The need of student counselors in
Nepal’s schools is a common and constant wish of every parents. They expect
their children to be a better decision maker. An adolescent is exposed to 8-10
hours of daily school, bullying, family issues, and raging hormones. Add social
media and video games to the mix and you have the typical teenager of this era. Easily irritable, rebellious, restless, impulsive, moody and secretive. How can we expect students to maintain
balance in their lives after all these emotional ups and downs?
Erik Erikson (a German
psychologist and psychoanalyst) has developed a theory of psychosocial
development which consists of 8 stages. One of them is role confusion vs.
identity which occurs during the adolescence period i.e. 12-18 years. If a
student faces a new behavior beyond his experiences, then it’ll be hard for the
student to face the changes that leads to conflict. I believe having a
counselor at least in school level might change the dynamics of school and the
life of student.
Based on the context of Nepal, a
student generally gets exposed to 8 hours of daily class. Every subject teacher
provides education on the subject matter. It is hard for the subject teacher to
take on the role of a counselor in a class of 35 to 40 students. Now, the
problem is how can a parent know the overall behavior pattern of their children
if a school doesn't even have a student counselor? Subject teacher, class
teacher, management simply scratch the surface of the behavior of a student
whereas a counselor goes into a deeper level to encourage the student. A
student who's carrying a family's expectation might be heading towards the
wrong direction (drugs, disrespecting elders, undisciplined and so on). We can
imagine the situation, right? The stress for families and school as well.
The role of a student counselor
is to help students in their academic performances, career development,
boosting their confidence and overall making them productive as well as working
to fulfilling the common wish of every parent. Even educated parents expect a
subject teacher or management to know everything about their child but it becomes
easy if a school has a counselor. Isn’t that true? They are one of the vital
members in the educational team these days.
Sadly, in Nepal we hardly find the
concept of student counselor and the ongoing conflict goes on where parents
cannot know their children behavior pattern and school management wants to get
rid of such student.
In a nutshell, like I mentioned
earlier, they can change the overall dynamics of a school and life of a
student. Shouldn’t we as parents and schools be aware of these matters?
