School and career guidance as support and respect for the student's lifestyle

Abstract

The management of educational and career guidance has been transferred from the Ministry of Labor to the Ministry of Education, as it is considered an educational process to be implemented within schools, involving both school staff and families. The Center for Applied Psychology Studies in Turin has developed a program for some middle schools aimed at highlighting students' lifestyles and developing their aptitudes, focusing in particular on cooperation. Fifth-grade teachers collaborated in the program by answering a questionnaire to outline the students' lifestyles. The team then provided support to teachers and mediated between families and students, including individual interviews. The school choices of children in this socially and economically disadvantaged area of the city reflected both their parents' desire for revenge and their passive acceptance of a subordinate role, but they also revealed unresolved and unclear problems that manifested themselves in tics, maladjustment, and deviant behavior. With the intervention, the children's communication skills improved steadily and the alternatives offered to them, which they were free to choose, proved far more effective than any coercive corrective measures