Written by: Dr. K Muralidaran, Mentor Helikx School Social Work & Research
Pupil is a term that refers to students in educational institutions, especially in schools. A student is expected to be studious in studies. This is the simple expectation from the LKG level students
to Higher Secondary level students. A pupil at the primary education level believes that the parents and teachers know everything about everything.
Their thoughts and exclamations are posed as questions to parents seeking clarifications. Very few parents do clarify them satisfactorily. The other lot discourage them and perish their questioning tendency.
The pupil in the middle school level is desirous of establishing relationship with his peers. There is an interchange of affection from one another. This sharing of affection gets extended at home from the next sibling to the grant parents. Pampering by parents and grant parents towards the child/student/pupil take place spontaneously. School and home work become disgusting events to some pupils at this stage. Their feelings towards teachers are of ambivalent nature: sometimes they like and sometimes dislike or even afraid of.
The later part of the schooling is totally driven by the pluses and minuses of the adolescent stage of psychological development. There are more possibilities for an adolescent pupil to get confused easily. He searches for role models from parents, relatives, and teachers and largely from the society. But this attempt is easily over ruled by the exposure to media and the peer group. In fact the peer group influence is very strong. The school pupil is encouraged in some social processes like competition and rivalry than accommodation.
The pupil is a son or daughter; a grandson or granddaughter; and a brother or sister. He is a friend and has friends. He is a member of the society, a citizen. What actually happens very often is that all these perspectives are unnoticed and the pupil is perceived only as an obedient student in a more disciplinarian perspective. All those who work with students for counselling them have to understand that a pupil has to be seen in all these perspectives and not by the literal word ‘student’ alone. School Social Workers who do counselling are supposed to look at their client in different perspectives and work with them in accordance with the needs and capacities of the pupil.
Comentarios