Evening star., 1944-12-10
School CounSelors Divide
Over Best Method to Guide
Importance of Providing Helpful Advice by Experts
to School Children Beset With Problems, How.
ever, Gaining Recognition Generally
By Clarke Siade,
Well-Known washington Educator,

Well-Known w,
In nearly all cities these days the
public schools have teachers designated
as "counselors" in their junior and
senior high schools, the aim being tc
help students solve educational, voca-
tional and personal problems. Thei,
training ranges from none to many sum-
mers spent In study. Washington schools
have start in this direction with one
counselor assigned to each junior and
senior high school,
Cities are divided about the best
means of counseling large numbers OF
students. Some employ only one coun-
selor per high school, believing that
essentially, guidance is and always has
been component of effective teaching
requiring no magic, mystical skill; the
counselor's job is to prepare and channel
information for homeroom or classroom
teachers to use. Pittsburgh, Cleveland
and Minneapolis, to cite three large
cities, do it this way. Certain others
believe counseling is a field for experts
only, with the inference usually that the
only experts are teachers who have
taken courses in guidance and counsel
ing in graduate schools of education;
these cities engage counselors in greater
numbers.
Providence and Pasadena are consid-
cred by public school people to have out
standing counseling. Providence has one
counselor to each $50 students and an
assistant superintendent of schools in
charge of the whole program. Balti-
more places one or two counselors in
the smallest Junior high schools and
six in the largest. AS specialists they
work with, but independently of, the
teaching staff.
Too Few CounselOrs.
Both ways of guidance are likely to
put most of the emphasis on educational
and vocational choices. Both make use
OF the newer types of tests. Both are
limited to grades 7 to IL. Both fail to
allow much time for work with individ-
uals. Washington is somewhere in be-
tween the two methods: The coupselors
only Informally and there aren't enough
counselors per high school to carry on
all the work themselves.
There are two approaches to coun-
selling: The authoritative, directive"
approach and 'permissive, nondirec-
tive'' one. The first implies the coun-
selor's ability and authority to interpret
problems and supply the right answer.
This makes students dependent, say
child psychiatrists. The second implies
the counselor's skill in setting up dis
cussion so that it becomes a mirror in
which student sees his own problem
In detached way; then he can supply
his own answer, from his own insight,
and he can act with a minimum of
outside help. This, say child psychia-
trists, makes students independent. De-
spite schools protestations to the con-
trary, most of them follow the "au-
thoritative."
Two years ago Philadelphias school
board, with refreshing disregard of
other cities counseling and guidance
programs, engaged professional social
worker to reorganize counseling and at
tendance policies and head division Of
pupil personnel. Here was a man who
knew children, too, but from outside the
classroom instead of inside Still re-
tanning the usual guidance in high
schools, he set up permissive, non-
directive counseling in elementary
schools, where many people dealing with
children think emphasis should be.
Given Thorough Training.
1t Is this deviation which makes Phila-
delphia's counseling of possible signif1-
canoe. From its teachers were selected
80-odd known to be interested in chill
dren as persons instead of as academic
sponges, and they were assigned to
schools as rapidly as principals would
accept them. Their preparation was
marked for its thoroughness, simplicity
and common sense. They were trained
in seminars and round-table discus
sions; the best child psychiatrists in the
country talked to them; leaders in
training social workers lectured; they
read, they discussed they sought advice
from older, more experienced teachers
who knew distraught child from a
bad one. And all the time they talked
with children and parents, reporting
their mistakes and successes to the head
of the division and his equally capable
assistant, also a social worker. In short,
the counseling teachers, as they were
called, were trained exactly as master
craftsman trains an alert, promising
apprentice: By handling actual cases
under close supervision instead of rely
ing completely on book-theory, but not
expected or allowed to attempt the
impossible. They knew that, funda-
mentally, no matter how inept they
might be at first, a sympathetic heart,
ready ear and mum tongue would
remedy more children's difficulties than
basketful of shiny new degrees.
After an initial resentment the
teachers and principals accepted their
help because it paid of in school efi-
cheney. The counseling teachers worked
with the mean bully, the shy and with
drawn child, the boy every one picks on,
the bright, restless child, the one who
vomits at the sight of a reading book
the sissy, and the show-off; they helped
each child individually ito set up his
problem as it feels to him, personally
and to work on it in his own way; to
bring him something new, such as in
formation he does not have, and help
him consider how he may be able to
use it: and to recognize and accept ele-
ments In the situation which will not
yield to his pressure and to which he
will need to adjust insofar as he is
apIe."