Divine Word College of Bangued

Bangued, Abra
College Department

HISTORY OF GUIDANCE

As early as 20th century, there has been a slow but steady growth in the recognition accorded
to guidance and counseling as essential aspects of the school program. In fact, it is only at the end of
World War II that such programs have attained widespread acceptance at different school levels.
Guidance and Counseling slowly became a function of student personnel services (Kelly, 1974).

In this topic, we will trace significantly the gradual development and movement of guidance in
selected countries and eventually look into its progress and development in our country, Philippines.

Vocational Guidance

The first recorded attempt of providing vocational assistance to young people was the
guidance movement started in Boston by Frank Parsons. The Boston Vocational Bureau started
training teachers to serve as vocational counselors immediately because one of the most pressing
problems facing the Boston system was the selection of students for overcrowded vocational high
schools.

Educational Guidance

Increasing recognition among parents of the value to their children of continued education
resulted in not only a growing secondary school population but also diversified curriculum offerings.
This meant that students entering high school needed help in selecting a curriculum in consonance with
the interests and/or wishes of their parents.

Personal Guidance and Mental Hygiene

Various conditions inherent in the 20th-century life represent maladjusted factors causing
leaders to become concerned about the personal welfare of children and adults. The mental hygiene
movement provided another source of support for the conservation of human resources stressed by
the vocational guidance movement and the humanization of education stressed by the progressive
education movement. Beer’s autobiography (1908) attracted the attention of educators as well as
social reformers.

Child Guidance Clinic

From the small clinic established in Chicago for the purpose of studying and applying therapy to
young people who gave evidence of serious maladjustment, the Illinois Institute of Juvenile Research
was developed. At present, child-guidance, psychological and educational clinics serve children,
adolescents, and adults in practically every large city in the country, and some small communities

Introduction to Guidance and Counseling

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 Divine Word College of Bangued
Bangued, Abra
College Department

EARLY PIONEERS OF COUNSELLING

Frank Parsons

✓ Credited as the first counselor and often referred to as the “Father of Guidance”.
✓ To individualized counseling, he established the Vocational Bureau of Boston in 1908.
✓ At the Bureau, Parsons worked with young people who were in the process of making career
decisions.
✓ He “envisioned a practice of vocational guidance based on rationality and reason with service,
concern for others, cooperation, and social justice among its core values”.
✓ He theorized that choosing a vocation was a matter of relating three factors: knowledge of
work, knowledge of self, and a matching of the two through “true reasoning.” Thus, Parsons
devised a number of procedures to help his clients learn more about themselves and the world
of work. One of his devices was an extensive questionnaire that asked about experiences,
preferences, and morals.
✓ In 1909, a year after his death, his book Choosing a Vocation was published wherein he
discussed the role of the counselor and techniques that might be employed in counseling

Lysander S. Richards

✓ In 1881, he published a slim volume titled “Vocophy”. This was the “New Profession, a system
enabling a person to name the calling or vocation one is best suited to follow”
✓ His work has been dismissed because there is no documented proof that he actually
established the services he advocated.

Jesse B. Davis

✓ “Founder of the Educational Guidance” and was the first person to set up a systematized
guidance program in the public schools
✓ He implemented his ideas among his students on self-study and the examination of self in
relation to the chosen occupation throughout the 7th to 12th grades.
✓ His description of counseling seems to suggest that students should be preached about the
moral value of hard work, ambition, honesty, and the development of character as assets to
any person who planned to enter the business world.
✓ He uses the “call” concept in relation to the way one should choose a vocation. When an
individual was called, he would approach it with the noblest and highest ideals, which would
serve society best by uplifting humanity.

Introduction to Guidance and Counseling

This module is a property and is exclusively used by the DWCB College Department. Any duplication and reproduction, storing in
any retrieval system, distribution, posting or uploading online as well as transmitting in any form or means (photocopying& electronic sharing) of
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 Divine Word College of Bangued
Bangued, Abra
College Department

✓ What he and other progressive educators advocated was not counseling in the modern sense
but a forerunner of counseling: school guidance (a preventive educational means of teaching
students how to deal effectively with life events).

Anna Y. Reed and Eli Weaver

✓ American counselors who established counseling services based on Social Darwinian concepts.
Social Darwinism is an application of Darwin’s biological theory of evolution to social
organizations.
✓ Anna Y. Reed established guidance services in Seattle. She came to the need for counseling
services through her study of newsboys, penal institutions, and charity schools. She believes
that guidance could be important as a means of developing the best possible educational
product. She believed in stiff competition and that people needed to give their best effort to
any assigned task to see themselves as successful

Davis Spence Hill

✓ He organized the first guidance and counseling services in New Orleans.

✓ As Director of Research for the New Orleans schools, he discovered a need for guidance to
assist youth in assessing their abilities and in learning about the opportunities that would best
help them use those abilities.
✓ He advocated and worked for a diversified curriculum complemented by Vocational Guidance.

Carl Rogers

✓ Advocator of Client-centered Counseling, which he introduced in 1942 in his publication,

Counseling and Psychotherapy.
✓ He offers nondirective counseling as an alternative to the older, more traditional methods.
✓ He stressed that the individuals had the capacity to explore themselves and to make decisions
without an authoritative judgment from a counselor (stressing the client’s
✓ responsibility in perceiving his or her problem and enhancing the self).
✓ Since there was no advice given or persuasion used to follow a certain course, this system was
better known as Non-directive counseling

Clifford Beer

✓ A former Yale student who was hospitalized for depression several times during his life. He
found conditions in mental institutions deplorable and exposed them in his book, A mind that
Found Itself (1908), which became a popular best seller.

Introduction to Guidance and Counseling

This module is a property and is exclusively used by the DWCB College Department. Any duplication and reproduction, storing in
any retrieval system, distribution, posting or uploading online as well as transmitting in any form or means (photocopying& electronic sharing) of
any part, without prior written permission from the owner is strictly prohibited.
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 Divine Word College of Bangued
Bangued, Abra
College Department

✓ He used the book as a platform to advocate for better mental health facilities and reform in the
treatment of people with mental illness.
✓ His work was the impetus for the mental health movement in the United States, as well as
advocacy groups that exist today including the National Mental Health Association and the
National Alliance for the Mentally Ill. His work was also a forerunner of mental health counseling.

DEVELOPMENT OF GUIDANCE IN THE PHILIPPINES

Before 1925, guidance as movement, as it is now practiced and accepted, was unknown in the
Philippines. It was when Dr. Sinforoso Padilla, Dean of Men of the University of the Philippines started in
1932 a Psychological Clinic which dealt with student cases of discipline, emotional, academic, and
vocational. In November 1945, the first Guidance Institute seminar was held at the National Teachers
College (NTC), Manila from November 23to December 13 with the United States Arm Psychologist as
resource persons. Educators from all levels of the school system were given a series of guidance
lectures. After his seminar, the participants organized the

Guidance Association of the Philippines

The Bureau of Public Schools started to send teachers and officials for observation and study
of guidance services abroad. Cognizant of the role of guidance in our schools, the Joint Congressional
Committee on Education, in its report in 1951 to Congress stated, “There should be established in every
secondary school a functional guidance and counseling program to help the students select courses,
activities, occupations, and friends and future mates; to guide them in their work in school and at home
and to help them solve their personal problems.”

In 1952, the Division Superintendent of Schools recommended the establishment of guidance

services in the public schools. The City of Manila at present has the most up-to-date organization and
maintenance of functional guidance programs in general secondary schools In December 1953, another
organization was organized. This was the Philippine Association of Guidance Counselors. The objectives
of the Association are:

1. To study the needs, interests, and potentials of our young people oinorder to promote their welfare.

2. To establish a Testing Bureau which would undertake research with a view to develop local tests.
Advisement and Guidance Section was established by the United States Veterans Administration,
composed of both American and Filipino psychologists like Dr. Sinforoso Padilla, Dr.Jesus Perpinan,
and Mr. Roman Tuason, setting up the first systematic guidance program in the Philippines

Introduction to Guidance and Counseling

This module is a property and is exclusively used by the DWCB College Department. Any duplication and reproduction, storing in
any retrieval system, distribution, posting or uploading online as well as transmitting in any form or means (photocopying& electronic sharing) of
any part, without prior written permission from the owner is strictly prohibited.
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 Divine Word College of Bangued
Bangued, Abra
College Department

In view of the interest developed in Psychology and Guidance, colleges and universities started
offering courses such as Counseling Psychology, Industrial Psychology, Clinical Psychology, and Human
Services Technology.

LEGAL BASES OF GUIDANCE IN THE PHILIPPINES

In 1951, the Philippines has its own beginning in the legal foundation of guidance when the Joint
Congressional Committee on Education, in its report to Congress, stated that:

“There should be established in every secondary school a functional and counseling program to help the
students, to guide them in their work in school and at home and to help them solve their problems.”

To give more impact on the role of guidance in the Philippine educational system, Section 4-
Declaration of Objectives of Batas Pambansa Blg. 232, an act providing for the establishment and
maintenance of an integrated system of education which shall be known as theEducation Act of 1982
states that the educational system shall aim to:

1) provide for a broad general education that will assist each individual, in the peculiar ecology of his
own society, to:

a) attain his potentials as a human being;

b) enhance the range and quality of individual and group participation in the basic functions of
society: and

c) acquire the essential educational foundation for its development into a productive and
versatile citizen;

2)Train the nation's manpower in middle-level skills for national development;

3) Develop the profession that will provide leadership for the nation in the advancement of knowledge
for improving the quality of human life; and

4) respond effectively to changing needs and conditions of the nation through a system of educational
planning and evaluation. The realization of these objectives is stipulated under Section 3, Article
XIV of the 1987 Constitution to wit:

“All educational institutions shall inculcate patriotism and nationalism, foster love of
humanity, respect for human rights, appreciation of the role of national heroes in the historical
development of the country, teach the rights and duties of citizenship, strengthen ethical and

Introduction to Guidance and Counseling

This module is a property and is exclusively used by the DWCB College Department. Any duplication and reproduction, storing in
any retrieval system, distribution, posting or uploading online as well as transmitting in any form or means (photocopying& electronic sharing) of
any part, without prior written permission from the owner is strictly prohibited.
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 Divine Word College of Bangued
Bangued, Abra
College Department

spiritual values, develop moral character and personal discipline, encourage critical and creative
thinking, broaden scientific and technological knowledge and promote vocational efficiency.”

Introduction to Guidance and Counseling

This module is a property and is exclusively used by the DWCB College Department. Any duplication and reproduction, storing in
any retrieval system, distribution, posting or uploading online as well as transmitting in any form or means (photocopying& electronic sharing) of
any part, without prior written permission from the owner is strictly prohibited.
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