Victory Abanjo
Counselling involves the development of interaction between a counsellor and a person in a perceived temporary state of indecision, confusion, malfunction, habit disorder, distress or despair. This interaction helps the client to make his own decisions and choices, to resolve his own confusion, to correct his behaviour disorders, to evolve new habits and to overcome distress and despair.
There is dire need for counselling in Nigerian schools. Guidance and counselling is designed for people in distress and for normal people with everyday problems within and outside the school system. It is an effective aspect of educational process aimed at maximizing talents and enhancing appropriate decision making skills and personal adjustment. Denga (1983) identifies the areas of need in educational guidance as; development of effective study habit, choosing the correct subject combination, high performance in examination, coping with examination anxiety, building confidence in students, effective use of the library, how to obtain relevant information, how to seek assistance from teachers, parents, peers and significant others. It therefore becomes imperative to seek assistance to enable us meet these needs.
Accordingly, counselling can help reduce stress experienced by learners. For instance, counselling orientation is necessary to help prevent the mistakes and frustrations that arise as a result of wrong educational foundation. This service helps individuals to adjust well in their new environment. It provides skills, rules, values guiding the establishment. It also helps for emotional balance and stability of the individual.
A counsellor has the duty of ensuring that learner’s needs are brought to a right level to create the right environment for learning to take place. The counselor who functions as a facilitator in guidance and counselling encourages the teachers to provide stimulating teaching and learning experiences; bearing in mind the individual differences of each learner so as to enable each individual attain his maximum potentials.
Vocational counselling is used to provide students with skills on the choice of vocation; this is also beneficial to parents as they would no longer choose or force particular occupations on their children regardless of their abilities, interest, etc. The counsellor helps parents to collect, analyze and interpret the related data about their children with clear perception of their children’s abilities, interests and other potentialities. More importantly, a good vocational counselling programme will help the students in making good vocational adjustment. This is because many students have unrealistic vocational aspirations and preferences. They select occupation because of its position, prestige attached to it without consciously assessing themselves. Appropriate vocational counselling programme would enable them match their individual characteristics with occupational requirements thus making a more realistic occupational choices. This will help minimize the chances of failure and frustration in one’s chosen career.
It is important to note that counselling doesn’t just revolve around educational and vocational needs of students; it is also concerned with the personal-social adjustment of the students. For instance, the school system usually has children from various socio-economic backgrounds, ethnic groups with cultural differences. At times these children have misconceptions, prejudice about other groups that may not belong to their own group. They thus react negatively to the opposing groups. It is in the realm of the guidance counsellor to facilitate these children in order to develop frictionless interaction among themselves. For taking care of the various problems of individuals in schools, one can see counselling as an indispensable part in enhancing our educational system. When one is adequately guided, he maximizes his potentials for the benefit of himself specifically and for the Nation in general.