Educational Counseling and Socio-Economic Development. MsC.Amilkar A. Brunal

 

(What do you mean?)[1] [2]

Traducing by PhD. George Davy Vera

Faced with the question of the REMO in 2012:[3]

 

"Is it valid that a magazine specializing in the dissemination of educational issues is also in the treatment of social and economic problems, is THE REMO a means of political analysis?",

I took advantage of this academic provocation at the time to affirm what I do not know if many people share in the academic world of Counseling:

 

"of course we must as Counseling professionals,  dedicate ourselves to the study and treatment of the social and economic problems of our time which not only our students and Counselors experience, but ourselves, not only as social beings, but as professionals that  face day to day  the effects of the models of social development that we live in.

 

Counseling, devoid of this level of analysis would not go beyond being a technical discipline in which naive and intuitive counseling is applied in a tone of popular wisdom that our grandmothers, with the best intention,  have historically performed.

 

I consider that the study of Person-Society-School relationships (which is obviously not unique to sociology), can not simply be an important chapter of our work, but the philosophical-praxiological essence fundamental to understanding such complex situations such as the construction of life projects in this contemporary society [called by some "Modern or postmodern" and by others with whom I share their position (Ulrichk Beck) risk society or society in which the second ,third, and fourth industrialization] in which the overwhelming and impoverishing neoliberal policy is increasingly accepted, implemented by normalizing hourly working precariousness, reflected in the multiple poverty (Max-Neef) of the families of most of our public or official school students, translated into precarious living conditions and probable futures.

It is for all this that a model of Guidance that is called "Latin American", It cannot evade the component of community life, as a fundamental axis of interaction with the educational community it serves. However, political aspects of the so-called socialist-communist NOT proposed here, which has shown in sister countries such as Cuba and Venezuela that the people reject any hyper-controlling totalitarian intervention of social life and equally radical and overwhelming of freedoms and human rights. Nor could we make apology for the savage capitalism we suffer in most of our countries. Much less is attended to the principles of liberation theology that at the time gave their answers to the problems of depressed societies like the ones we know in our daily work.

We have proclaimed several times in OrientAction, the search for humanizing and community models, communal, or community, without any weapon other than transcendental human action in our field, that allows us to work from critical pedagogies, a building of sense of life in community, such as models such as "Ubuntu" of pan-Africanist movements and the well-known Abya-Yala model, or Suma Kuamsay (Good Living) proclaim: Living in harmony with nature to nature which we belong to and on which we depend in order to build a social life in community (although it seems redundant), transverse in the micro social, at least by the principles of Empathetic Leadership and Alterity-Assertive (proposed in the glossary of our magazine OrientAcción), and in the social mezzo , by principles of ethically-sustainable economics (fair trade), aesthetics (harmonic), solidarity and synergistic, determined communally, giving priority to respectful, fair, rational and indigenous production, a principle widely explained by economists of the theory of "Human Scale Development".

Transcendental Human Action in Educational  Orientation

But what belongs to us beyond individual commitment as citizens? What actions are typical of our professional work? Obviously, the assistance position of distributing food, giving away used clothes, etc., which can be very appropriate for volunteer citizens, merciful  or empathetic, O.N.Gs or other social foundation organizations (which somehow seek to close the social gaps that states have stopped covering, often due to political corruption and/or mismanagement of public resources, without discounting the brutal weight of our countries' external debt, in many cases immoral and unpayable), may still be necessary and relevant in our communities, however obviously, that cannot be our role.

Social mobilization, in these cases, is left to those who belong to them: the social and trade union leaders whom we deeply thank for the working conditions obtained after decades of joint struggle in public squares and streets. Nor do I think that's the role of Educational Guidance.  This is not the invitation presented here, nor that of meddling in houses, returning old models poorly imported from social work and poorly implemented in   Counseling  of the 80s and 90s, supplanting the work of the official entities that they are responsible for intervening or mediating in the domestic-family sphere. Guidance   in other cases has also supplanted clinical psychology, (by the way, playing a rather mediocre role by the way), in the search for an identity of its own. It has also happened with pedagogy, when the Counselor replaces the teacher in his classroom with no better results.

I propose here, to work mainly and decisively for the empowerment and psychosocial strengthening of the families with which we work, from a [4]cross-sectoral and interinstitutional perspective, critical  (recognizing that the individualistic perspective   in Educational Counseling is necessary but insufficient), that makes it easier for them to generate social awareness, understood all this as self-recognition, as social beings capable of transforming and transforming their circumstances transitionally, ethically-sustainably, synergistically-solidarity, resilient and fragile, regardless of their difficult conditions of life. This is the work we consider to be momentous in Counseling as it obviously affects everything from the individual to all known forms and levels of society

So these are the reasons why in this edition, in the midst of the greatest pandemic of recent times, we are committed to various reflection-action articles, presented by colleagues of the highest  academic and human level, who pride us and exalt the field by demonstrating that their proposals in the areas of General Counseling,   Vocational/Professional and Professional Guidance,   Family Counseling, are not reflected in a distant desk, but within the very part of the work committed to the communities to which we owe ourselves. 

 

It's the right time to thank and recognize the totally selfless and voluntary work of all of us who make this means of expression and outreach possible. Thank you very much

 

Amilkar A. Brunal

 

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[1] Colloquial expression in culture popular Mexican, used here respectfully and joquely to refer to a supposedly obvious response.

[2] Amilkar A. Brunal, is a psychologist graduated from the University "Konrad Lorenz" of Bogota, specialist in Educational Guidance and Development Human the University "El Bosque" of Bogotá (2001), Educational Guidance in school field attached to the Secretary of Education of Bogotá since 1994 and master in Interdisciplinary Social Research graduated from the District University "Francisco José de Caldas(2008). Author of books Transitional Orientation 1.0 (2014) . "When Men Talk" and co-author of: "Role and Sense Education Orientation in Colombia." Co-editor from the Latin American Journal of Guidance and Development Human:"OrientAcción" of the Latin American Network of Guidance Professionals(Relapro) of which he is Director General for the period [2018-2021] amilkarbrunal@gmail.com . https://amilkarbrunal.blogspot.com/

 

[3] Torres Verdugo, María Angela, & Magaña Vargas, Hector. (2008). Profile of the REMO, five years after its foundation. Mexican Journal of Educational Orientation, 6(15), 1-8. Retrieved on 01 October 2020, http://pepsic.bvsalud.org/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1665-75272008000200013&lng=pt&tlng=es.

 

[4] "Minimum micro-social group, consisting of inbreeding, parenting or voluntary union, with the purpose of performing the existential axiological needs of: Subsistence, Protection, Affection, Identity, Understanding, Participation, Creation, Recreation and Communication sharing ethical modes (Post conventional-Conventional-Preconventional-Sub-conventionals) of  obtaining and managing satisfactors for these needs indicators of moral awareness. Magazine OrientAcción 2020[4]