Student’s Problems and Counselling — A space of neglect and disregard?
Counseling is designed to facilitate student achievement, improve student behavior and attendance, and help students develop socially. Many schools have full-time counselors on staff to support students who are experiencing personal or academic challenges, help students choose careers and plan for college, and intervene when students face behavioral, physical, or mental health challenges.
Schools & the legislation in countries like the US, that we often bring up in a conversation about all other things and including education, we often do not talk about the implementation of laws that could benefit and create jobs. In the United States, 1917; Specific legislation was drafted to provide funding for vocational guidance programs. Following this, the school guidance counseling profession grew. In the 1930s, Urban elementary schools begin to offer school counseling services. 1950s, humanistic psychology, and person-centered psychology movements gaining traction lead the focus of school counseling to undergo a significant shift. In the 1970s, school counseling incorporated wider goals of helping students develop socially, personally, and academically. And finally, in the 1990s, a nationwide shift toward standards-based education and the adoption of legislation such as the No Child Left Behind Act made it necessary for school counselors to find increasingly innovative ways to serve students.
So what do school counselors do?
School counselors, also known as guidance counselors, were first primarily responsible for facilitating career development. Today, the role of the school counselor is multifaceted and may vary greatly, depending on the requirements of both the state and each school.
The duties of school counselors can include the following:
- Providing instruction on psychological and social issues.
- Vocational guidance. Many school counselors help students prepare for college or select careers.
- Counseling. School counselors often help students mediate conflicts with their peers, teachers, or parents.
- Early intervention. School counselors receive training about learning difficulties and psychological concerns that commonly manifest in children and adolescents.
- Special needs services. Counselors often help special needs students integrate into classrooms and may oversee programs that address requirements for students with special needs or learning difficulties.
Further, counselors often help students:
- Maintain academic standards and set goals for academic success.
- Develop skills to improve organization, study habits, and time management.
- Work through personal problems that may affect academics or relationships.
- Improve social skills.
- Cope with school or community-related violence, accidents, and trauma.
- Identify interests, strengths, and aptitudes through assessment.
It could be a place of vulnerability and exploitation for young budding minds?
School counselors must complete a master’s degree, a diploma at a minimum, in school counseling, psychology, or social work and obtain the relevant certification, endorsement, or licensure to gain employment. This may involve taking a comprehensive exam and logging hours in a supervised counseling setting. In many cases, counselors will need to complete an internship or practicum, and some cases could also require previous teaching experience.
School counselors should be required to renew their licensure every three to five years. Depends on their personal development and appraisals that should be done with testimonials and progress they have made with the students, analyzed.
Multiple research findings that are pertinent to Pakistan’s contextual state of status quo in regards to progression in education and guidance for students.
A study — (2010; Shahinshah Babar Khan; “assessment on the provision of guidance services at high school level in Pakistan”) — was carried out on teachers who were teaching at a secondary level. to find out the status of guidance at the school level. A total of 60 teachers were selected as a sample from District Bahawalnagar. A questionnaire was formulated for teachers to explore their opinion about the guidance and its need at the school level. the findings included the following summarized below and this was back in 2010.
- At the secondary level, for guidance, special guidance departments are needed.
2. Parents contact teachers for guidance concerning their child’s education.
3. Guidance can help in selecting the right path and the students can perform better in the subjects of their own choice.
4. Special training is needed for teachers in the field of guidance and career counseling.
5. Guidance can enable students to understand the importance of the subjects and can find the relationship between education and work.
6. At this stage students feel different internal and external problems, with the help of guidance; they may overcome these problems properly.
7. There are no proper resources in the school for guidance.
8. Teachers need training for guidance and counseling of the students.
Other studies from as before as 1983 up till now have presented with models of how the proposed systems should work, they talk about workshops and existing platforms and talk about how the nonprofit organizations have filled the gap, one that needs to be mentioned here is the eduvision.pk — which has been filling in space for where the government should have proper legislation in place and also formulate a massive scale organization and a regulatory body to manage this aspect of education, if their true intentions are to educate the masses.
Eduvision — is Pakistan’s largest career counseling and educational guidance providing organization which was established in 2001. Eduvision is a pioneer non-profit organization in the field of education. It promotes educational opportunities across national boundaries and serving students and organizations. — this is the what is says on their website, even though they have loads of information on the website, the access can be limited to those who have access to the internet and personal computing itself? which also limits the use of it?
Personal thoughts on the subject at hand?
One of the most sort after topics of debate and constant contention has been the subject of “poor education/educational standards and then it is related to the reason why Pakistan is not progressing and why this country is ‘a supposed failure’? It has also been used as a scale for the judgment of the performance of politicians/parties & the weak legislation and how the process of updating the curricula is made into a game of bureaucracy. Also, how curricula itself is nothing more than about rote/memorization and has no practical implications with no aspects of building critical thinking and problem-solving mentality. I tend to think about this question and which is what have we done to do something about this? If we can question the system/party/leader/teacher/universities, why can we not have the capacity to have something in mind to fix and or at least better the issue at hand? I have often thought that career guidance and counseling in the earlier stages of starting anything, always go a long way and I believe this is something that will make a difference in numbers and it will change lives — in my personal honest opinion this is what can be the difference.
