebration.

        The child grows in an affectionate society where his/her needs are relentlessly met by not only the siblings but also by the religious and adult models around.

Therefore, the child enjoys abundant love from his/her elders and age mates. The African society provides a terrain where the child learns to associate with his/her age mates from infancy because of the certain aspects of the traditions that prohibit the infiltration or undue interference with adult discussion or conversation. Traditionally, the child is scolded and stigmatized for unguided utterances in an adult dominated discussion. Therefore this suggests that the child is trained to internalized the values of his/her age group.

        In some traditions, rituals and initiations greeted the transition from one age group to the other during which roles and responsibilities are ascribed to the group. Therefore, the basis for peer relationship is sociological and traditional to the unlimited support from the parents and notable individuals. The peer relations continue and the infact establishes friendship based on several variables. Kandel (1981) noted that similarly between friends could be de to either assortative pairing in which friends are selected on the basis of similarity or a socializations process in which friends influences each other.

        The next group the child encounters chronologically and probably in order of importance for psychological development is the preschool play group of age-mate, in which reciprocal relationships arise spontaneously from interaction without a pre-extent social structure. Later, peer groups generally arise within and centre in the school. In middle and late childhood, these groups tend to exert little compelling behaviour control over the individual student, possibly because his/her behaviour is largely controlled by family norms. Yet such play group eventually comes to mirror the dynamics of social interaction and develop institutionalized or traditionalized norms, values and relationships among members (Merei, 1989). A sense of acceptance more than a sense of belonging characterizes normal social development during this period of late childhood. According to Horrocks and Buker (1991), they demonstrated that though friendships tend to fluctuate markedly in late childhood, the degree of social acceptance expressed by the group for the individual is not dependent upon the stability of his own feeling-ships or group memberships.

        Ausubel (1984) regards the adolescent peer groups as the major training institution for adolescent in our society, and suggested that the schools capacity for influencing the adolescent lies in its capacity to provide occasions for the inculcation of the peer culture. Common experience suggests the reality of the adolescent peer group as a cohesive, dynamic socio-cultural unit, which exercises behaviour control in matter of speech, dress and taste.

        In supplying a micro society with reciprocal relationships, the adolescent group serves a valuable function in social development. Perhaps, because of the sheer duration of its ascendancy, the adolescent culture is likely to become an even more important testing and training with greater celebrity between adult society, represented by parent and teachers and the adolescent micro society.

        It is important to note that at the childhood stage, the transition to the gang us usually complete and with it the adoption of the gang values, manners and speech patterns. Equally too, parents are distressed to find that their recent loving and out-going child seems to have lost his or her affectionate and confiding nature and become a stranger to the family. In one sense, the immersion in being a child and the strong peer-group affiliation of the middle years look time out from the process of development. The gang this serves as an intermediate reference point and each member uphold and fortifies the others.

        An important structural feature of the peer group is the sex leverage the fact that boys and girls tend to form separate groupings. The sex leverage is partly a matter of differing tastes and interests and preferences, of course. But at a very basic level it is bust into the childhood adult views on the inferiority of the opposite sex. It is significant to note that peer influence is enormous on the youth development including academic pursuits. This is the focus of the study.

Statement of the Problem

        Children grow up in an environment where peer influence is enormous these relationship extend to the school. Children are in various gangs and the school provides ample opportunities for children from diversified socio-economic backgrounds to interact and exert influence on their members’ perception, attitudes to school and school work etc. usually, children display attitudes to school activities in conformity to year norms. Hence, children’s attitudes to school work are reflections of the peer values.

Purpose of the Study

        The study is designed to investigate the influence of peer group on school going adolescents in Ilorin East Local Government Area of Kwara State and specifically determines the peer influence on children’s attendance in the school, observation of school rules and regulations, healthy rivalry in the class and progress in the school work in the class and progress in the school work in the class and progress in the school work. It also suggested ways to channel peer influence on meaningful activities.

General Question

Do peer group influence on school going adolescents?

Research Questions

Therefore, the study attempted to provide answers to the following questions: –

1. Is there any difference in the influence of peer group on the male and female school going adolescent?
2. Is there any difference in the influence of peer group on the young and old school going adolescents?