President's

Message

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere "

-Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Changing Tide in Counseling
Hugh C. Crethar, CSJ President (2007-2008)
University of Arizona
Wednesday, March 05, 2008

The past few years have been exciting in the development of social justice in the field of counseling. We have increasingly moved the direction of focusing on the convergence of contextual, systemic and cultural variables in our counseling approaches and theory. Increasing numbers of counselors are arriving at the realization that a great many of the challenges that our clientele face are ultimately due to systemic and systematic variables that are designed to serve some people better than others.

For instance, in the field of school counseling, student advocacy and systemic change are two of the four themes of the ASCA National Model (ASCA, 2005). In the model, Reese House argues that school counselors should ultimately “fix the system, and not the student.” This model of counseling takes a clear stance that counselors who work in school settings have a primary responsibility to serve every student. Implicit in this stance is the understanding that the great majority of our school systems are not serving our students appropriately. It is both archaic and inaccurate to assume that the challenges that our students experience are all results of individual choices. School counselors are increasingly encouraged to act as leaders who develop counseling programs focused on collaborative, systemic change that serves every student in every school. Therefore, responsible counselors oppose policies that maintain inequitable funding of public schools based on property taxes, support policies that treat students of all sexual/affectional orientations with equity, support educational practices that encourage increasing numbers of women to work in science and math-related fields, and support educational practices that close the achievement gap.

Counselors who work in mental health, community, rehabilitation, military, college, career, occupational and couples and family settings also serve clientele who face systematic marginalization and oppression on a regular basis. It is our duty as ethical counselors to empower our clientele while simultaneously advocating for systemic change that increases equity, access and participation in society. Such changes will bring greater wellness for all and ultimately a more harmonious world.

César Chávez once explained that “once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot un-educate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the person who is not afraid anymore. We have looked into the future and the future is ours.” It is my hope that social justice continues to flourish as the “fifth force” in counseling. We will know that Counselors for Social Justice has done its job within counseling as soon as we have made our existence obsolete. This will come when social justice counseling is infused in all theory and practice in counseling. The tide is changing in the field of counseling. Having grown up on a beach in the Pacific Ocean, I learned at an early age that the tide is not something that can be stopped.