Introducing group counselling into Nigerian secondary schools: Report of a three-year experience
✍ Scribed by Tunde Ipaye
- Publisher
- Springer US
- Year
- 1982
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 701 KB
- Volume
- 5
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0165-0653
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
This paper presents a progress of the efforts by a department in a Nigerian University to introduce group counselling into near-by secondary schools. Fkst, it reviews the traditional concept of guidance and counselling in Nigeria and compares this with the western concept, with emphasis on providing guidance/counselling to one individual at a time. The paper then discusses at length the group counselling programme that is used in various schools, mentioning findings on problems that adolescents are faced with. In a section devoted to evaluation, it was shown that Nigerian schools do need guidance counsellors. The last sectio~a discusses counselling techniques. Here is emphasised that, as counselling goes into Nigerian schools, there is a need to devise culturally viable techniques of handling issues and problems that are culturally peculiar to Africans.
Most, if not all, American counsellors regard Frank Parsons as the 'father of guidance and counselling' as a result of his establishing the historic Vocational Bureau in Boston in 1908 (though they have played down the contributions of Mayer Bloomfield). In fact, some within and outside the United States of America consider guidance and counselling to be strictly an American institution. This view is reflected in the writings of authors like Pietrofesa, Hoffman, Splete andPinto (1978), andShertzer and Stones (1974), who argue that counselling and guidance is an American product, and who suggest that certain factors in the American environment such as the orientation of its youth, its rugged individualism, the absence of strong family ties, its rapid rate of industrialisation and its affluence are important elements in the growth and development of counselling services. However, students in their introductory courses in counselling, especially in Africa, generally learn about traditional helpers or lay counsellors who have been playing the role of the 'skilled helper' (skilled in the traditional helping methods) from the earliest times. The point being made here is that counselling and guidance is not new to any African society; what could be new is the scientific approach to counselling and guidance -an approach that one could claim started in the United States. But then, in the words of Donahue (1977),'Americans must be particularly careful of two pitfalls. The first is to avoid a chauvinistic bias, a tendency to believe that Americans are the model and other countries are simply catching up with