Summary JVB 210 - Guidance and counselling

Introduction As a school student, you must have received guidance from your parents, teachers, and others. You have received advice, suggestions, directions to do some work systematically when you needed. As a college student, you may have given advice to some school children or your classmates, or have helped them to complete a task. You have done these depending upon your knowledge, skills and understanding of the situation. You might have done it perfectly or might not. You may not be aware at this stage about the meaning of ‘guidance’, or principles of guidance, though you have helped some students or others in the past. Guidance in educational settings means to assist a learner to acquire sufficient understanding of himself/herself or his/her environment so that he/she can utilize the educational opportunities afforded by the school and/or community effectively. From this point of view, you may recall the way you helped any student in the past. Did you help them to solve the problem directly? Did you give them direct advice to do something or not to do something? Did you guide only once? Did you collect feedback after few days? Yes, all these questions are important. When you read this unit, you can make a difference in between the type of guidance you have given to any student, and the type of guidance we should provide. This is the first lesson of course “Guidance and “counselling”. In this lesson we shall discuss the meaning of guidance, highlight few definitions and principles of guidance, discuss brief history of guidance with reference to USA and India, and the importance of appraisal in guidance. We shall also highlight some important views available in the literature. 1.1 Objectives After reading this lesson, you should be able to:  Trace out the historical background of guidance movement in India; 3 M.Ed = EP-04  Trace out the historical background of guidance movement in U.S.A.  State the recommendations of Secondary Education Commission (1952-53) in guidance; and  State the recommendations of Indian Education Commission (1964-66) in guidance; 1.2 Historical Background of Guidance Guidance is an old concept and process. It is unorganized and informal process in all places, at all levels and at all times. In the ancient time, guidance was given to the young by elders or parents in the family. Even to-day, in our country, guidance whether in personal, educational and vocational is taken from the family priest, palmist, numerologists. Good teachers have always been interested in providing awareness to their students to help them for overcoming problems of learning and adjustment. The guidance was informal and incidental, more akin to ‘advising’, ‘suggesting’ and sometimes ‘ordering’ and ‘prescribing’. In the ancient time, it was the responsibility of teachers to provide the guidance to their students. The contact between teacher and students was intimate during the course of study. Bhagwad Gita’, is the result of providing guidance and counselling to Arjuna by Shri Krishna during Mahabharat. Guidance, as a personalized assistance made readily available by a mature, experienced and qualified person who gives it the status of separate field of endeavour with adequate sophistication and specificity separate from teaching, learning or Education. The intellectual climate, out of which guidance emerged as an essential activity of education, can be traced back to the time of Comenius — when the intellectual and social precursors of the modern world were uncertainly established. The development of science was a potent force in this direction. The technological advance of the Industrial Revolution brought in its wake increased division of labour and occupational complexities which really made the need for vocational guidance. The Revolution also 4 M.Ed = EP-04 brought changes in the way of life. The development of democratic values and the utilitarian emphasis on education gave an impetus to two things— freedom of the individual and a feeling of need for practical education. Thus, the Industrial Revolution, with the changes it introduced in modes of working, living and thinking, made this supposedly family problem of guidance assume wider importance. Guidance, as an organized professional activity, dates back to 1905 and the credit for the same goes to Frank Parsons of Boston, U.S.A. At the end of his career, he actively engaged himself in social work in a Boston settlement house where he worked directly with young people struggling to find work for themselves. He helped to found the Vocation Bureau and wrote his classic Choosing a Vocation. These two achievements, in the last years of a varied and eventful career made him pioneer in the guidance movement in America. Parsons was followed by a number of social reformers like Jessie B. Davis, Anne Reed and Eli Weaver who advocated social reforms and stressed the necessity for the school to prepare youngsters meet the rigours of a competitive and materialistic society. Davis S. Hill, another guidance pioneer, considered guidance as a means of developing human beings who could build a better society. 1.3 Guidance Movement in USA