Guidance, counselling in schools

BOTH the new, updated so-called, and the old curriculum emphasized Guidance and Counselling in schools. But how critical is this area of teaching and learning? What is guiding and what is counselling? What kind of guiding is done and what kind of counselling goes on in the schools? How critical is guiding and Counselling in the education of our children? How much efficacy is realised from the efforts made by all who talk and walk the G&C path?

Let me from the outset reveal and confess the source of the barrage of questions above and many more quietly implied, perhaps reserved to ask relevant authorities when the time comes.

The behaviour of our children in secondary schools, in high schools and ultimately in institutions of higher learning, namely colleges and universities is despicable. The level and extent of moral decay is nondescript. Student prostitution, drug consumption and drug pushing are visibly growing from sublime to ridiculous. College and university students, instead of knowing better and behaving better, have become what, in French, is called infants-terrible; meaning young persons whose behaviour and ideas annoy, shock and embarrass those with conventional values and opinions.

The institutions of higher learning have become typical brothels . . . far worse than high schools. One could easily say the moral delinquency evident in high schools grows far worse, not better, as education becomes higher. What exactly is the nature of Guidance and Counselling in schools? What does the syllabus, if any, demand? Who must teach Guidance and Counselling? Considering the drug consumption and sexual hanky-panky going on in the schools, worst in colleges and universities, why are schools wasting time and money? Why is the G&C on the timetable? What purpose does it serve when students are growing from children to animals in the schools where they are supposed to be examples of the benefits of education?

What is G&C concentrating on . . . career guidance or moral guidance? The answer is visibly obvious. We see active organisation of Career Days from time to time and literally everyone is up and about with information-givers and receivers in the form of students all hyper active at various stages of their education.

Hardly do we see special days set aside to seriously guide students around self-discipline, self-control and moral rearmament. The education sector is serious about academic achievement and careers, there is no doubt about that, but hardly awake to the children’s endemic moral decay.

The school head or his wife normally takes up Guidance and Counselling as part of his or her teaching load and in many schools students do not even know who their G&C teacher is. They never come to teach them.

Those who do, come to entertain students; make them laugh about the joys and humour of life and ask them about their own romantic relationships. They come to talk about their ‘beautiful’ wives and in most so-called lessons, how he is the best husband and father while his wife is the best mother and wife.

In a school where there is Scripture Union, Morning Assemblies; where every school head rumbles and roars about good behaviour, some with Chaplains and Reverends to Biblically guide students, why and how do student prostitution, drug abuse and drug-pushing, bullying and unwanted pregnancies become ‘the norm’, especially in boarding schools?

We all know school authorities are doing a lot to address moral decay in educational institutions. But we also know that they are not doing enough. A lot more can be done and done differently and more seriously. Window-dressing G&C will never help our children to undergo desired behavioural transformation.

Perhaps G&C in the schools needs to be seriously reviewed and up-dated the way the Old Curriculum was overhauled. We cannot change the curriculum and continue with old business approaches and methods. If the new political dispensation came to introduce new concepts, ways and methods of doing politics, all Zimbabweans must have a new mindset of approach to whatever business is their occupation.

Certainly if G&C is failing to answer the question of moral decay in educational institutions; failing to supply solutions to the behaviour pandemic, but seemingly fanning it or encouraging it, something must be terribly wrong in the content and approach of mitigation.

Whatever is or may be wrong, common sense must tell us that if you want a different harvest, the wisest thing to do is certainly not to continue to plant the same seed. Change the seed if you want a different harvest. That is not a robotic science or Socratic philosophy. It is simple wisdom to master. As a microscopic observation, perhaps G&C is suffering the same abortion DIVINITY is suffering in schools where even the fund is who called this learning area Divinity, certainly seem not to be sure of what the word means. Why? Because none of the brilliant students who pass Divinity with distinctions ends up divine. If anything, the more ‘intelligent’ they are in Divinity, the more farther-away-fromGod they are. How many of these distinction students ever end up baptised in any given school?

Does this not vividly illustrate a case of intellectual abortion and reversal of value and expectations? One discipline of learning with a wrong faculty-name producing wrong products! A subject that says, ‘We must turn right’ but rears products that turn left! A path that has a clear NO-THOROUGH ROAD sign ahead! Strange, isn’t it? Oliver Mtukudzi asked in song.

There is no better time for parents, children, schools and universities to be serious about moral decay manifesting in the form of sexual harassment, drug consumption and selling, student prostitution and other celebrations of decay best known by those who are possessed by the relevant demons.

The depth of moral decay in schools and universities can no longer be left to the institutions alone to address. As Zimbabwe opens more for business, it is prudent for Zimbabweans to open even more for education business, particularly un-examinable business in the curriculum: Ubuthu/Hunhu and Guidance and Counselling. Intelligent students; politicians, lawyers, engineers, doctors, professors, teachers, nurses, who have no character do not build great nations.

Just in case my perception of G&C is wrong and my observation of where the wheels are coming off is irregular, I have through the Provincial Education Director invited the G&C inspector-Manicaland to radio (Head-To-Head with MM) so we can one-on-one, eye to eye, head to-head distil wisdom together with listeners on this critical un-examinable learning area.