Page 136 - DEDU502_GUIDANCE_AND_COUNSELING_ENGLISH

Guidance and Counseling

Notes provide vocational guidance. The Vocational Guidance Society at Calcutta, the United
Christian Mission of North India at Jullundur, the Gujarat Society at Baroda and the like, in
addition to the Rotary Club, the YMCA and the YWCA are making a significant contribution
to the guidance movement.
3. The third category includes university and college-run agencies. The guidance bureaux at St.
Xavier’s college in Bombay, and M.S. University, Baroda, were the earliest agencies rendering
guidance and counseling. In recent times guidance services as well as counseling have come
to be offered by the departments of psychology of several universities. An important example
of this type of service is the one run by the Department of Psychology, S. V. University,
Tirupati.
The functions of the guidance bureau vary with the type of bureaux. The functions are well
defined in the well established bureaux like the Bureau of Psychology, Allahabad. This bureau
provides educational and vocational guidance based on psychometric data. The Institute of
Vocational Guidance of the Government of Maharashtra has done meritorious service of collecting
and disseminating occupational information. Several career pamphlets and brochures have been
brought out for the use of school-leaving pupils. The Central Vocational Guidance Bureau and
the Ministry of Labour, Training and Employment, have brought out and are still bringing out
career pamphlets to cover most of the occupations. In addition, the Ministry of Labour, Training
and Employment, published the Employment News, a fortnightly. The Ministry has published the
National Classification of Occupations (NCO) on the lines of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT)
of the USA.
At the governmental level, the operation of the guidance programmes is assigned to the State
Directorates of Education. The State Bureaux are set up under the State Directorates of Education
and they are guided and assisted by the Central Bureau, the National Council of Educational
Research and Training (NCERT), New Delhi. The NCERT runs a one-year diploma course for the
guidance workers. The State bureaux have also been conducting short-term training courses in
guidance for career masters.
A lukewarm attitude towards counseling still exists in India and may be attributed to the fact that
it is a foreign concept. A number of factors together are responsible for the apathy and indifference
on the part of the administration and the community and complacency on the part of the teachers
who believe that counseling is irrelevant in the existing educational pattern.
Counseling, it is thus seen, has not yet come of age in India. There is sufficient amount of
conceptual confusion regarding the terms ‘guidance’ and ‘counseling’. During the 1970s other
areas of guidance and counseling have been organized. The Family Planning Association of India
(FPAI) offers counseling for family welfare at its Bombay and New Delhi centres. A number of
private counseling centres have sprung up in recent times in metropolitan cities like Bombay and
New Delhi. This brings us face-to-face with the all important question regarding the professional
requirements of counselors.
The work at the counseling centre was more in the nature of a student personnel services centre with
a dean of student welfare. The experiment was not a success and the centre was closed down in 1966.

St. Xavier’s College, Bombay, has provided counseling service to its students since 1955 and the
counseling was done by pastors in the beginning. But from 1960, it has tended to become
psychologically oriented. The college has a full-time counselor. The college provides training
facilities for school counselors at St. Xavier’s Institute of Education.
The Wilson College of Bombay set up a counseling centre for its students in 1963 with a counselor.
The Delhi University planned to organize a counseling centre in 1965 with the assistance of the
University Grants Commission (UGC). The Department of Psychology took the initiative and
started the centre which had a lecturer of psychology in charge. At the Annamalai University

130 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY