Wilderness Road

Just because students don't get personal attention doesn't mean they don't need it.

By Howard Good

In a public education system whose terminology is composed largely of misleading euphemisms and impenetrable jargon, the term "guidance office" may be the greatest misnomer of all. This isn’t a knock on the work ethic of high school guidance counselors. I’m sure many important activities occur down at the guidance office. It is just that none of them qualifies as guidance in any meaningful sense.

To guide, Webster’s Dictionary says, means to "lead or direct … in a course or path." It also means to "instruct and influence intellectually and morally; to train." Moreover, a guide is defined as, among other things, "one who ... directs another in his conduct or course of life." By these definitions, guidance counselors aren’t actually guides, and what they do isn’t actually guidance.

So what do they do? A 2002 survey by the National Center for Education Statistics found that guidance counselors spent the most time on course schedules and the second most time on college applications. They spent the third most time on attendance, discipline, and other school problems. Nowhere was there reference to time spent directing the intellectual and moral growth of students or serving as...