ADVERTISEMENTS:
In this article we will discuss about:- 1. Need for Guidance 2. Definitions of Guidance 3. Meaning 4. Basic Facts 5. Principles . Types. 7. Functions.
“Guidance is not giving direction. It is not the imposition of one person’s point of view upon another person. It is not making decision for an individual which he should make for himself. It is not carrying the burden of another’s life. Rather, guidance is assistance made available by personally qualified and adequately trained men or women to an individual of any age to help him manage his own life activities, develop his mm point of view, make his own decision and carry out his own burden”. – Crow and Crow
Need for Guidance:
When we talk of need for guidance, we use the guidance in the specific sense mentioned above, and not in the general sense of providing help to an individual for the entire life. Here we mean not guidance in all spheres of life but guidance needed by a secondary school student.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
He needs guidance for the following reasons:
1. Directing the Academic Growth:
Guidance is needed for helping the individual to develop his abilities and skills and acquire knowledge without difficulty. Learning in the class is to be made adjustable to the needs, interests and abilities of the pupils. The pupil is to be helped to developed good study habits and right attitudes to studies, and to select the educational courses in accordance with his interests and abilities.
2. Directing Vocational Maturity:
ADVERTISEMENTS:
The pupil is to be helped to develop right attitude towards work, basic skills needed for vocational life in general, and to make the right choice for vocation in-accordance with his ability, interest and aptitude.
3. Directing Personal Social Adjustment:
There is need for helping the pupil to understand himself, analyse his abilities and interests, understand the environment around and make suitable adjustment. There is need for clarifying the goals of schooling and building a proper philosophy of life in the pupils, so that they can be better members of the family and life.
The growing number of problem children backward children, juvenile delinquents and maladjusted pupils in schools is a threat to the educational organisation and to the society.
If something is not done, preventive and adjustive measures are not taken, the menace will grow. There is need for helping the adjustment of not only these problem cases, but also the normal children so that they grow good citizens and well-adjusted young men ready to assume family and social responsibilities.
4. Guidance to Cope with Special Problems of Home and Society:
The pattern of home and society is becoming increasingly complex, with the result that some special problems arise and baffle the growing child. The homes are becoming disintegrated, the joint-family system is waning rapidly. The family conditions due to certain social changes become complex.
We have soring prices upsetting the domestic economy, women compelled to work outside home, one or both the parents frequently absenting from home due to professional work, the economic market tightens day by day, the employment opportunities are winding even for the technical hands, new jobs are turning up, and the man-power planning is becoming more complex.
Some organisation is therefore needed to analyse the present social structure in all its aspects — social, economic and political, understand its repercussions on the growing child and his future educational and vocational adjustment, and make proper arrangements for helping the pupil to make the best of the present circumstances.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
5. Guidance to Cope with Special Problems of School:
Although education is widely understood as a harmonious development of all the traits and powers of the child, the present-day school hardly fulfills the requirements and strives to achieve this goal on account of a good number of inadequacies in the school management, curriculum, supervision, methodology of teaching etc. The recent movement of mass education has resulted in absence of individual attention to the pupil.
The curriculum has been charged with such unnecessary material as has no relevance to the future educational and vocational development of the child. Absence of co-curricular activities have rendered education purely theoretical and academic. The present techniques of classroom instruction adopted by the teacher hardly enable the pupil to have right attitude towards work and study.
The basic elements of growth for purposes of education, namely learning knowledge and skill, application of abilities, information and skill, attitude development, habit formation are not attended to properly.
There is thus a dire need for helping the pupils in the school under the circumstances so that the inadequacies of the schooling do not have adverse effect upon. Guidance is needed to the teacher also so that he makes the best of the situation and strives hard to help the child in making adequate progress under even adverse conditions of school.
Even besides the normal children, there is a sizable number of exceptional children (backward, mentally retarded, physically retarded and the gifted). An organisation in the school to check frustration among them, and to lead them personal social adjustment and progress is of no mean importance. Adjustment to home and school environment for exceptional children is as important as the judicious selection of courses and careers for normal children.
6. Guidance for National Planning:
The recent changes in the economic, social and political conditions have a direct effect on the educational structure in our country.
Firstly life has become more complex, the urban civilization has become more and more sophisticated,
Secondly modern life demands production to speed up, and business (both small and large-scale) to progress, and science and technology to get greater attention.
Thirdly, the professions are growing both in number and in specialisation.
Fourthly there is need for man power planning so that the human resources are properly utilized, unemployment is checked and labour is amply rewarded. At present there is a paradox of unemployment.
On the one hand, there are men but no suitable jobs for them. On the other hand, there are jobs, but no suitable jobs for them. On the other hand, there are jobs, but no suitable personnel to man these. With the rapid march towards industrialisation, we need greater number of skilled workers. We need specialists in the field of science, technology, industry, agriculture, administration and many other specialised jobs.
The Indian Education Commission has made a strong case for man-power planning in the country and has suggested targets for the same, starting from the elementary stage of education.
Guidance is needed from the beginning of the secondary stage so that pupils are helped to offer suitable courses, followed by suitable careers so as to fulfill the manifold needs of the country. On one hand, we have the abilities, interests and other factors inherent in the pupil that determine his specific choice of courses and careers.
On the other hand, there are the needs of the country to have trained workers in all the directions, occupying each zone of the world of work. A balance between the conflicting demands of the individual and the society is to be met.
Guidance is essentially needed to strike the balance. In its forward looking process, it will reveal the future needs of the country, and in its present working process, it will correlate the present human potentialities with that.
Definitions of Guidance:
Guidance in the ordinary sense of the term means any kind of help or assistance. Such a type of guidance is needed by man throughout life – From infancy to death, ‘womb to tomb’ as they call it. It is needed by him for fulfillment of his personal needs and for adjustment to the environment.
But ‘Guidance’ in the present context has a specific meaning. It is limited in scope, period and functioning. It is given only during the schooling period, and deals with only the specific problems concerning educational and vocational plans and social adjustment.
In this limited sense, psychologists have presented numerous definitions of guidance:
1. Arthur J.Jones:
“Guidance is the personal help that is given by one person to another in developing life goals, in making adjustment and in solving problems, that confront him in the attainment of goals”.
2. Morris:
“Guidance is the process of helping individuals through their own efforts to discover and develop this their potentialities happiness and social usefulness”.
3. Husband:
“Guidance may be defined as assisting individual to prepare for his future life, to fit for his place in Society.”
4. Ruth Strang:
“Guidance is a process of helping every individual, through his own efforts, to discover and develop his potentialities for his personal happiness and social usefulness.”
5. Crow and Crow:
“Guidance is not giving directions, it is not imposition of one person’s point of view upon another person. It is not making decision for an individual which he should make for himself. It is not carrying burden on other’s life, rather guidance is assistance made available by qualified and adequately trained men or women to an individual of any age to help him manage his own activities, develop his own point of view, make his own decisions and carry out his own burden.”
6. The Secondary Education Commission (India): says:
“Guidance involves the difficult art of helping boys and girls to plan their own future wisely in the full light of all the factors that can be mastered about themselves and about the world in which they are to live and work.”
7. Rama Rao:
“Guidance is essentially as educative process, the outcome of which are mental and educational preparedness for the courses of action centred round the basic, functions of men especially those pertaining to vocational, recreational and community service field”.
Meaning of Guidance:
From the above definitions we form an idea of the guidance work in schools. The concept of guidance is very recent, but even then there has been a strong shift of emphasis. Only recently the specialists took a very narrow view of guidance in so far as they included in guidance work just the problems of selecting school subjects choosing career and making emotional adjustment.
But now guidance is viewed in a broader perspective, including in it all the problems concerning the total development of the personality of the child. Thus it brings into its fold besides educational and vocational problems, the physical, moral, social, personal and recreational problems of the child which may arise only in school but also at home, neighbourhood playground and anywhere. Viewing it broader in scope, some experts find guidance synonymous with education. But actually, its frontiers are not so unbounded as that of education.
Basic Facts about Guidance:
1. Guidance Fulfills some Aims of Education:
Guidance helps the realisation of some of the aims of education, as it assists the pupil to make the best selection of his educational courses, so as to avoid failure and frustration. A well-adjusted profession also is an asset to the society. That way guidance is the practical side of education. While education sets the goal, guidance fulfills it.
2. Guidance is Paedocentric:
The centre of guidance is the child himself and not any problem. The assistance is to be given to him so that he himself arrives at the right decision, rises to the occasion and fulfills his objective. The guidance worker, does not thrust anything from outside. Guidance is a kind of assistance rendered to the child which helps him in his best development.
All this assistance is to be given after studying the pupil – his abilities, interests, aptitudes, personality traits and aspirations, in relation to the opportunities available in the society. Guidance is thus a continuous dynamic process concerning the individual pupil.
3. Guidance is a Sort of Service:
Guidance is neither instruction nor curriculum. It is a sort of specific service.
It is a personal service as it renders assistance to the pupil with the objective of enabling him to solve his problems himself. “It helps Johny see through himself and then to assist him in seeing himself through.”
It is a specialized and a generalized service in which the parent, the teacher, the administrator and more specifically the counsellor plays his part. The counsellor performs the specific and specialised duties of technical nature, and others supplement his work and support him.
It is an organised service, as it has a specific objective, special staff, special organisation, specific tools and techniques and a specialized agency to guide. It is not an incidental type of school work, provided now and then, without any regular programme. It has a development set apart for the school with qualified personnel, adequate equipment and necessary technical know- how’.
4. Guidance is Universal:
The specialized service of guidance is meant for all the pupils (without any distinction). It is not only meant for the abnormal and exceptional children who pose problems for the parents and teacher, but also for the normal children whose abilities and potentialities are to be helped and developed to the optimum.
It is meant for those who seek it, and also for those who do not seek it. Guidance is not meant only for the secondary school pupil. It is meant for pupils of all the stages.
Guidance is needed at the end of the compulsory attendance stage, the completion of the elementary school, the beginning of junior high school, the completion of the middle school and entrance to the secondary school, the completion of the secondary school education, entrance to the college, completion of the college education and lastly taking up of an occupation.
5. Guidance is Assistance:
Guidance is not provided in the form of thrust or compulsion, instructions or lecturing, but in the shape of wise- counselling which is no more than an assistance., As Jones puts it, ‘guidance is self-development and self-direction’. It helps the pupil to guide himself, and arrive at self-understanding.
It helps him to accept himself as he is, to understand his potentialities, to realize the worth of the potentialities, to analyse the situation prevailing in the environment, to set personal goals, to arrive at wise decisions and to make efforts accordingly. Guidance is never meant to seat a pupil in a particular educational course or on a job.
The guidance worker imparts information about the opportunities of educational, social and vocational character. He helps the pupil to become adjusted to the environment and become a useful member of the society. He does not restrict the freedom of the individual pupil in any way.
6. Guidance is Planning:
It is planning in the sense that the guidance personnel reviews the entire situation and plans for future. On the one hand he makes an estimate of the abilities, interests, aptitudes and personality traits of the pupils, on the other he studies the educational courses befitting them, then again he studies the courses that are actually available to suit the demand, and then he studies the vocations that are concomitant to these courses, and the vocational opportunities that are available at present and in future.
Lastly he tries to equate the personal characteristics with the educational and vocational opportunities. Thus, he conserves human resources and energy by placing an individual in the suitable position, i.e., round peg in a square hole rather than a round peg in a square hole. The scope of guidance is planning in the three field — educational, vocational and social. Thus guidance is three dimensional in character.
Principles of Guidance:
Below we mention some important principles that underlie any guidance work:
1. Guidance is based on the principle that all individuals differ in abilities, interests, capacities and limitations. Guidance recognises the psychological fact of individual differences and works out its programme after accepting these differences.
2. Guidance assists the pupil is studying his present educational opportunities, and his own capacities.
3. Guidance is a continuous dynamic process concerning the child during his entire studentship.
4. Guidance has threefold responsibilities of assisting the child in social – personal adjustment. In choosing suitable courses and careers.
5. Guidance is a community responsibility with school playing the major role.
6. Guidance services should be available continuously to all the individuals.
7. It meets the varied and extensive needs of the individual.
8. Guidance is an assistance to the pupil so that he understands himself, guides himself and makes his final decisions.
9. Guidance needs a personnel who are trained in collecting information about the individual pupils and about the educational and vocational opportunities available, in test-construction administration of tests, technique of interview and counselling.
10. Guidance comprises of a number of services such a pupil-information service, occupational information service, data collection service, counselling service, occupational preparatory service, placement service, follow-up service and research service.
11. Guidance organisation comprises of budgetary provision, technical know-how, co-operation of staff and personnel, co-operation of the parents, a system of collecting, recording and analysing the data of the pupils, a time- schedule for different tasks, and supervision and expert advice from the head.
Types of Guidance:
Broadly speaking, there are a dozen types of guidance, in accordance with various fields and situations where guidance is needed.
The various fields or types are:
(i) Personal-social guidance,
(ii) Educational guidance,
(iii) Vocational guidance,
(iv) Physical guidance,
(v) Hygiene guidance,
(vi) Martial guidance,
(vii) Home guidance,
(viii) School guidance,
(ix) Leadership guidance,
(x) Religious guidance,
(xi) Leisure time guidance, and
(xii) Old-age guidance.
Out of these types, the first three are the major ones, and the rest are either minor or already included in any of the first three. For instance, fourth to tenth types are somehow included in personal-social guidance. The eleventh can form a part of educational guidance. The twelfth is not related to school pupils, and hence it may be left out.
Briefly speaking the three main types are as follows:
1. Personal-Social or Psychological or Adjust-Mental Guidance:
This assists the child to adjust well with physical and social environment and solves all the emotional and psychological problems. It makes the child socially well- adjusted and emotionally balanced and helps his all-round development of personality.
2. Educational Guidance:
It pertains the choice of the various educational courses available to the child in accordance with his innate capacities, interests, personality traits and aspirations. It seeks to recognise the individual differences in pupils and adjust these with diversified courses.
3. Vocational Guidance:
It is an extension of the educational guidance, pertaining to the judicious choice of the profession or employment after the completion of the studies, in accordance with the ability, aptitude and traits of the pupil.
Personal-social guidance is very much needed at the childhood level, and also during pre-adolescence and adolescence. Educational guidance is needed chiefly at the beginning of the secondary stage, when the child has to make a choice of the elective groups to be selected.
Vocational guidance is needed mostly at the end of secondary stage, when majority of the students after passing the secondary examination, enter the professional field. It is also needed at the end of the university stage for those who complete university education.
Functions of Guidance:
A. Personal-Social Guidance:
The term personal-social includes the personal aspect of the child’s life combined with social aspects. The personal aspect includes the development of the innate powers, emotional adjustment, and the psycho-emotional relationship developed within the self. Personal guidance safeguards the psychological abnormalities, mental conflict maladjustments of various types and the frustrations caused thereby.
Under the social aspect, we include the relationship developed with the physical and social environment. The interconnection between the personal and the social aspects of personality development suggests a single combined type of psychological guidance as named above.
This type of guidance is designed to help the child to satisfy his basic psychological needs (like affections, recognition, security, belongingness etc.), to develop wholesome character traits and to make the suitable adjustment with the environment.
Personal-social guidance is provided at three well-marked stages of the pupil’s life, viz., the elementary stages, secondary stage and the university stage:
(a) Elementary Stage:
This stage is the period of growth and development of physical emotional and social traits. Without careful guidance it can be unhealthy, abnormal, slow, and unwholesome. The utmost importance of providing this guidance at this stage is due to the fact that the childhood is the most impressionable period of life, when the character traits, attitudes, values and habits are formed. A useful programme of psychological guidance at this stage will include many tasks.
Firstly it will help the pupils to make the right start in the school, so that when he enters the school, he meets the new situations pleasantly and does not feel horrified at the sight of new building, new place, new teacher and formal atmosphere as compared to the informal atmosphere at home. Through sympathy emotional help, play technique and affection by the teachers, the pupil can be made to feel in a homely atmosphere. The pupil can be helped to form desirable attitudes towards his self, the parents, the school teachers, the playmates, and others.
Secondly, he can be assisted in the task of building good physique. For this purpose the guidance unit in the school should have a detailed medical check-up and find out disabilities, deficiencies or ailments if any. Diagnosis and remedial cure must follow the check-up.
Thirdly, the guidance unit must observe the emotional tone of the pupils, their adjustment difficulties and their mental health. Various therapeutic measures can be adopted as treatment.
(b) At the Secondary Stage:
This is the transition stage from boyhood to adulthood, and, a stage of storms and stresses. Details about the emotional and other problem of the adolescent boy or girl have. Psychological guidance to help the child solve his problems and build emotional stability are needed very badly.
The adolescent may be facing numerous types of problems such as those concerning his physical health, mental health, family adjustment, financial handicaps and social adjustment.
The psychological guidance at this stage will comprise of talks, discussions, interviews, sympathetic advice, assistance in understanding the problems, engaging the pupil in manifold activities, redirecting and sublimating his emotions and lastly adjusting the curriculum and the school situations.
(c) At the College State:
At this stage, the pupil makes a transition from adolescence to adulthood. The specific psychological problems that arise are adjustment with the college environment and persistence of the old problems from the adolescent life.
The function of the guidance services is to help the college student solve old problems, adjust to new environment, build a philosophy of life, imbibe healthy ideas and goals, acquaint themselves will the social surroundings and participate in social activities.
B. Educational Guidance:
Educational guidance is concerned with the assistance given to the child in solving his academic problems. This is possible through a programme of self-appraisal or self-understanding, orientation, adjustment and development. The pupil must begin with understanding his own abilities and interests. He must further be oriented to follow these and adjust to the courses available, so that develop into a really educated man.
The assistance provided will differ in its nature, content and area from stage to stage of the pupils schooling.
Elementary, secondary and the college stage are the three marked stages, although much of educational guidance is needed at the secondary stage:
(a) Educational Guidance at Elementary Stage:
Guidance programme at this stage is directed towards the inculcation of good habits and proper attitudes towards work and study. It helps the pupil to adjust himself to the home-school environment. It creates interest in the pupil in various co-curricular activities and hobbies so that he develops his basic potentialities. It enables the child to make a good start in the school by attaining mastery of the basic skills of learning – the 3 R’s.
His difficulties in reading, writing and arithmetic are solved and he is helped to get the best of elementary education. The pupil helped to plan intelligently for future. Although the courses are uniform for all still he is helped to explore his special interest in specific subjects or content areas.
(b) Secondary Stage:
While the pupil enters the secondary stage, a number of changes take place in him and also in the school environment which necessitate a special type of guidance programme. Psychologically, he enters the stage of adolescence, and his intelligence grows to the maximum point.
His personal qualities are established, his attitude towards the studied, class-mates, teacher and the school becomes well-formed. A number of specific interests grow the mature. He forms social relationship and fresh associations.
As this critical and crucial stage the pupil needs assistance for understanding himself in relation to his educational cum vocational environment. He needs orientation to future relationship with life. He needs help in the development of new interests and healthier habits of thought skills, now and work. All this needs a well-organised guidance programme with a number of specialised functions.
The major functions are given below. In the first instance guidance will help the pupil to understand the goal of education, the purposes of his educational efforts. The pupil is mature enough to know the fruits of education and to be enthusiastic about his studies so that he grows an educated man and leads a happy prosperous individual and social life.
Secondly, the guidance programme helps the pupil to understand his own self, his abilities, interests and potentialities, thirdly, it helps him to understand well the home and school environment with an enriched programme of instructions.
Fourthly, the pupil is helped to understand the need for wise planning for future. Right in the delta class i.e., one class junior to the secondary stage, the pupil is appraised of the various types of courses at the secondary stage and their relation with specific abilities on the one hand, and the future vocation on the other.
The pupil should understand that failure to make the wise choice of courses may mean failure in the studies, leading to repentance. The guidance worker will give a number of examples of persons who selected courses carelessly, oscillated afterwards from one course to another, and gathered no mass.
Fifthly, the major responsibility or the guidance programme is to help the pupils to make wise choice of the subject of study. The courses at the secondary stage are diversified, with the express purpose of helping the pupil to utilise his special abilities as best as possible. The curriculum at this stage includes the core subjects which form the basis of general and liberal education compulsory for all.
Besides it includes elective groups like Humanities, Science, Technology, Commerce, Agriculture, Home Science and Fine Arts. The last two courses are specially meant for girl students. Pupils with artistic aptitude may opt for Fine Arts (painting, drawing, music, dance etc.)
Those with scientific ability may opt, for Medical or Non-Medical course. The Non-medical group (Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics) leads to engineering and master’s degree in the various subjects.
The Medical group (Physics, Chemistry and Biology) leads to courses in Medicine, or M.Sc. in various subjects. The pupil must have a clear idea of each of the elective groups, their purposes, future uses and connected vocations. For this purpose guidance programme aim at providing orientational course at the delta class.
The main purpose of orientation programme is:
(i) To provide information to the pupil regarding the purpose of each elective group,
(ii) To inform the pupil regarding the future vocational implication of each course,
(iii) Inform about the schools in each locality which provide such courses or the higher courses, which these courses lead to, and lastly
(iv) To help to the pupil get a glimpse of his own abilities and interests so that he can think himself regarding the selection.
A number of talks is given to the child in the VIII class on these and allied topics, so that he is mentally prepared to decide at the time of admission into IX class. Fifthly, guidance includes a programme of helping the pupils to make progress in the academic field by removal of subject difficulties. Sixthly, it motivates the pupils for extensive studies and higher studies.
(c) College State:
This is the higher stage when the pupil is in the age- group 16-20, and he develops into a youthful mature personality. He becomes conscious of his self, his responsibilities towards the parents, the family members and towards the society. But many of them are not clear about their goals. They are blind about their purposes.
The guidance programme at this stage is to help the college student in realising their aims. Not all are fit of college education. They deserve to be diverted to other channels such as, short-term courses after matriculation, apprenticeship in a vocation or a direct employment. For those who for their better abilities are fit for university education guidance aims at helping them and select the courses and to know the world of work outside the college.
Some additional facilities are also needed in the form of library for widening the horizon and outlook of the pupils, and also in the form of such extra-curricular academic activities as seminars, tutorials, discussions and extension lectures Special guidance in the selection of reading material looking up reference in library, taking notes, using these notes and acquiring extensive habits is immensely needed at this stage. The college library must open a vista of the wide world of knowledge for them.
C. Vocational Guidance:
Although vocational guidance is a recent concept, it has undergone a radial change. The old concept of vocational guidance was fitting an individual to a job -square peg in a square hole. But this is too limited a view. It is wrong to assume that men are really born to fit in various professions. A person is born for no profession at birth. He does possess some specific ability, but that will help him to take up not one specific job but a variety of jobs, jobs, of a particular group.
He can further take up some jobs nicely after the necessary orientation. It is wrong to presume that once a person has joined a profession, guidance has finished its task. Success in a job depends upon not only entry but also systematic progress and adjustment during employment. Hence there is need for re-orientation of the very purpose of vocational guidance.
A question may be asked about the exact significance of providing such guidance, the raisen detre, justification of any such endeavour.
The justification is quite clear when we have a second reflection upon the very goals of education. The goal of education, of course, is development of personality, social efficiency and a happy life. No personality can develop successfully apart from its progress in the psychological, professional and economic field.
Happy life depends not merely on good social relationship but also on economic and professional well-being. ‘Happy is the man who has a good profession and a loving wife’. Many of the miseries of life result from hard economy and unsatisfactory vocational life.
Even family adjustment impossible without that. That is why Super remarks occupation is not merely a means of earning livelihood but also a way of life. Income status, social relationship and family relationship verily depend on vocational life. Hence education these days puts greater premium on vocational efficiency which is the crux of progress of the individual and of the nation.
Failure in a vocation is failure in education and failure in life. It is a loss to the individual and to the society. Success, in vocation is ‘satisfaction of the individual and benefit to the society.
Guidance is thus a special organisation of Educational Training with the objective to helping the pupil to grow into a successful worker.
Although its bulk of work concerns the after-school period of the pupil, but a start is made right from the elementary stage:
1. Elementary Stage:
At this stage, the pupil is not expected to think exactly about a profession he is to choose after school. But guidance is needed to help the pupil to develop basic skills so essential for vocational efficiency during life. Guidance ensure the development of all such qualities, traits, attitudes and skills ‘Work experience’ starts right at this stage.
The pupil must learn the use of his hands and physical organs. He must develop right attitude towards manual labour. The habits of neat and clean work, the spirit of cooperation, the appraisal of one’s own work, the desire to excel others in output, the coordination of head, heart, hand and eyes, the efficiency in using the basic tools and a quality of industriousness are the foundations of efficient vocational life, and hence these must be developed at this stage.
Any deficiency in acquiring knowledge of 3 R’s must be filled up. Emphasis on language arts and co-curricular activities will lead to good reading habits and organisational skill. So important for some scholarly or administrative professions.
This developmental task is to be supplemented by an orientation in some preliminary occupational information. To make it less technical and more interesting, demonstrations about certain major jobs can be given through pictures, posters, charts, talks, radio-broadcasts and documentaries. But this is only an orientation programme, and not a regular vocational information programme.
2. Secondary Stage:
A pupil entering VIII class (delta class) is expected to be conscious of his self and the world outside. The orientation work at this stage is designed to give him a realistic concept of his higher education and professional life.
Therefore guidance aims at preparing the pupil for this vocational life through a five-fold programme of:
(i) Orientation to the world of work,
(ii) Guidance in the right choice of courses leading to jobs,
(iii) Guidance in the preparation for the specific job,
(iv) Guidance in getting the job, and
(v) Guidance in taking up university education as an alternative to employment at the school-learning stage.
Thus, guidance at this stage begins with the orientation work. The pupil must be given an idea of the complexity of the world of work, the vocations growing day by day, and the complex problem of the selection of vocation. Most of the cases of vocational failures of young-men results from the ignorance on the part of the parents, teachers and the pupils and lack of systematic agency for acquaintance with this field.
As said earlier, there is paradox of unemployment; there are men but not jobs, and there are jobs but not men. Ignorant about the employment market, young-men rush to the colleges or to the offices for clerical jobs. As Indian Education Commission has recommended, it is desirable to redirect the pupils to professional life at three stages viz. the middle, the high and the university.
Some of them who pass middle-standard examination can be sent to junior technical schools, some who pass the high- school examination can be directed to technical schools and colleges and also to minor professions. Guidance, therefore, helps the secondary school pupil to have a knowledge of the details about specific major jobs, their characteristics, requirements for entry, period of training, emoluments, conditions of work and future prospects.
The second task of guidance at this stage is to help the pupil in making a preliminary choice of his future vocation, after weighing and evaluating his personal assets and liabilities, and matching his potentialities carefully with the specific job requirements. Although the pupil at this stage is busy in his secondary school education, but some sort of preparation for the job is also necessary.
Full preparation for a job is necessary for those who do not want to undergo the complete secondary education. Such pupils are to be helped in applying for suitable jobs, seeking interview and apprenticeship, if necessary. The fourth task of guidance at this stage is helping the needy to get the job. At present there is no special agency (except the Employment Exchange) to do this task.
Employment Exchange cannot cater to the requirements of both the general public, and the school students. The schools, too, do not have the necessary facilities in terms of staff and equipment to undertake this responsibility.
But a humble effort can be made by the guidance unit of the school to start an employment wing, and correspond with employers and impart information about vacancies of jobs to the pupils. The schools may also contact the youth employment service and Employment Exchange.
The fifth task of guidance is to help the school leavers to choose the right alternative-entry into the college and entry into professions. Majority of the school-leavers are not really fit for university education. But the fact remains that there is heavy rush of admissions to all the Arts, Science and Professional colleges.
This is partly due to lack of restrictions to be imposed on admissions, and partly due to ignorance on the part of the pupils about alternate suitable avenues. For parents, B.A. has a prestige value, and their wards must get at least this degree.
This heavy overcrowding in colleges has resulted in lowering of standards, mass failures, frustration on the part of the failed candidates, indiscipline and student unrest, unemployment, shortage of technical personnel and loss of manpower to the country.
The Indian Education Commission has duly stressed the need for screening at this stage so that only the pupils with higher ability join the colleges. Guidance is needed to those who are not fit. 75% of the school-leavers are to be guided for independent vocations, minor jobs, apprenticeships or technical studies. Hence Guidance at the school stage must have a detailed plan for redirecting the majority of the students to non- university work.
3. College Stage:
The objective of guidance at this stage is to assist the college student in acquiring knowledge about numerous vocations after the university education, making him conscious of this responsibility, and redirecting him from service- jobs to jobs of technical and professional nature, so as make him a better contributor to the society, a better producer in the economic sense, and a happy citizen.
This type of guidance is to be provided through a well-knit organisation at the district level or at the university, or at the college itself. The specific tasks of the organisation will be to impart knowledge of various vocations, knowledge of higher avenues in terms of studies or jobs, and knowledge of financial assistance available from the Government in terms of scholarships, fellowships, travel grants and apprenticeship allowance.