Does Your School Have A Counsellor?

Photo Credit: India Mart

A colleague of mine asked a question this morning. He seemed not to be able to comprehend why his son scored an 'A' in Further Maths and a 'B' in Maths in his WAEC. He added that this trend had been happening right from when the boy was in SS 1, that he often aced in Further Maths and struggled with his Maths.

I asked what he had been able to discover concerning this situation all these years and he replied that he is still confused. He has spoken with the boy's maths teacher, further maths teacher and even the principal of the school but none of them have been able to convince him. I then asked if he has spoken with the G&C and he was like; "Which one is G&C?"

G&C is an acronym for guidance and counselling and it is one department that has been overlooked in not just our schools but in our society as a whole. How many persons have you witnessed in your neighbourhood booking an appointment with a counsellor? How many counselling offices have you ever seen or heard of?

The role of G&C's in our schools is critical to nation building as they help guide students into making informed decisions relating to their career.

When I was in JSS 3, the stereotype was that those who were intelligent (and intelligence then equated to having good grades) go to sciences department in SS 1 while those struggling with their grades were to be found in either arts or commercial department.

Many of us struggled to get into the science department not necessarily because it had anything to do with our passions, skills, talents or strengths but because we wanted to prove to our peers that we were also brilliant.

Upon resumption to SS 1, some of us who were in the sciences had to switch back to arts and commercial because sciences no longer appealed to them. 

It will interest you to know that even in SS 3, there were many of us who were not sure of what we wanted to study in the university and had a hard time during our JAMB registration.

I am talking of a unity school that had three councillors available, yet we had poor orientation as regards their relevance to us back then. How much more the private schools we have around that cannot boast of even one counsellor!

The endgame is that we have students in universities struggling to study a course they're not passionate about. They graduate and dump their certificates to pursue another career. A trained farmer becoming a fashion designer, an engineer baking cakes, a medical doctor working in a restaurant... When you approach them, they don't attribute their change of profession to lack of jobs but you hear them saying that they discovered a new passion.

This passion discovery should have happened a long time ago especially for specialized professions. It is true that most people tend to find new passions when they grow up, but majority who get to discover their passions later in life is chiefly due to poor counselling; a gap which our G&C's should be filling right from our secondary schools.

A student may break bounds, commit an offense or a crime and the next thing is either suspension, removal of tree stumps, clearing of grasses or receiving cane strokes. Why not also send such defaulting children to counselling? Some of them may be having mental illnesses.

We need to get it right. G&C's are vital in our schools and societies, it is a culture we must embrace if we are to build a better focused and productive nation and avoid wasting resources.