Effects of Insecurity on Education

Globally, security has remained a subject of great concern. No nation or society can boast of being completely free from the problems ensued by insecurity. In the last two decades alone, countries like Israel, North Korea, Russia, USA, and South Korea, have experienced different forms of transnational violence; terrorism, kidnapping, insurgency, socio ethno-religious conflicts, have emerged in countries like Afghanistan, Nigeria, and Kenya; while countries like Myanmar, Pakistan, and Gambia have suffered political violence and politically induced tensions. Sucide bombings and several other acts of criminality, have risen and are fast spreading. As insecurity is heightening, the understanding of its manifestations and consequences is also evolving.

Unlike before when its effect is simplified and equated to only loss of lives and properties: Today, security experts, researchers, and many others have agreed that the threats from insecurities are manifold. Despite that, they’ve been minimal attention paid to the link between insecurity and education. That is why in this article, we investigate how insecurities affect education through the approach of unravelling the dynamics of the effects.

Sociological effect  

Sociologically, education is seeing as a social process of homogenizing social self and organizing individual self through the development and internalization of social competences, moral values, (special) mental qualities, and physical skills determined and needed by the society via the process of interacting with other people and elements of life and society; primarily for the functionality and active participation of the educated in the society, and essentially for the continuous realization of a unified, stable, and progressive society.

Hence, many sociologists defines it as socialization. Simply put it: the state of education in any society is dependent on the state of interaction that characterized it. Where lives feel unsafe, relationship among and between students and teachers is often weaken by the traumatic fears characteristic of the atmosphere thereby causing a proportional reduction in the ability to acquire, create or transfer (new) knowledge.

Environmental effect  

For education to occur, it must take place in a setting with variable but certain features such as space, culture, people and infrastructural facilities that makes it unique but similar to environments that support learning. Sustainable Education thrives better in a healthy environment. Generally, nothing goes well in an insecure environment and particularly, learning environment that is characterized by insecurity would not only threaten effective learning by affecting the behavior and interaction of both learners and teachers but it is also liable of exacerbating other factors such as the destruction of available facilities, scaring qualified teachers/trainers and learners away and causing shortage of resourceful materials.

Psychological effect  

As noted by Zahra (2019), the academic success of students depends largely on their psychological stability. Psychologists have summarized the factors that affect learning into three classes; factors resident in learners, factors resident in teachers, and factors resident in environment. However, generally insecurity and tension often caused emotional, psychological, and mental imbalance.

According to Abraham Maslow’s theory, after the fulfilment of man’s needs for survival, psychological needs such as the desire for peace, the need for a secure and safe life among others is the next most basic category of needs. For example, one will not think of how to effectively impact, learn, or achieve something in a situation where feelings of danger, fears of impending doom or threats to life, and anxiety dominates his or her mind.

This implies that education is more effective when both the educator and the educated are in the state of positive feelings that is able to stimulate the interest to learn (or teach) and generate the attention needed for effective learning (or teaching).

Economical effect  

Mostly, persistent or serious insecurities and violence often affect people’s source of livelihood. This is evident in places like Nigeria, Kenya and other countries where social vices such as cattle rustling, kidnapping, banditry, and farmer-herder’s clashes, have caused great destruction, exploitation of economic resources and limitation of economic activities. In places like Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Myanmar among others where there is political violence and politically induced tensions, the need for survival has forced many people to migrate from where they can make earns meet to where they can feel safe first. As a result; it has weaken/crippled the financial strength of most people thereby impoverishing those who should pay for the cost of education and making education [seem like] a luxury, too expensive for some people to afford.

Conclusion 

As discussed above, the effect of insecurity on education is not only manifold and threatening, but dynamic in nature. It is important to understand that insecurity, within or outside education environment, have grievous implications on learning. Having that understanding that its effect (s)is more than the mere assumption that simplified and limit it to loss of lives and destruction of facilities will be helpful in guiding us to know who to engage and what to do in the process of remedying the problems.

Lastly, to solve the problems [caused by insecurity] militating against sustainable education is to first address the issue of insecurity that gives birth to the problems and to ensure that the solution provided is adequate; it most take into cognizant all the effects that insecurity have had on the sector and approach it from dynamically.