IN A MULTICULTURAL SOCIETY

EXCERPTS BY: REV. JOSEPH AWOYEMI

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Copyright © 2012 Joseph Awoyemi All Rights Reserved

The book Ethical Code for Counseling in Education in A Multicultural Society is a toolkit to equip guidance Counsellors in education, stake holders, policy makers and planners, educators, school psychologists, pastoral Counsellors, medical personnel, nurses, youth workers, chaplains and teachers and other professionals who interact with or intervene in other people’s lives in public and private educational institutions. The book is of utility in unleashing the potentials of students, apprentices, learners, workers, parents and helpseekers. It is a pastoral tool that helps shape the character of the help givers, care givers and their surrogates who interact with and or intervene in other people’s lives as they confer with helpseekers and learners in their life destiny. The book is envisioned as a tool to unleash human potentials; a resource for intervention in dealing with human life hurts and as a channel of Gods healing and liberation to humanity.

The book addresses issues of confidentiality, welfare of learners and helpseekers, justice, benevolence, non-Malefiscence, non omnipotence, and fallibility, fidelity, autonomy, avoidance of walking on helpseekers, avoidance of self serving bias, non-nepotism, electronic communications and records handling, valid learner assessment, professional competence, integrity, content competence, pedagogical competence, respect for rights and dignity, boundaries of relationships, truthfulness and candor, professional responsibility, social responsibility, student development termination and referral, multicultural diversity training, multicultural diversity counseling, records handling, professional qualifications et cetera.

The author exposes users to life related case studies as insights to unleashing human potentials and dealing with human life hurts for Gods healing in a multicultural/multiethnic society. In this wise, the book calls for the highest standard of reputation, conduct, study, ethics, and training - if we will be the true channels of healing to the population wherein we live and serve.

The author posits that Ethics is not co-terminus with law; ethical behaviour is not co-terminus with abiding by the rules regulations,  laws and ordinances of a nation and so decisions made by a Counsellor, pastoral Counsellor, school psychologist or any other helping professionals in education is not the same as abiding by laws of the land. It is much; much larger.

The author also posits that: each person born into the world is teleologically pre-potentiated (pre-packaged) with his/her own somatic, psychic and spiritual inheritances which determine the potential talents embedded in him/her. With the unavoidable life milestones, encounters, challenges and hurts that populate a person’s life journey he/she may be shortchanged of his teleological potentialities.

Herein lays the value of the helping professions- to confer with the learner or helpseeker in dealing with the hindering life challenges so that the individual will achieve adjustment and homeostasis through rational autonomy.

The book serves as a toolkit for how help-givers make decisions and judgments and how helpers act on them to influence other people’s lives. The author believes that for a counselor  to fully exercise professionalism, he/she must be firmly grounded in the love of God and of humanity and avoid actions and inactions that can damage the Help Seeker; for it is only in these that the therapeutic powers of the helping profession can  be effective in the homeostatic shalom of humanity.

For a background (as a backdrop of Knowledge), the book explores some foundations of ethics in religions and in horizons of understanding such as psychology, philosophy, sociology, education, social work, teaching and multicultural underpinnings to bear on the principles and articles.

As Counsellors, help givers, pastoral care givers, and guidance Counsellors, we submit ourselves to the highest standard of reputation, ethics, training and conduct for us as help givers to be the channel of Gods healing to the populations wherein we live.

AUTHOR’S PHILOSOPHY ON PEDAGOGICAL ETHICS

1.40 PHILOSOPHY ON PEDAGOGY Copyright © 2012 Joseph Awoyemi All Rights Reserved

Every, child at birth is pre-potentiated (pre-packaged) and so has multiple inheritances, talents or intelligences, which can be elevated by nurture, acculturation and environment for the persons homeostatic adjustment in life. Consequently, the child has multiple areas of his/her talents in which he/she can match or excel among other students.  In education and counseling therefore, the categorization of a helpseeker, student or learner as poor, (dunce), high performer or low performer, bright, dull, with low or high intelligent quotient (IQ) is subjective judgment and a fallacy. Similarly the current instruments for the measurement of IQ in western education are a grossly erroneous and cannot have universal application. Since the contents of IQ measurement instruments in any society are cultural specific; learners coming into that culture from other cultures are automatically downgraded and short-changed of academic assessment and placement.

In order for IQ measurements to be valid, the ingredients, particularly the symbolism and language in the instrument must be reconciled and adjusted with the culture wherein the person is coming out of; else, assessment and IQ measurements will be discriminatory and rapacious to the learner.

The author of this book posits that in education, a teacher whose pedagogic competence cannot arouse the restorative elements in a child is the one that is deficient in the education process.  This means that in all practicality, it is the teacher or the instructor that is deficient, dunce, poor and lacking the pedagogic competence to reach the child rather than the child being deficient in learning.

Teachers who are deficient in pedagogic and or content competence inadvertently short-change the learner of his/her potential in achieving the desired outcomes of education. Once an educator for instance, a teacher discovers the right methods of reaching the restorative elements in a learner on a subject or topic and is willing to apply such methods to the benefit of the learner, the restorative elements in the learner’s psyche is elevated and the student’s intellect begins to bloom. But when the teacher/instructor is deficient by training, experience or talent to interact with the restorative elements (gifts and talents) in the learner, the teachers efforts become naught and the learner is unjustly blamed for the teachers deficiency. Here, it is reasonable to conceive that a challenged student or learner’s psyche is crying, “send me a teacher who understands my psychic configuration and is willing to work with my areas of intelligence and I will become an excellent learner”.

In light of the above a counselor or help-giver in education should in addition to content competence also seek pedagogic and multicultural counseling competence to avoid short-changing the learner or help seeker in their intellectual, behavioural, spiritual and homeostatic adjustment in life.

Copyright © 2012 Joseph Awoyemi All Rights Reserved