Knowledge-Information-Service Era Changes in Work and Education and the Changing Role of the School Counselor in Career Education

Career Development Quarterly, March, 2001 by Kenneth B. Hoyt, Pat Nellor Wickwire

Some people decide to enroll in a 4-year college for reasons that extend far beyond that of education as preparation for work. To the extent that is true, it would be wrong to contend that these people are biased in favor of 4-year college over other postsecondary educational opportunities available. Many individuals place high value on a general liberal arts education. Others value the socialization skills acquired by 4-year college students, and they especially value the friendships that are made during that period. Still others value the thinking skills associated with a liberal arts education. Many people strongly emphasize the capacity of the 4-year liberal arts college to help students shape their personal value systems. In short, many parents value the 4-year college, in a broad sense, as preparation for living and not just as preparation for making a living. Career education seeks to include preparation for making a living as one goal of 4-year colleges, not as the only or most important goal. The sc hool counselor can be a key contributor in reaching this goal and in keeping it in proper perspective.

Need to Acquire General Employability, Adaptability, and Promotability Skills

As the occupational society participates in the Information Age, it will become more and more important for workers to be able to think about what they are doing and to make decisions aimed at performing their job duties successfully (Marshall & Tucker, 1992). Necessary thinking skills will include deciding how to use basic academic skills to perform job functions, how to use productive work habits consistently, and how to apply career decision-making skills. One of the key goals of today's school counselors must be assisting classroom teachers in their attempts to help pupils acquire general employability, adaptability, and promotability skills useful in any occupation found in the emerging high-tech society (SCANS, 1991).

This can be done in elementary school classrooms, to some degree, through career-awareness experiences involving presentations by private sector persons, coupled with field trips by elementary and middle school students to sites within the occupational society. These kinds of activities, although helpful, are far from being sufficient if the goal is to equip all students with general employability skills.

Instead, the major kinds of activity needed in career education are oriented around those activities aimed at considering the classroom to be a workplace and both teachers and pupils as workers. Most career education advocates seem to endorse the definition of work found in the first U.S. Office of Education monograph on career education, which was this: "Work is conscious effort, other than that whose prime purpose is either coping or relaxation, aimed at providing benefits to oneself and/or to oneself and others" (Hoyt, 1975, p. 3). According to this definition, the word work is not limited to paid employment. By including unpaid as well as paid activities as work, the concept of the classroom as a workplace becomes clearly defensible.