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What is the point of paying attention to counselors giving bad advice?

Francisco Miraval

The situations looks deceptively simple and routine: a student goes to talk with counselor to receive advice about what classes to take to complete the studies, be it at high school or college, with the best possible grades.  However, what happens when the advice given by those counselors -as it unfortunately happens with some frequency- is a bad advice?

Last week, a mother called to share the story about something that happened to her daughter, attending grade 11 at a school near Denver. At the beginning of the new school year, this mother discovered that her daughter, that previously took advanced classes following the advice of her counselor, failed those classes and, therefore, she has to retake many of those classes.

This is not a case where a young students hides information from his or her parents. This is a case where the school did not inform the student or the parents about the problem. The mother went to talk with the counselor, but the counselor denied any responsibility.

I must confess that just a year ago, I would have not believed the story and I would have accused the mother of neglecting the education of her daughter. In fact, I would have assumed the whole story was just a fabrication by the mother to find a scapegoat for the low academic achievement of her daughter. Now I fully believe her, because something similar happened to my son.

My son was also advised by his counselor to take advanced classes. Unfortunately, my son received low grades, literally ruining his GPA for high school. As it was clearly proved later, it is not that my son lacked the intelligence or understanding to pass those classes. It is that nobody helped him or took him seriously.

With great efforts, he was able to overcome that difficult situation, graduating from high school with a decent GPA. But during one of his last conversations with the “counselor,” this counselor, in my presence, advised my son not to go to college, but to study mechanics, and not even car mechanics, because that would be too complicated, but motorcycles’ mechanics.

Obviously, we disregarded such a stereotypical and biased advice and my son is now in college studying what he wanted at a good university. Unfortunately, bad counselors are found not only at high schools, but also at colleges and universities.

I recently spoke with a Latina college students (she is in her forties) who, after several years in college and very close to getting her degree, found out that some of the subjects she took following the advice of her counselor do not count towards her degree. For that reason, so she will need to spend more time and money to achieve the goal of completing her college career.

If academic counselors provide bad advice (seldom assuming any responsibility), I wonder how many other “experts” are giving us bad advice about health, finances, religion, or politics, when we face the consequences of following those unwise suggestions.

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