I never thought guidance at my school was very useful. When I ask for university advice, they refer me to a standard Ontario universities webpage, and tell me non-truths such as “art schools mainly look at your report card marks” and “you can’t get into an Ivy league; your marks aren’t high enough” (my guidance counselor didn’t actually say this, but sort of shook his head while muttering when I asked him if he thought I could get into Yale. Into the arts program. When their main claim is that they don’t really look at your average as a main indicator. I porbably won’t get into Yale, but still).
Yes, guidance counselors are useless, but now I am really pissed off.
A close friend of mine failed math. Barely. Needing 50% to pass, she failed by 5% (or something like that). The only help her guidance counselor provided was telling her that the school started a day later than it actually did start. Well, I guess they told her the location of the school. Gotta give them credit for something.
It turns out there is no follow-up call for summer school. Which is unfortunate as guidance did not have the courtesy to tell her the time the school started. When the principal of the program finally called back, it was to say that the school had already started, and she had missed one more day than the cut off three days she was allowed to miss.
So really, I’m not just pissed off at guidance, but at the whole school/summer-school system.
What really gets me is the attitude displayed towards my friend. It seems that far from being accomodating, or attempting to be sympathetic, to the school system, a failing student is someone to be looked down apon and punished rather than helped out. After visiting guidance in an attempt to open up some dialogue between the school system and the summer school system, my friend was met with contempt and told bulshit such as “You know, summer school really isn’t good for your academic career.” Really. And I suppose repeating a course is.
A guidance program, in my opinion, should be for three things. First of all they have to do the basics, and make sure courses that students take allow them to have a working schedule. Secondly, they need to advise kids on their careers and futures beyond school, and, lastly they need to help those having real difficulties at school. So far, I only see evidence of the first. For universities, guidance seems to have established this method of advising where they refer students to a website/book without knowing anything themselves. For students struggling, the bare minimum is done.
Unfortunately, in the schooling system, those that need the most help get the least. If a student is struggling, or failing a course, it is vaguely seen that this student is a bad student/lazy/not worth spending time on… generally someone to treat with contempt. If a pupil has a learning disability, difficulty grasping a subject, or for some reason or other is falling behind in their work, accomidations are as few as the effort made to reach out to them.
True, there are students that are generally lazy and don’t care about their progress. Another one of my friends played video games in the back of the math classroom the entire year. What I am saying is that it is unfair to assume that all failing students are like this.
Linking this back to my friend, had the schools had a different opinion of her, they would have believed that her guidance counselor told her the wrong date, or would have attempted to make some sort of accomidation. As it is, guidance was rude to her and proceded to further screw her over.
Now, perhaps this is all just a misunderstanding. After all, both the guidance programme and the summer school principal did not break any rules, go against the constitution, or anything like that. But wouldn’t it be nice if guidance counselors actually pretended to care for the students that need them the most?
