A Systematic Review of Theories and Discourses on Oral Literature for Children: Pedagogical and Moral Implications for Nigeria Children
Abstract
Oral literature, over the centuries, has been applauded to have winsome and efficacious effects on the audience to which it is targeted. While it has been relegated to the background because it lacks, so to speak, codification or it is not written down in black and white, its pedagogical input and importance in the parlance of early childhood education catches the attention of the researchers in this paper. A review of the theories and discourses on children in oral literature was done with a view to positioning it in the right place. The paper also mirrors the immense benefits that oral literature offers children at the early stage of their sojourn in academic life. While academic excellence had been and is being given prioritised attention, the importance of moral, which has become a sine qua non in the face and present phase of decadence, immorality, hooliganism and social breakdown that permeate human society calls for the attention of every human that live on the planet earth. Early childhood educators are not left out in providing succor and sanity needed to build up children that would take the mantle of leadership in the decades to come. The authors opine that if early childhood educators tenaciously hold to the dictate and tenet of National Policy on Education, as drafted by the Nigerian Federal Ministry of Education, oral literature would unequivocally serve as a compass that would positively direct the psyche of Nigerians in the appropriate direction from early childhood to late adulthood.
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