Objectives
1. Personal development and adjustment. Self-understanding: the discovery of potentialities, special aptitudes, and interests.
Recognition and development of favourable attitudes and habits, and the elimination of undesirable traits. Self- direction.
2. Educational process and adjustment.
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Selection of appropriate courses in line with individual needs, interests, abilities, and circumstances.
Choice of the right type of advanced training, college or otherwise.
3. Occupational development and adjustment. Information on occupational opportunities and trends. Knowledge of occupational fields toward which individual aptitudes and interests may best be directed. Help in finding suitable employment.
4. Follow-up after leaving school.
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Research with respect to needs of pupils and the effectiveness of the secondary school curriculum. Evaluation of the guidance programme.
The fulfilment of the basic needs as given above for which guidance has assumed the major responsibility will help greatly to meet our present-day situation without damaging freedom of choice.
Guidance functions whenever choices are to be made and where help is needed in making intelligent decisions.
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Even when there is no choice possible, guidance may help the individual understand and accept the situation; that is, it may enable him to “co-operate with the inevitable.”
Guidance may also operate when the individual is not conscious that a choice is possible by pointing out the avenues that are open to him. In still other circumstances the time may not be favourable for making a choice because of fatigue, emotional strain, or influences that will make an intelligent decision unlikely.
In such situations the best help may well be to suggest that only those decisions be made which are mandatory, leaving open as many as possible until a later, more favourable, time.
A survey was conducted by the All India Educational and Vocational Guidance Association (1960-61) for gauging college students’ needs.
Three thousand students from seventeen Indian universities responded. The survey revealed students’ felt needs. Eleven problems were marked by more than 50 per cent of the respondents:
1. I cannot do as will in my studies as other people expect me to do.
2. I do not know enough about the qualifications needed for different kinds of work or careers.
3. I worry too much about what my future will be after I have finished my studies.
4. Even though I force myself, my attention will not remain on my assignments long enough to finish them.
5. I do not know how to make friends among the opposite sex.
6. I do not have sufficient information about matters on sex.
7. I do not know enough about my aptitudes and abilities for different kinds of work or careers.
8. It is difficult for me to get the books I need for study.
9. I cannot read fast enough to complete my studies in time.
10. I do not know proper methods of study.
11. I have more difficulty in forgetting my mistakes than I believe I should have.
The eleven areas may be summarised under four headings- Study habits and skills, Career choice, knowledge of aptitudes and abilities, Sex education.
The respondents reported that their parents were the only source of help the received, if any, along these lines and practically no help had been forthcoming from college personnel.
Eighty per cent of respondents expressed the need of such assistance from their non-parental source. The bigger the college, the bigger the campus, the more the need for personalised student services, else the student will merely feel a small cog in a huge machine.
Another survey of the educational, vocational and personal problems was conducted by Umrudin and Gadri (1964).
Widespread maladjustment was rated among hostel residents who showed much concern over problems connected with study habits, vocational choice, family relationship and mental hygiene.
All these emerging issues and problems make it obligatory for our educational planners and administrators to build into our higher education an appropriate guidance and counselling programme for the development of the individual student into an adult personality, imbued with social and occupational awareness, intellectual and functional proficiency, discipline and confidence. We can sum-up-the need and importance of guidance with following observation:
“It would not be too much to say that on the success or failure of our guidance programme hangs in all probability, the success or failure of our system of education.”