The Value of Counselor Services in the Elementary School

One need only study current statistics concerning patients in mental hospitals, the emotionally ill, the number of suicides each year, disturbed children in school, alcoholics, juvenile delinquents, drug addicts, etc., to be made aware that a great number of individuals in our society do not reflect characteristics of a healthy development.It is as a result of some frustrating, yet rewarding, years of classroom teaching experience in trying to plan and provide for experiences that would most satisfactorily meet the needs--sometimes undefined, sometimes vague, always unique--of individual students that the writer has become interested in what supportive services a counselor might offer the elementary school program. The concerns of children may not be as obvious as those of adolescents, but they are no less important. It was supposed that the counselor would be just as valuable in the elementary school as he was in the secondary. Later experience in secondary school counseling has emphasized, for the writer, the tragic waste of undeveloped human resource with underlying maladaptive patterns, which in many cases obviously had their beginnings during the childhood years.It was not the plan to review the organization of elementary school guidance programs nor to try to determine what the counselor's role in the broad service should be. Rather, the basic question concerned the results of research studies which reflect trends in guidance as to the value of counselor services made available to the elementary school child.