EXAMINING ORATURE AS CULTURAL LITERACY DEVELOPMENT TOOL: THE CASE OF CHILD BIRTH SONGS

Abstract

Scholars have continued to engage in advancing strategies for ensuring effective literacy development. However, while recognizing the need to come up with strategies that are universally responsive to literacy needs, it is also pertinent to consider the uniqueness of every society, in terms of culture, orientation and world view. Every society has its uniqueness, and this must be built into any development strategy that involves such society. The purpose of this paper is, therefore, to examine the place of orature in literacy development of children among the Igbo, south east Nigeria. Literacy ought to be an all encompassing phenomenon. The contention of the paper is that the seeming disappearance of folktale and folksong, for example, has contributed to the imbalance in the literacy development of the present-day children of Igbo, south east Nigeria. The paper relies on the theory of cultural literacy. The major argument of the paper is that a situation where every effort is put towards developing a child in modern-day science and technology with a near total neglect and discouragement to acquiring the wit, wisdom, and experience that would enable the child effectively fit into his or her native environment is detrimental to the total growth of the child. Thus the recommendation of the paper is the revival of the use of folk songs as effective means of integrating a child into the worldview of his or her environment.