Teachers' Opinions of High School Counseling and Guidance Programs: Then and Now.

Abstract

In 1965 secondary school guidance Opinion of High School Guidance Pro programs were experiencing a golden grams (Gibson, 1965). era. Subsidized from training to imThe results of this study raised plementation by federal funding proquestions about excessive standard vided under the National Defense Edized testing, failure to understand ucation Act of 1958, 15,700 secondary theoretical foundations for career de school educators attended counselor cision making, and inadequate corn training institutes, and the number of munications with teachers and other full-time high school counselors incritical audiences, creased from 12,000 in 1958 to more In the intervening 22-year period, than 30,000 in 1964 (Gibson & Mitchthe federal goose not only ceased lay ell, 1986). Secondary school counseling ing golden eggs for school counsel was clearly on a roll. ing; also (and equally disconcerting to Although external support was remany) school counselors were asked to sponsible for counseling and guidance become accountable and to prove that programs getting a foot in the door what they were doing was needed, that of the secondary school, the staying it was being done well, and it was being power and eventual success would be done efficiently. Often lacking both this largely determined by the internal supevidence and the external support nec port accorded these programs. From essary, secondary school counseling this perspective, no group was more critical, then or now, than the classRobert L. Gibson is a professor in the Department room teacher. Accordingly, a study was 0f Counseling and Educational Psychology, In conducted in 1965 titled Teacher diana University, Bloomington.