Counselling in Schools:Unveiling Reality

Counselling is a term which is widely being misinterpreted amongst people. It is a human service that enhances personal and interpersonal functioning across the life span and addresses emotional, social, vocational, educational, health related, developmental and organizational concerns (Lopez & Rasmussen, 2005). Counselling and practitioners differ from one another, from their clients and from other professionals in how they conceive and value psychological health and dysfunction (Shillito-Clarke, 2003). In Kerala, counselling service is mainly provided by people like teachers, parents, priests, police, doctors, nurses, other experts and non experts, for clients like children, adolescents, criminals, patients etc for academic, familial, personal and health problems. But since recent times, with counsellors being appointed in schools, the duty of counselling is entrusted to them. Even if this happens to be the situation, teachers still continue to counsel the students. Some teachers still consider that they have the responsibility to direct and give advice to children and end up counselling them. However, often, their intervention only makes matters complicated. In this context, the study attempts to explore the issue as to how far Moral Policing and Advice Giving are provided in disguise in detail, through a qualitative approach. A pilot study in this area was conducted by the investigator among 50 students who had undergone counselling in school setting, teachers and counsellors. The data throws light to the fact that what they receive in the name of counselling is a kind of attempt to moralize them by criticizing what they had done/undergone and an attempt to provide advices. As the real causes of issues are not at all addressed, it remains the same, even after such intervention are unintervened.