Mental health and education: Counselling as prophylaxis

Though school counselling is concerned primarily with prevention rather than cure, in practice the urgent needs of the wayward and the sick leave little time for genuinely preventive work. Furthermore, effective prophylaxis in the strong sense of laying foundations of robust mental health, competence and well-being in all children must involve the whole school to some degree, and particularly a team of willing and able teachers working along with the school counsellor on curriculum development in personal and social education. Though the needs of the few can be met by one-to-one counselling, the needs of the many will be answered only through group work. Trained counsellors must take the initiative in such work. They will retard the mental health movement if they permit their colleagues to feel complacently that the appointment of a school counsellor is an ample school contribution to the objectives of preventive psychiatry. Mental health is every teacher's business.     

Training Family Therapists in a Multicultural Setting

Authors describe a multicultural training model for family therapists and psychologists at a traditionally conservative Afrikaans speaking university in South Africa. Black psychologists are now receiving high priority in a masters degree program that leads to professional registration licensure because of the needs of the population. The authors emphasize the importance of being able to think multidimensionally and creating a context in which students can do the same in such contexts.     

The perils of intimacy: Closeness and distance in feeding and weaning

This paper is based on work in the baby clinic of a general practice, with examples from infant observation, and ideas from recent research. It is something of an interdisciplinary paper.     

Are careers education programmes in secondary schools a waste of time? – A reply to Roberts

Vocational guidance and the careers education programmes which vocational theorists currently argue should span the secondary school years imply that entry into employment is the outcome of choice processes exercised on significant differences among available jobs in respect of the talents they require and the kind and extent of opportunity for self-fulfilment that they offer. Because Roberts (1977) has questioned these assumptions, the case is here argued that careers education programmes (CEPs), if begun early enough, can exert an influence upon all young people's educational and occupational choices, and that such an influence is educationally and socially defensible.     

The effects of gender-typed labels on children’s performance

The present study examined the effect of gender-typed labeling of a task on the performance of children. A total of 72 boys and girls aged 11, 13 and 16 years took part in the study. The same measure of performance—a perceptual motor task—was used across all conditions. Two main dimensions were investigated: first, the effect of of directly labeling the task as gender appropriate or inappropriate; second, the effect of the instruction to role-enact a person competent at the task labeled gender appropriate or inappropriate. The results indicate that children of all ages studied perform better at the task labeled gender appropriate rather than inappropriate. Children also perform better when role-acting competence at a gender-typed labeled task than under conventional testing procedures. The implications of these findings are discussed.