Humanistic education: The challenge to the counsellor

Counselling has long been considered to be an ancillary service in American education, its general purpose being to assure that the student is free enough from personal concerns and emotional problems to concentrate upon the objective of education, which is the development of the intellect (or cognitive abilities). Humanistic education questions this goal, and proposes that the objective of education should be the development of the student as a whole person, or the development of self-actualising persons. Counsellors, ideally, have always held this as their goal. When education adopts it also, then counselling will not be an ancillary activity, but will be central to the educative process.