Schools, hire counsellors! Save childhoods

Counsellors can make a difference to students and teachers. Education is incomplete without sound mental health

Harassment in schools may not always be physical, and God forbid, sexual. There is a domain which many tend to neglect — mental harassment. In school, I have had teachers grumbling that corporal punishments are no longer “allowed”. Many ignore the law and continue with their daily dose of beatings. These ‘indispensable’ techniques are necessary, they say, to ‘correct’ the students. “We had caning in our school days. Nothing happened to us because of that”, pat comes the justification. Certainly, nothing much happened to them, except it made them more violent and aggressive towards younger minds, turned them intolerant to mistakes, and probably led to a few personal issues here and there, which they effectively hid, much like open secrets. We need to be perfect after all. Yet, lest all the blame solely lie on the teachers; peer pressure, too, is not an unknown phenomenon anymore. How would the children cope with all these without a counsellor in schools?

Now, many of the schools do have a counsellor, if records are to be believed. But some issues arise here — one being that most counsellors are also teachers in the same school. If at all they have the necessary qualifications, would they have enough time? Consequently, focus on the mental wellness of students takes a back seat. Given how mental health was always ignored in educational settings, hiring specialised counsellors would be a paradigm shift. This would create an arrangement to look after the well-being of children, rather than allowing the problem to arise before being taken seriously.

Yet another question: would counsellors advise teachers about their methods? This gets dicey. Firstly, teachers are supposed to be respected. Pulling them into counselling for just one or a few students, may not be a feasible option. Secondly, sensitive teachers, who would voluntarily meet the counsellor for the sake of students, are not really the ones because of whom the problems arise. Occasionally, the source of a student’s problems stem from teachers who do not understand the situation. If so, how would they be convinced that their methods are the problem rather than the child’s drawbacks? This is not to corner such teachers. Often, teachers themselves do not realise that their upbringing did not allow for sensitivity to flourish. As much as we would like to believe that teachers are gods, the truth is, they too are not free from their early childhood conditioning. And rarely do they encounter counter-conditioning to erase childhood experiences. So is it solely students who require counselling? Students will graduate but the teachers are going to stay. If corrective measures are not introduced, successive batches of students will live with the trauma before authorities realise the importance of appointing a good counsellor.

Coming to bullying and peer pressure, there is data, loads of data, on how this destroys students. It was not until one social psychology class, that I learned how bullying is a two-way problem. Imagine a situation where a bully snatches the lunchbox away from a classmate. The immediate, and possibly the only solution, would be to reprimand the bully and punish him or her. But hardly anyone looks into what turned the particular student into a bully in the first place. Majority of the bullies have some personal issues themselves — family problems in the form of verbally or physically abusive parents, inferiority complex, or a hidden but legitimate reason like a retaliation to an offence caused to him/her. If these issues go amiss, and they usually do happen so, how can any long-term change in the bully take place? Are we destroying the life of one student in our bid to “protect” the victims? Who is really a victim in the case? Just the receiver of the aggressive act or even the aggressor himself or herself?

I am in no position to direct the more learned individuals in their dealings with the students. However, as a third party, these gruesome facts are appalling. Much as it may anger us as to why such a situation exists, we must not neglect the fact that there is a lack of properly trained, and more importantly, ethical school counsellors in educational institutions. We complain about what others lack, but are we doing enough to protect our children? They are the country’s and our future support systems too. In our eagerness to make them educated — perfectly educated — are we draining their beautiful minds of their health?

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Source: DNA, 5-02-2017