Counselling deficit misleading kids, says education expert

Neha Saini

Amritsar, April 20

India’s huge counsellor deficit has been acknowledged by eminent educationists, academicians and experts in the education sector. It also remains a fact that still a large number of schools, private and public, do not have professional counsellors at the primary or secondary levels. According to statistics, we are short of 1.5 million professional counsellors, at the school and college level.

Ganesh Kohli, founder, IC3 movement, that focuses on enabling access to career and college counselling for high school students, addressed the issue and its solution in an engaging inaugural session of the IC3 Regional Forum hosted by Invictus School. The event had actor Rahul Bose as the keynote speaker and Deputy Commissioner Harpreet Singh Sudan as the distinguished guest.

Kohli, who has been conducting workshops and hosting training sessions for teachers working with school systems under the IC3 movement to bring professional counselling into school and college education, said that a context needs be provided to students as to how their education is going to make sense in real-life scenario. “The first job is to sensitise people about the criticality and need for school or college counselling. Not just academic or career counselling, every teacher in the school needs to be a counsellor to provide context to the students, academically as well as otherwise. Over a period of time, in the conventional system of education, nothing changed much in Maths and science or English, but the students have changed. The attention span of youngsters changed, studying patterns changed, we are living in a different world. So, the approach towards education must also change, the ecosystem needs to change,” he said.

Kohli, who has been an educator and entrepreneur for over two decades, said, “Punjab is a classic example of how counselling deficit has managed to mislead youngsters. Kids here are being misled due to a systemic failure, the school and college systems churning them out and throwing them into the world, without a proper skill set or purpose. That’s why they are running to agents, that in turn pushes the ‘student trafficking system’ being run in the name of student migration. I have met enough people from Punjab, who have done two MBAs and are driving a taxi in Canada.”

Manjot Dhillon, founder-director, Invictus School, stressed on introducing the Greek concept of Eudaimonia in the education system. “It is a Greek concept that is based on the power of finding purpose, welfare and happiness. Moving from success to significance, this concept needs to be ingrained in the education system if we have to empower a child truly,” she said.

Actor Rahul Bose also emphasised on imparting the right education, which he said should make one happy. “Finding propose through education must be done the right way. It’s not enough to educate our children just academically. The right education must make them equipped with values, about non- violence, truth, honesty, a skill set without which all the academics are worthless.” He shared how he enjoyed acting in his school plays and ultimately found his calling and later, found purpose and passion in rugby.