Chapter 4. Toward Career Guidance as Guidance for Life
Section 3. A New Approach to Career Guidance
1. Problems to Be Solved
The current state of lower secondary school career guidance and related issues were discussed in section 1 of this chapter. Specific aspects of career guidance that have been highlighted as problems are as follows.
1. Career guidance in lower secondary schools lacks clearly defined planning or goals. Even when plans and goals do exist, they have been reduced to mere forms that have little bearing on day-to-day guidance activities.
2. Schools have not established internal organizations for career guidance, which is left to the teachers in charge of third-year classes.
3. Guidance for third-year students is limited to the selection of the upper secondary schools that they should enter, and in particular the schools whose entrance examinations they can pass.
4. There is no assessment of lower secondary school career guidance, which means that there is no consideration of the problems that result from the guidance process and its outcome. Even when career guidance is assessed, the criterion used is the number of students who have been able to enter certain upper secondary schools.
5. As a consequence of this approach to career guidance in lower secondary schools, students take examinations for the upper secondary schools recommended by their teachers and enter those schools without understanding the significance or purpose of proceeding to upper secondary education, including what they will learn and why.
