Page 28 - DEDU502_GUIDANCE_AND_COUNSELING_ENGLISH

Guidance and Counseling

Notes units should be the most cherished goal of every nation. Guidance and counseling efforts are made
to develop the potentialities of individuals to the maximum possible extent so that they may live an
effective life themselves and may contribute their best to the progress of the society. From this point
of view guidance and counseling should be considered essential social services. Besides, there are
several other considerations on the bassis of which the need for guidance and counseling may be
justified.

Guidance services are provided at the colleges and universities to help the students in the
process of vocational development by making a possible for them to gain knowledge
about themselves their abilities, interests and needs and knowledge about the world of
work.

The following are the main reasons for the need of guidance.
(1) The total development of the student : Intellectual development though the teaching of subjects
along cannot lead to the total development of the students. There has to be a basic and
fundamental change in the entire system of education, which recognizes that a person remains
a barbarian unless he knows something about himself no matter how well a human being is
educated in chemistry, physics, economics, history or literature. Self-knowledge in depth must
become its primary focus. This is done through a programme of guidance and counseling.
Total development of the students requires that individual differences among students are
accepted and understood, and all types of experiences are so organized in an institution as to
contribute to their total development.
(2) Proper choice of courses : Everyone knows that our educational system has grown haphazard.
While humanities and the liberal arts are subjecs most frequently offered and taken, both in
the colleges and the universities they were the oldest and relatively inexpensive areas of
knowledge, taken because they require no specified intellectual equipment. Hence, thousands
of young men educated in these liberal are liberal are arts without jobs.
(3) Vocational development : The process of vocational development covers almost the entire
span of life of an individual. It begins quite early in one’s life and continues till sometimes
after retirement. In this process, the individual passes through growth, exploration, maintenance
and decline. Their transition from education to work can be facilitated by providing them
opportunities for self-exploration as well as exploration of the world of work while they are
still in an educational institution.
(4) Minimising the mismatching between education and employment and help in the efficient
use of manpower : The hiatus between education and employment has rarely been as wide
and so disturbing as it is today. Higher academic education is far too general and diffused to
be of practical value to the vast majority of young men and women. Most of Indian young men
and women have no clear objectives or career targets. They go through university courses of
learning without acquiring much knowledge or preparing themselves for an uncertain future.

Every year, Indian colleges and universities send thousands of hopeful youngsters into the
labour market virtually unemployable despite their fancy degree and diplomas. (Employers
often complain that of the hundreds of applications that come in response to a single vacancy,
at least 80 per cent have no relevance to the job specifications.) Few students pursue their
education with a clear idea as to what they would eventually like to become. People register
at the employment exchange with scant idea about the sort of work they would like to take up.
Thus, while jobs to abegging the youth go begging for jobs. The employment of workers ill-
suited to their jobs leads to a higher rate of labour placement or to the retention of persons who

22 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY