Guidance services have increased in every state
and in practically every school district of modest size or larger.
In this sense, guidance services as part of the American educational
enterprise seemingly enjoy a heyday. It is particularly important
now to examine some of the reasons why guidance has so recently
caught fire, for the forces which have produced its dramatic expansion
may paradoxically also be hindering its development as a
In addition to
providing a "lush" and "benign" environment, it is necessary to guide
individuals in the use of this environment and to help them, when possible,
to take the initiative in making the environment more favorable to
adolescent growth and development. This is the individualized aspect of
education which we call guidance.
Research, in the judgment of many
who have observed these changes closely, has led the way in this development
and will probably continue to lead until guidance has become
recognized as a necessary foundation for, and an essential process
in, all education. These three stages in the development of guidance
are worthy of fairly detailed consideration, even though it is impossible
to assert that school practice has yet passed beyond the first stage in
more than a few localities.
The school at all levels is now accepting much more seriously its responsibility for helping students to develop and to maintain wholesome personalities. In the face of great handicaps, there is a concerted effort being made to prevent all types of personality maladjustments through attempts to arrange a total school environment favorable to wholesome personality development. This is leading teachers to focus their attention primarily upon the needs and purposes of their students rather than upon subject matter.
Education itself, along with the schools, has too often been appraised in terms of size of the school system, cost of buildings, number of books in the library, inventory value of the equipment, the acres of grounds, landscaping, training and experience of staff members, and other tangible assets that attract the public eye. In reports and charts schoolmen arc sometimes guilty of 'playing up' these aspects of the school program.
Throughout this Yearbook every effort has been made to emphasize the fact that guidance should be an integral part of every aspect of education. How can guidance become an integral part of the teacher's day-by-day procedures? What follows represents an attempt to show some of the ways by which a teacher may become a more effective person in the guidance of his students.
Guidance may be a twentieth-century educational term, but counseling is as old as formal education, or older. Good teachers have always been interested in students and counseled with them. Nor is counseling merely a function of education, modern or ancient. Counseling with others on all sorts of problems and perplexities has been a phase of man's social development for centuries. Although it ispermissible for us to place boundaries around the term, so that we can systematically discuss its function in education; we should not consider ourselves as discoverers of a new activity.
Guidance is concerned with the best possible growth of individuals who will exemplify in their personalities the fullest realization of inner potentialities along lines consistent with the highest welfare of the group. If the guidance service is to influence personality development in a significant manner, it must be an active agent in the complex process of continuous interplay between the individual and his environment, physical and social, through which learning and growth occur. This can best be done when guidance becomes an integral part of the entire
Orientation, like all other aspects of guidance, is a process, not an event. Our concept of personality development as a continuous interaction between a growing individual and his ever-changing environment, material and social, precludes the possibility of effecting any important life adjustments merely by means of a discrete series of events directed narrowly toward the induction of students into a new school environment. An adequate orientation service is an integral part of the whole guidance program, just as the latter is an integral, functioning part of the entire school program.
So much attention has been given to personality development as the central task of education that a yearbook on guidance should devote at least one chapter specifically to this problem. In the treatment of this topic the psychological nature of personality and the processes by which it is developed, so far as they have been discovered, will first be discussed. Next, an attempt will be made to describe concretely some of the manifestations of an individually satisfying and socially acceptable personality and ways in which guidance may function in its development. Finally, maladjustment and the function of guidance in discovering early symptoms and correcting detrimental habit tendencies will be discussed.
Out of the experience of the past there has evolved a persistent educational philosophy characterized by purposeful instruction and individual guidance for all young people. The potency of this movement has been so great in recent years that few educational institutions have entirely escaped its impact, even though various forces from time to time have endeavored to preserve the status quo. Increasingly, our leading educators and thinking citizens have become aware that the schools must take a larger part in improving youth's possibilities for living more successfully and happily amidst continuous social change.
The organismic conception in psychology and in sociology, involving a recognition of the close interrelation of the components, has had an important effect on recent educational developments. It has challenged the separation of instruction, guidance, and administration, and has called attention to the importance of the unitary nature of the educational environment.
The foregoing chapters have indicated the objectives sought and some of the services to be provided in an effective guidance program in an educational institution. The present chapter considers the staff needed to achieve these objectives and render these services.
When viewing the European scene, which constitutes the major foreign area with which we are concerned, it must be kept in mind that the term 'guidance' is always coupled with 'vocational' and is never used in the broader sense assumed in this Yearbook. Orientation professionnelle, Berufsberatung, and orientamento professionale mean orientation and counsel toward occupations. In this sense guidance is highly organized.
THE following quotation from the writer's Administration and JL Supervision of the High School sets forth his conception of the scope and function of the library in the modern high school:
"The complete lack or the meagerness of space suitable for library purposes in the great majority of our high school buildings reveals a striking failure to appreciate the important part which the school library should have in high school education.
Self-harm has become one of the most prevalent issues in the last decade. It is a serious and intense form of managing ones emotional pain that has been under researched and long misunderstood. School counselors, educators and administrators alike are challenged with the task of understanding this under-discussed phenomenon.
A graduate student in counseling at a public university was dismissed from her program after she asked to refer a gay client to another counselor based on her religious views about sexual morality.
This commentary examines the failings of American high schools.
American high schools continue to show lackluster performance relative to high schools in comparably developed countries and to American elementary and middle schools. Laurence Steinberg argues that the problem isn't our schools, but the ways in which we raise our adolescents.