Several weeks ago, I wrote about the fact that education policies often do not work because they consider only the school, not the community. In many cases, they even go less deep than that -- they look only at the academics at the school, not at, for example, the extra-curriculars, library supplies, or the counselors. This last aspect I think is incredibly important.
Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of studies to back me up (see how this aspect is ignored?), but I can tell you anecdotally why the education policy-makers should spend more time discussing counseling. I went to a small school where we didn't have counselors and I did okay (although I think I would have been much less stressed and better prepared if I did have someone guiding me through the college application process). But what about the students who needed counselors -- students who had mental health issues, scheduling conflicts, and crises with regular teenage things? This last aspect did happen to me -- I was afraid one of my friends at the time was an alcoholic and I didn't want to tell her teachers or her parents. I went to our principal because I trusted him, and I was lucky to be in a school that was small enough where he not only knew my name, but he knew my personality. Most students are not in that situation. Most students don't even know their own counselors well because of the sore lack of them around the country.
Most professionals don't even know what counselors really do. They do SO much more than college planning. That is another issue -- we cannot advocate for them if we don't understand what it is they do. We need to educate policy makers and the rest of the community before we can help educate children. So much is left to be done.
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