GUIDANCE

 

Chapter 25

GUIDANCE 

The Chapter at a Glance

What is Guidance?

The purpose of guidance.

The phases of guidance.

Fundamental rules of guidance.

            The history of the human race reveals that mankind has always felt the need for some sort of guidance, especially for its young ones. This need, however, has become more intense, more pressing and more precise in contemporary times owing mainly to the growing complexity of the modes of living and other complications associated with it. Parents and teachers, therefore, are now becoming growingly alive to the need for adequate guidance for their children. Such awareness is perhaps unprecedented in human history.

What is Guidance?

            For an effective survival in the contemporary world we do need guidance for ourselves and for our children. Of this there can be no doubt. But we must be precise about what we exactly mean by guidance.

Definition of Guidance

            Perhaps the best definition of guidance is that offered by Jones*. It runs as follows:-

            “Guidance involves personal help given by someone; it is designed to assist a person to decide where he wants to go, what he wants to do, or how he can best accomplish his purpose; it assists him to solve problems that arise in his life.”

            This authoritative definition brings out clearly the salient features of guidance. It points out that guidance is neither dictation nor direction. It is rather friendly advice and personal help offered by a competent individual, known as the guide or guidance expert, to one who is in need of such assistance, the guide to understand his problems and to overcome his hurdles. Lack of guidance is liable to lead an individual to inadequate thought and behavior, wrong decisions and to maladjustments.

Guidance is Education

            We have seen in the preceding chapters on Mental Health and Hygiene that the aim of mental hygiene is the prevention and treatment of maladjustments. Guidance also aims at precisely the same objective. It is, in fact, one of the specialized techniques for realizing the aims and objects of mental hygiene. From this point of view, guidance is a tool or a handmaid of mental hygiene.

A Significantly Educational Process

            We have also realized that the aims and purposes of mental hygiene and those of educational are almost identical. Both aim at turning children into efficient, adjusted and healthy citizens. Now since guidance furthers the purpose of mental hygiene and since mental hygiene and education are identical it follows that guidance, too, is a significant educational process.

Guidance is Education Itself

            Guidance aims at educating the individual for understand­ing himself, unfolding his potentialities to their maximum so that he may eventually prove himself to be an adjusted and pragmatic member of the community. Guidance, therefore, is a significant educational procedure. It is, in short, education itself.

The Purpose of Guidance

            Guidance is a very comprehensive concept. Its object is to encourage the dull and the backward child, to normalize the neurotic, to socialize the aggressive and to reclaim the anti­social and the delinquent. In addition to such a specialized service a program of guidance assists the average and the normal children in overcoming their everyday problems of academic and social adjustment.

            Specifically speaking the main purposes of an adequate guidance program can be grouped under the following major categories: —

            (1) The Psycho-physical purpose.

            (2) The Educational purpose.

            (3) The Vocational purpose.

            (4) The Recreational purpose.

            (5) The Social purpose.

The Psycho-Physical Purpose

            An adequate guidance program aims at improving the psychological and physical health and efficiency of the individual.

It enables him to overcome his defects, deficiencies, handicaps, disabilities, etc., both mental as well as physical.

            A properly guided child has better possibilities of develop­ing into a mentally and physically healthy adult. On the other hand, a child who is denied such guidance is exposed to the risk of developing a number of mental and physical diseases and inadequacies.

The Educational Purpose

            Guidance enables the learner to understand his abilities and to exploit them to their maximum in scholastic pursuits. It thus minimizes the chances of educational failures, wastages and frustrations which, without guidance, may disturb or even wreck a child's life.

The Vocational Purpose

            Guidance offers valuable help to the individual in under­standing his vocational aptitudes and abilities. It aids him to decide about the adoption of a particular profession that is most suited to his individual requirements. Guidance thus increases an individual's chances for vocational and professional efficiency and adjustment.

The Recreational Purpose

            Guidance highlights the significance of various healthy recreations and their suitability for various types of individuals.

            Participation in those adequate and healthy recreations which are most suited to one's taste and temperament increases one's health and efficiency very considerably. Guidance thus de­creases the possibilities of bad health and inefficiency conse­quent upon lack of, indifference towards, or inadequate, recrea­tion and enjoyment.

The Social Purpose

            By fulfilling the various purposes enumerated above, a guidance program furthers the health and efficiency of the entire society. After all, the health and well-being of the society is dependent, in the last analysis, upon the health and well-being of the individuals who comprise it. Guidance, thus, is indis­pensable for a healthy, efficient and economical social order.

The Phases of Guidance

         One can better appreciate the nature of guidance if one analyzes its various aspects or phases. The three major phases of guidance are as follows:—

            (1) The Counseling phase.

            (2) The Mathematical phase 

            (3) The Demonstrative phase.

The Counseling Phase

            Counseling means giving advice. This is the oldest guid­ance practice. Since life began parents, teachers and elders have considered it their foremost duty to counsel the younger ones on various aspects of life.

            The modern differs from the ancient form of counseling in that it is not directive, authoritarian and rigid as the old system of counseling used to be. Contemporary counseling simply aims at pointing out to the child the possibilities of success and failure in a given field of life. It leaves the matter of choice and decision to the child's own discretion. Modern scientific guidance is mostly non directive. It merely offers friendly advice to those who need it.

            Guidance has its mathematical side as well. Modern guidance makes quantitative measurements of abilities, surveys of probabilities, etc. in order to be able to offer better and more precise advice to the guides. Measurements also enable the guidance experts to make predictions about human behavior.

            The mathematical aspect of guidance has been mainly responsible for the element of accuracy in its procedures. This element is a unique characteristic of modem guidance.

The Demonstrative Phase

            The ancient systems of guidance relied mostly on sermons, exhortations, oral advice, force, authority, etc. Modern guid­ance, on the contrary, emphasizes the need for practical de­monstrations and observations for and against the good or bad course of thought and behavior suggested to the guidee.

            Demonstrative guidance has proved immensely useful in the field of education. Excursion education, for instance, which provides the students frequent opportunities to make study trips, educational tours, etc., has proved a very helpful demonstrative technique for teaching many a school subject. Similarly, vocational trips to various industries and professions demonstrating the general pattern of life in these fields enables innumerable children to understand the suitability of a parti­cular professional career for themselves.

Fundamental Rules of Guidance

            No hard and fast guidance rules can be laid down for parents and teachers. There are no Ten Commandments to an effective system of home and school guidance. Much depends upon the wisdom and maturity of those who embark upon the task of guiding children.

Some Common-Sense Rules

            Some common-sense rules, however, could be relied upon by parents and teachers in their efforts to guide the children in their care. Following question was asked from 1,120 American School teachers:

            "Do you accept the thesis that the schools, with the co-operation of parents, should attempt to guide pupils toward what seem to be the best educational and vocational careers for them?  If not, why not; if so, with what reservations, if any?"

            1,104 teachers answered "Yes" while only 16 answered "No". Their answers and reservations constitute some of the most helpful common-sense rules for administering guidance. Some of these answers are as follows:—

(1)       Guidance should be rational advice based on factual information.

(2)       Guidance should not be compulsion, force, domination, and cut and dried planning, regimentation, prescription; neither should it be dictatorial or arbitrary.

(3)       Neither teachers nor parents should force children to follow an unwanted career.

(4)       An efficient and comprehensive guidance organization should be         provided for testing and interviewing each child and for     evaluating all data about each child.

(5)       School guidance should avoid, as far as possible, conflict with home guidance.

Parental Guidance

(6)       While parents naturally have their children's interests at heart and try to give them sincere advice, they are prone to error because of the following factors:—

      (a)             The awareness of the child's aptitudes and capacities, and the implications of these

             facts, are apt to be dulled by sentiment.

      (b)             Their lack of knowledge of a very complex occupational world makes it difficult for them

             to give the child an ade­quate picture of career possibilities.

      (c)             Their eagerness to obtain information about both the child and careers in general

             leads them to accept statements that are based on mere hearsay and that, therefore,

             tend to be scant, unreliable or biased.

(7)       Parent guidance is as necessary as pupil guidance.

(8)       Guidance should be done by trained guidance coun­selors.          Guidance by well-intentioned, but untrained, people may do   more harm than good.

(9)       Guidance should not take the sole responsibility for making people successful or happy or good. It is but one of the agencies helping people to help themselves to achieve their ends.

(10) Guidance should be broadly conceived. Ideally, a child's vocational interests and choices should arise out of atti­tudes and experiences developed through adequate educational guid-ance during the whole of his school career.

(11)    The composite picture of the pupil as constructed by parents and         teachers is probably the most accurate obtainable. Hence, close   cooperation between teacher and parent is neces­sary in any guidance program.

The Social Implication

 (12)   The social implication of guidance is that each indi­vidual should             be engaged in that type of occupation which he can successfully pursue and in which he can render his maximum contribution to society and to his fellow men.

(13)    Guidance workers should remember that since it is the child who must live with his choice, it should be the child who makes the choice of a career whether educational or voca­tional. The guidance worker's job is to help the child make that choice as    intelligently and as wisely as possible.

(14)    Guidance should not mean coddling the student. However, for             some students, it should provide more suitable programs.        Some of these will be harder, some easier, than the average. The            goal should be an individually tailored pro­gram for every            child.

(15)    Guidance, properly functioning, should eliminate to very great extent maladjustments of individuals to school life.

 (16)   The theory that every teacher should be a guidance teacher is based on the false belief that every teacher can be a guidance teacher. Many teachers do not have the type of per­sonality, the training, or the interest required for this work.

The Guidance Workers

(17)    Guidance workers should be practical people of the widest culture and interests.

(18)    Guidance workers should keep a careful record of the help- given        pupils. Hence, a complete system of personal records is a necessity for every counselor.

(19)    Vocational tendencies are latent in many cases until adolescence          is well over. Hence it is necessary that much guid­ance be given late in the high school period.

(20)    It is idle to talk of guiding pupils towards the courses for which they are best fitted unless the schools provide such courses.

            These common sense rules can prove helpful for teachers and parents in guiding the children along the right lines.