Basic Principles of Guidance Most textbooks used in introductory guidance courses typically carry a statement of the basic principles

that undergird the guidance function. In many cases these include statements of assumptions, aims and practices, and principles. The authors of this book seek to present a statement of basic principles (fundamental truths or doctrine) accepted by most authorities as characteristic of the guidance function. Sources from which these principles are drawn include Miller, Cribbin, Beck, Wrenn, and especially Kehas.16 Principle I Guidance is concerned primarily and systematically with the personal development of the individual. Kehas explains that the thrust of personal development is for the individual to marshal intelligence about the self through systematic, personal inquiry. Usually the effort of the school centers upon intellectual learning and only when interference with intellectual development occurs do the personal and emotional components of human development receive attention. Kehas urges that education be defined as involvement with learning Further, the primary nature of guidance practitioners work would be the personal development , while the primary nature of teachers involvement would be the intellectual development of the individual. The character of guidance programs, then, exists in helping students acquire knowledge of the self, to understand their experiences. Kehas states, This concept of personal development assumes that it is desirable for individuals to have opportunity both to think about the kind of self they are building and have built and to confront themselves with the meanings they attribute to their experiencing and the consequences such attributions will have on their future self 17 Therefore guidance could be conceptualized as the school s provision for enabling students to create meaning in their lives. Principle II The primary mode by which guidance is conducted lies in individual behavioral processes. Since guidance is concerned with personal development itpractitioners subject matter is the personal world of each student. Guidance practitioners utilize personal interviews, counseling relationships, test interpretation sessions, and the like to advance students understanding of their own internal structures. Through these methods individuals can examine the world they create themselves and the meanings to be derived from personal experiences. Miller points out that guidance operates in the zone in which individuals own unique worlds of perceptions interact with the external order of events in their life context. 18 Therefor, the processes and practices employed by guidance personnel are designed to assist individuals to understand better their subjective states and external social conditions. The intent of the practitioners operations is that individuals master their experiences, attitudes, and meanings in order to exert control over personal development. Principle III Guidance is oriented toward cooperation, not compulsion. Students cannotbe compelled to submit to guidance. Guidance takes place by the mutual consent of the individuals involved. Consent is given either explicitly. The absence of coercion or pressure is the hallmark of guidance. When unwilling students are referred to guidance personnel, the resentment and resistance usually present must be taken into account and resolved. Guidance depends upon releasing the internal motivation, and/or willingness to change, rather than upon external coercion or threat. Duress creates mistrust rather than improvement. Principle IV Guidance is based upon recognizing the dignity and worth of individuals as well as their right to choose. Respect is accorded persons because they are individuals prossessing worth and dignity and because they are human. Guidance rests on a belief in the fundamental dignity and importance of the individual, in the essential equality of human beings, and in their need to exercise freedom. This emphasis on the supreme worth and central position of the individual has been an unbroken thread in democratic thought. Its fundamental proposition lies in the integrity of individuals they have the right to be threated as unique and inviolable persons.

Further, individuals should have the maximum opportunity to select their ownpurposes in life and to choose the means to accomplish these purposes. The core of freedom is self-determination. It involves the power to act positively toward goals that an individual chooses. Certainly, the freedom to make choices and to act upon them is essential to personal development. By using this freedom the individual develops a sense of responsibility and self-restraint. Principle V Guidance is a continous, sequential, educational process. It should begin with the elementary school and continue throughout education; it should be united by a single theme; and it should be integrated with the total school program. Perhaps Wrenn has best summarized these principles when he ask what is important in student personnel work and responds by citing the following from the personnel point of view in education : 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Above all else, personnel service in education is predicated upon seeing the lerner totally. We are dedicated to treat the student with dignity, to respect his integrity and his right to selffulfillment. Personnel work is concerned with the student s plans for the future as well as optimum living in the present. We are the prime advocates of individual differences in the school. Personnel work depends upon a varied methodology, one that is fitted to the ends to be served. Just as the best conception of counseling is that of a creative relationship between counselor and student, so the important element in all personnel work is the quality of the relationship established between worker and learner, between worker and colleague. Finally, personnel services must remain in the central stream of educational effort.19

7.

Criticisms of Guidance A survey of guidance would be incomplete without some examination of the criticisms at issue in the field. This section attempts to bring together some of the more conspicuous ones. It should be noted that these criticisms have been made not only by people outside the field of guidance but also by those who are employed in the field. Only a view of the major criticisms of guidance will be dealt with here. A consistent criticism, past and present, has been that the word guidance is meaningless. Wrenn is among those who have been most cricical of the term. He states, The term guidance workers , already in disfavor, will disappear from our vocabulary as a vague and ambiguous term involving a person whose time may be spread so thinly over such a variety of activities that no one of them can be performed adequately 20 On the other hand, Hoyt has argued for retention of the term because it is essential if the role of the counselor in education and in pupil personnel work is to be placed in proper perspective. Hoyt sees it as a symbol of the responsibility all educators must have in the process.21 Critics point out that the term conveys direction, authoritarianism, and paternalism, just the opposite of that which people in the field claimthat they practice. Defenders of the term claim that from a historical sense guidance has meaning in education, and furthermore, no better term has yet been advanced that is acceptable. In view of these difficulties Hobbs has facetiously suggested: One way out of this semantic quandary would be to invent some new words. We might take a cue from government and world organizations and get some words that stand for the person engaged in guidance work. A few samples are supplied, without much self investment in their perpetuation: COOSSD, AIPP, and WANTAPICU. These stand, respectively, for: Coordinator of Opportunities for Student Self Development, Assitant to Individuals in Personal Planning and Wheedler and Needler of Teachers and Principals in the Interest of the Child Undivided. A person could get an M.A in AIPP or accept a

position as COOSSD in his home town high school. On further thought, maybe we had better stick to the word guidance, limp as it is.22 Another criticism is that guidance and counseling have lost their identity to psychology. In his 1950 presidential address to the national Vocational Guidance Assosiation, Hoppock reviewed some of the accomplishments of vocational guidance and then stated: Massive as this program has beeb and still is, the foundations upon which it rests are beginning to crumble . Client-centered counseling now challenges the basic assumption underlying the whole concept of testing and diagnosis as the in indispensable preliminary to clinical counseling.23 Tyler, in an editorial comment entiled What Do You Mean, Routine? described the tendency of many to consider educational and vocational counseling routine and to prefer clients with therapeutic needs.24 Tooker critized school counselors because of their tendency to cling to the coattails of clinical psychology.25 At issue is wheter personnel in guidance, by virtue of using concepts and techniquesfrom developmental, personality, and clirical psychology, have denigrated themselves and lost their distinguishing professional features. Another criticism is that guidance personnel are inadequately trained to perform the functions that Wolfle, in the preface to wrenn s report, The Counselor in a Changing World, very forcefully makes clear that. The current reality is that most school counselor and inadequately prepared to meet these rigorous standar. They are largely recruited from among perhaps who originally prerared themselves for one career for example , teaching history and who later, on the b of meager additional training, became counselors The hard truth is that many school counselors have not been trained to give a student much help in finding his way in an increasingly complex world. 24 Over time, perhaps this criticism will be blunted when the APGA Counselor Education Standards are fully implemented. These standards call for a more rigorous, systematic graduate preparation of school counselors than presently exists. Another criticism is that counselors spend all their time with college bound students neglect the large numbers of the youth who enter the labor market. In many cases this criticism can be reduces to the fact that counselors spend too much time with bright students, and consequently students average and low ability cannot receive their fair sare of the counselor s time, skills, and knowledge. Walton has stated that a real danger lies in a tendency on the part of school guidance workers to stress that with which they are most familiar, curricular angd college guidance areas, and to neglect that which is not their natural interest, the vocational area 27 Many have implied and orthers have forthrightly stated that counselor s luck of work experience in business and industry commits their attention, loyalty, and practices to those students who will remain in school. Many have criticized the counselor s use of time. Hitting hard at the counselor overinvolvement in such tasks as clerical work, substitute teaching discipline, activity club supervision, and other quasi administrative task, Arnold, 28 . Goaldstein, 29 Martyn 30 Hitchcock, 31 Purcell, 32Moore and Cramer, 33. and others urge the counselor to spend more time in counseling. This situation has led Tenyson 34 to cry for time and relief from admistrate duties :Stewart to draft are bill of rights seeking time, space, and support, concentration on counseling and related activities; 35 . and Novact to plead, Let the counselor! 36 Still other are critical of the fact that titles asigned guidance personnel do not convey functions, and that all too often counselor serve dual roles in the school when they sould be assigned full time to their responbilities. All kinds of tittles abound for those who work in the schools:educational counselor, adviser, guidance counselor, vocational counselor, school counselor, psychological counselor, guidance director, staff adviser, staff assistant, and the like. Critics claim the titles obscure rather than clarify roles. Arbukle s statement is illustrative of complaints of part-time assignments. Arbuckle reasons. It is interesting to note that of these groups (teachers, administrators, and specialized service personnel) it is only the school counselor who is willing to accept the part-time, dual-role status. Other

professional workers may spend only part of their time in the service of the school, but they are not part-time doctors, or part-time nurses, or part-time psychologists, or psychiatrists. Like pregnancy, they are or they ain t and there is no in-between status. We have no doctor-teacher, or nurse-principal, or psychologist-janitor, but we have thousands of teacher-counselors, or even more absurd, principalcounselors, and even, horror added upon horror, superintendent-counselors. Even worse, this schizophrenic fellow doesn t seem to mind this dual or triple status, and goes blithely walking off in several directions at the same time, quite unaware that one set of feet is falling over the others.31 Another criticism is that guidance is atheoretical. That is, that present-day guidance practice is not and cannot be based upon any theory. The contention is that attention has been directed to providing a service to students to the detriment of building theories that explain the behavior of individuals involved in guidance processes. Closely associated with this criticism is the view that borrowed psychotherapy models have been misapplied to school guidance. These critics assert that self-theory counseling, psychoanalytic, behavioristic, and other models do not fit that which is done in school-helping relationships because of the brevity of counselor-student contacts and for other reasons. Few school counselors would dispute that much more work in theory building is sorely needed. Another criticism is that counselors have confined their activities to those which take place in their office. The charge is that such a practice restricts the counselor s availability to those who need help so badly that they have the courage to come to the office and to those who are reffered by others. All too often, this means that the school counselor s clientele is composed primarily of students who plan togoto college and those who commit disciplinary infractions. Critics advocate abandonment of the traditional practice of all the counselor s work taking place within the four walls of the office. They urge the counselor to become more visible and accessible to students. Certainly, counselors in the middle and late 1970s must become increasingly active in the school and in the community. The modern school, characterized by its work-study programs, open campus, drop-in centers, and open exit and entry, demands counselors who are easly accessible and actively engaged in the life of students. Counselors will not be a force within school if they remain in their offices, passive and withdrawn from the life, interest, and concerns of students. Recently, counselors have been criticized for inadequately or badly serving-group students. Critics charge that such students are not given sufficient encouragement to seize the opportunities available to them in education and employment. Added to this is the charge that counselors fail to understand the culture and background of various minority-group students and therefore cannot adequately work with them. A final criticism is that counselors responses to female clients are based on outdated stereotypes of women. The charge is that counselors, from such a frame of reference, are unable to serve females in contemporary society in such crucial areas as education, employment, marriage, and family. Evidence and research bearing on this issue have begun to emerge during the mid-1970s. Super has written the words which serve well to end this section : That the school counselor has been organizing, to improve himself, and insisting on having a greater voice in deciding, where and how, is good, If is to be hoped that he will not let criticism lead him to overact, to in agine threats which he needs, wants and know how to use effectifely Is to be hoped, too, that those who want to help him will find ways of making their help available which are both acceptable and effective. Issues Only two issues will be presented. The reader should be aware that embedded within the preciding treatment of criticisms lie many hidden issues worthy of extensive thought and discussion. ISSUES I Economic and industrial forces rather that social or political forces were the reasons why guidance originated in this country rather than some other country. Yes, because

1. The constant need for talented labor power in the nation s work force makes it mandatory that counselors identify and encourage students to persue an education and seek training that would equip them for jobs. 2. The continuing emergence of division of labor, the unprecedented growth of a highly complex technology, and the ever-increasing specialization require that students carefully plan their education and vocation futures. 3. This country possesses the economic recourses to bear the costs of guidance personnel. No, because 1. Social forces, such as compulsory education which brought increasingly larger schools and expanded curricular offerings, were more important. 2. Guidance developed because its purposes and principles fitted snugly into American democratic ideals. Its aim of helping the individual to become all that one is capable of becoming without regard to family, class, or social conditions represents a characteristic of an open society and has been highly prized in America. 3. It was the axpansion of professionalism and specialization within education that was largely responsible. When certain needs exist in the United States, individuals trained especially to meet these needs emerge. Other societies characteristically depend upon the amateur to cope with specialized needs in addition to performing other functions. Rather than relying upon teachers to provide guidance, counseling specialists were brought into being to provide systematic services to youth in decision-making situations. Discussion Many reasons have been advanced to account for the phenomenon of guidance as an American invention. Presumably, it is not because of any one of them but rather a combination of forces that accounts for its origin and development in this country. Other countries such as Great Britain, Norway, and Sweden are beginning to implement guidance services within their schools. It should be noted that many of these countries have extended the age of compulsory schooling and are in the process of revamping their systems of education. The emergence of larger schools, offering more comprehensive program, seems inevitable. These conditions created the need for counselors. In the years to come, observations of school guidance practices and programs within these countries will be fruitful for those who practice in America. ISSUE II It would have been preferable if guidance services had been located in some community agency or institution other than the school. Yes, because 1. Students would be less likely to view counselors as part of the school establishment that seeks to control them. Therefore, initiation of positive relationships would be accomplished more easly. 2. Most problem of students originate in home and community situations rather than being school-based. Placement of guidance services in the schools confuses the origin of these problems and confounds the selection and use of effective treatment procedures. 3. Personal development, counseling, and therapy have no place in the school. The major purpose of the school is to promote intellectual development. Students who are unable to function because of situational, emotional stresses should be removed and treated elsewhere. No, because : 1. Locating counseling practitioners in the schools means that are conveniently and readily accessible to those who need their services. 2. Counselors can extact more quickly and easily the knowledge that they, teachers, and administrator have accumulated about individualand use it to help those who seek assistance.

3. External agencies such as community clinics and centers are often overcrowed and understaffed. It is not unusual for waiting list of weeks and months to develop for individuals who need help. As a consequence, community agencies, by necessity, limit their clientele to those who experience severe problems. The situational, educational-vocational, and commonplace personal-social (identity and relationship) concerns experienced by students would receive short shrift in agencies or institutions external to the school. 4. Educators have long insisted that the airms of the school are rightfully broader than development of the intellect. The school is obligated to provide those special services, such as counseling, that enable the individual to remain in school and profit from its offerings. Discussion The question of why guidance originated and resides within the school and not some other institution of society is a challenging one which every practitioner needs to think through cleary and carefully. The argument that students would be less apt to view counselors as part of the school establishment probably has some merit. An equally persuasive view is that students would simply enlarge their beliefs to incorporate the community agency as part of that same establishment. Traditionally and historically, both in the United States and in foreign countries, reliance on agencies external to the schools has proved to be less than desirable. Frequently referral results only in assessment and diagnosis rather than in treatment. Often the information returned to the school does not go beyond what is already know except in sophistication of terminology. Undoubtedly there is no existing setting other than the school which has access to virtually all youth. The opportunities for providing developmental, prophylactic, and remedial services are unparalleled. Those reasons advanced for placing guidance services in schools seem logical, sufficient, and persuasive. It should be recognized that there is no preordained set of functions that schools must provide. That which is provided by the school is that which educators and members of the public believe will help students become independent responsible members of society.