Concept Problem of School Counseling Research Paper

Introduction

Ever since the concept of school counseling became an integral element of America’s system of education, teachers used to think of it as simply an additional instrument of increasing students’ chances to succeed in academia. However, during the course of recent decades, this concept had undergone a drastic transformation – from being essentially an educational tool, it was turned into the tool of politically correct indoctrination. It is exactly because particularly ‘progressive’ counselors strive to meddle with school affairs, which add considerably to the process of the country’s educational standards continuing to hit new lows, as time goes by.

In its turn, this created a situation when even many ardent proponents of school counseling grow to realize counter-productive aspects of this practice. In their book “Strengths-based school counseling: Promoting student development and achievement”, John P. Galassi and Patrick Akos made a perfectly good point while stating: “School counseling and school counselor education have been criticized for focusing on the mental-health concerns of a small percentage of students rather than on academic development of all students” (2007, p. 150). Nevertheless, even though there is plenty of evidence as to the fact that school councilors’ activities do not result in anything but boosting up ‘ethically unique’ students’ perceptional ignorance even to a further extent, the government continues to provide counselors with financial grants rather enthusiastically.

The reason for this is simple – given the fact that the conceptual fallaciousness of multiculturalism (as official state policy), appears especially self-evident within the framework of America’s educational system, it is the matter of foremost importance for governmental officials to try concealing the fact that students’ ability to operate with highly abstract categories (the rate of their IQ), and consequently their chances of attaining social prominence in the future, directly correspond to the specifics of these students’ racial affiliation.

In its turn, this explains why school counselors’ actual agenda is being primarily concerned with: a) endowing particularly bright students with the sense of guilt (intellectually developed students are automatically assumed ‘euro-centrically minded’ and therefore ‘intolerant’), b) encouraging representatives of racial minorities to think that their lowered intellectual abilities constitute their ‘uniqueness’ and that the actual reason why they attend school is to ‘celebrate diversity’, rather than to obtain knowledge.

The fact that many America’s public schools, where counselors enjoy complete freedom of action, often end up on the list of country’s worst schools, substantiate the validity of earlier suggestion. The following is the interview, conducted with one of William R. Harper High School’s (Chicago, Illinois) administrators on the subject of school counseling (interviewed person preferred not to disclose his name).

Interview

What is the role of the professional school counselor in your school?

The role of school’s professional counselors is to indulge in sophistically sounding but utterly meaningless rhetoric, in regards to the sheer importance of diversity, as their full-time occupation. Apparently, they believe the students would be able to benefit enormously from being exposed to such rhetoric.

What do you see as the primary duties and responsibilities of your professional school counselor?

As far as I am concerned, counselors should go about helping students to adopt a responsible attitude towards studying. However, they seem to be mainly preoccupied with encouraging students to contemplate how this world can be made a better place to live.

In what ways do your school counselors serve as leaders in the school?

I guess they do serve as leaders, but only for as long as Black and Hispanic students are being concerned, simply because they encourage these students to think that their academic underachievement reflects the fact that White teachers are being instilled with racial prejudices.

In what ways do your school counselors serve as advocates for student achievement?

I do not think counselors are capable of serving as advocates for student achievement, in the first place. This is because, in the eyes of many of these counselors, the very concept of academic achievement is being grossly distorted. For example, they seriously believe that, for as long as students do not skip classes, it should automatically qualify them for high school diplomas, even if upon their graduation, students prove themselves incapable of pointing at the U.S. on the world’s map.

What do you think is the most important function of your school counselors?

I think that, despite their officially proclaimed agenda, school counselors often act as the agents of underachievement in the academic curriculum. Their second most important function is to act as squanderers of valuable academic resources.

Are there any additional responsibilities you feel that your school counselors should have?

I think that counselors deal with too many ‘responsibilities’ as it is, even though many of them clearly lack intellectual powers to even understand what the concept of responsibility stands for, in the first place. Therefore, endowing them with additional responsibilities would be a mistake – how can a particular counselor act as a responsible individual, if it is in the very nature of his or her job to teach students how to draw links between the concepts of ‘responsibility’, ‘discipline’ and ‘racism’?

If you could relinquish your school counselors from any responsibilities, what would they be?

I would relinquish schools counselors from a ‘responsibility’ of trying to prevent teachers from being able to adequately address their professional duties. When I worked as a teacher, counselors were constantly trying to convince me that I should have adopted a relaxed attitude towards dealing with students’ academic underachievement. Yet, I remain a firm believer in the fact that students should be graded as they actually deserve, as opposed to how the color of their skin implies they deserve to be graded.

Discussion

For the duration of the last twenty years, Harper High School remained on the list of America’s 100 worst-performing public schools, as seen on the website of Turkish Weekly. As of today, 98% of the school’s population consists of Black students. Thus, it comes as no surprise that this particular school employs an extensive number of counselors and psychologists – these people are believed to be able to help students being less exposed to ‘institutionalized racism and poverty’. Harper High even features its own “Counseling Department”, headed by Venisa Beasley-Green – even a brief glimpse at this woman’s photo leaves no doubt as to the fact that the only reason she was able to graduate from university, in the first place, is that she knew how to take quick advantage of ‘affirmative action’ policy, while it lasts. The same can be said about the overwhelming majority of school counselors and teachers that specialize in humanitarian disciplines.

Predictably enough, teachers that specialize in technical disciplines, such as math, geometry, physics, chemistry, and biology, are overwhelmingly White and Asian. Therefore, the specifics of how school counselors go about addressing their professional duties appear quite clear – these individuals simply teach students to refer to their White teachers as subtle racists. After all, one’s does not have to possess a particularly high IQ, in order to prove its effectiveness as a counselor in a multicultural classroom.

The interview with one of the school’s administrators was conducted over the phone. Prior to being interviewed, this person requested for his identity not to be revealed, as he fears that he would be facing the prospect of losing his job if his name was not kept confidential. While writing down administrators’ answers, I had a clear impression that he was not only expressing his personal opinions, in regards to the subject matter but also the opinions of many of his colleagues. As this person had told me, after the interview was over – as time goes by, more and more American educators get to experience a sheer horror while contemplating their chances to be accused of racism.

This is exactly the reason why many White teachers appear extra enthusiastic while trying to prove their racial open-mindedness in a multicultural classroom. Yet, what they say to each other, while in the safety of their homes, differs considerably from what say to students and to counselors, while in school. The reason for this is simple – given the fact that many educators were able to retain their ability to assess surrounding reality in terms of logic, despite being subjected to the governmentally sponsored propaganda of political correctness, they understand perfectly well that teaching students how ‘celebrate diversity’ could not possibly help these students to improve their grades. Therefore, the statement that “school counselors work as advocates to remove systemic barriers that impede the academic success of any student”, contained in “The ASCA national model: A framework for school counseling programs”, appears to be deprived of any sense, whatsoever. For example, how may a counselor go about trying to remove ‘systemic barriers’ that impede a particular student’s chances to succeed in academia, if the IQ of this student equals 60? And, as scientists are aware – the rate of one’s IQ is a genetically predetermined category.

In their book “IQ and the wealth of nations”, Professors Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen state: “Black infants reared by White middle-class adoptive parents in the United States show no improvement in intelligence, contrary to the prediction of environmental theory and consistent with a genetic explanation of the lower average IQ of Blacks” (2002, p. 194). Therefore, as I have suggested in the paper’s introductory part, the very concept of school counseling in its present form cannot be referred to as anything but yet another intellectual by-product of the neo-Liberal mentality.

What today’s counselors are trying to do is adjusting the objective reality to correspond to the set of their obscure beliefs, which derive out of an unscientific dogma of people’s equality. As a logical consequence – more and more America’s corporate employers now prefer hiring professionals from abroad. For example, as of today, 80% of Microsoft’s most prominent software designers consist of naturalized citizens from Russia, India and China. Apparently, despite what counselors want ‘underprivileged’ students to believe, it is not an individual’s ability to indulge in constant whining about inequality, which deems him or her as a desirable employee, but specifically his or her ability to act as a facilitator of cultural and scientific progress. This has always been the case and will continue to be the case, for as long as America remains a civilized country.

Conclusion

Given the context of what has been said earlier, the practice of school counseling in its present form will simply not be improved, because the very notion of ‘improvement’ is of a clearly qualitative nature; whereas, the overwhelming majority of school counselors adopt an essentially quantitative approach to dealing with the issue of students’ academic inadequateness.

Nevertheless, this practice can still be instilled with a certain degree of sensibility, if its proponents learn how to express their thoughts in a clear and comprehensible manner. Given the fact that many counselors do realize their own intellectual inferiority, they address their psychological anxieties by resorting to the utilization of sophisticate but essentially meaningless terminology, in regards to the technical aspects of counseling. For example, the book which we have already mentioned earlier, “The ASCA national model: A framework for school counseling programs”, contains a multitude of such terms as ‘transition-decision making’, ‘student empowerment’, ‘participative leadership’, etc. – apparently, book’s authors have assumed that this type of made-up terminology would make a perfectly good sense in the eyes of readers. Unfortunately, this is far from being the case. In its turn, this creates an objective precondition for counselors to use their own discretion, in regards to how they should execute their professional duties – thus, turning the practice of counseling into the subject of irrational interpretations and consequently depriving this practice of even remains of its former academic legitimacy. It is only after counselors learn how to remain intellectually honest with students that the hypothetical possibility might arise for them to be able to benefit young people practically.

Reference

Bowers, J. & Hatch, T. (2005). The ASCA national model: A framework for school counseling programs. 2^nd edition. New York: American School Counselor Association.

Galassi, J. & Akos, P. (2007). Strengths-based school counseling: Promoting student development and achievement. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Lynn, R & Vanhanen, T (2002). IQ and the wealth of nations, Westport, CT., Greenwood Publishing Group.

Mission & Vision (2010). William R. Harper High School. Web.

Top 100 worst-performing public schools in the U.S. (2010). Turkish Weekly. Web.