Influence of patriotism on the development of personal and social skills in secondary school students in Kotido Municipality

Abstract

The study was designed to find out how patriotism influences the development of personal and social skills in secondary school students in secondary schools in The study was guided by the following research objectives: (i) To find out how patriotism programme is implemented in schools in Kotido municipality. (ii) To find out the attitudes of teachers and students towards patriotism teaching in schools. (iii) To analyze the challenges in the implementation of patriotism in schools. The study used across-sectional research design and both qualitative and quantitative techniques to collect and analyze data with 309 respondents (head teachers, deputy head teachers, patriotism club patrons, and students) who were purposively and randomly sampled. Data was collected through self-administered questionnaires, interviews and focused group discussions. The information from the self-administered questionnaires was presented in figures and percentages in tables, while the information obtained from interviews and focused group discussions were analyzed using qualitative techniques. The outcome of the study revealed the following: • There is implementation of patriotism in schools in Kotido municipality • The attitudes of teachers and students towards patriotism affect its implementation. • Lack of funds, unsupportive school administrators, inadequate literatures in schools, negative attitudes of some teachers, students among others were found to be some of the challenges affecting implementation of patriotism in schools in Kotido municipality. The study generated the following recommendations: • Provision of enough funds by the national secretariat for patriotism to support patriotism activities in schools. • The department for patriotism should provide enough books and other literatures containing patriotism information in schools so that students can read and understand it better. • The government should train teachers and students to acquire knowledge of patriotism. • The government of Uganda should carry out massive sensitization of people to avoid negative perception of patriotism ideology.