Challenges in education; Counseling on campus

Could it be true that we are becoming too dependent on tests and advice from counselors. I have a feeling that in our culture we may be getting counseled getting psyched getting tested. Part of the tribal ritual and my own feeling is that if you can solve your own problems you're better off solving them than in finding yourself in the hands of a professional problem solver. It's only when when you can't confront the issues before you when you don't know what the opportunities are or your own resources are that you. You need professional help. The speaker is Dr. Henry White's at the moment. He talks about counseling on the college campus. Challenges in education presented by Duke University. Here with today's feature is Charles Bronson. Some people require the services of an expert counselor because they made out to be able to recognize their own resources.

Dr. Henry White's director of the Duke University Counseling Center explains his work well a function of counseling in a university setting is much the same as it is in any other setting. You have people who are troubled and have problems of one kind or another. They come to a professional counselor counselor with a view of getting these problems resolved. And in the process of finding solutions to the problems that they bring you try to help the client learn how to solve problems as they occur. Just when should one receive counseling services at any point where a youngster can make some kind of. Guess is about the kind of life he wants to lead. Whether he has made them or not. Then you can begin helping him assess his own abilities his own interests his own personality structure in ways that will make it possible for him to achieve

these goals. Now I'm not saying that everybody should therefore rush off and get counseling all I'm saying is if if they're not satisfactorily achieving the kind of serenity in their current life that they want and they're willing to accept help then this is a good time to do it test. According to Dr. White's offer clues to the counselor but primarily they are used to save time. My feeling about testing and most of the counsellors who are oriented in the way that I've been trying to describe here. You test as an important device for providing certain types of information more efficiently than you can get it any other way. But only if you use tests only when you need tests. If I want to know what a youngster's interests are I gotta ask him. But in order to find out something about the whole structure of its interest patterns

that might give us some clues as to the kinds of activities he's likely to find satisfying. We've actually tried this. It might take as much as six hours of interviewing to find out about his interest structure to find the same amount of information as I can get in a 45 minute interest test. Just in terms of economy of time and objectivity of results I would rather use it test here than spend six hours trying to find this out. The same thing is true for us as there is no point in saying to a kid I want to give you a reading test unless you have some reason to suspect that there is either a reading handicap here or that there is an unusual skill in reading. Dr. Weiss give some advice. Find goals that are realistic. Find ways of achieving them using your talents interests in a

personality and taking into account the realistic environmental constraints that you have to take into account as you move toward your goals. This permits you to check the conflict before it arises in your life. This is Charles Braswell with challenges in education from Duke University. This program was distributed by the national educational radio network.