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                        %ADVISING VALUES AND IDEALS 861111

     The process of serving as an advisor of  students  is
not a value neutral process;  it is not a purely technical
procedure by which the advisor helps the student achieve a
goal previously chosen by the student.   Consider why this
is so.

     In  the process of calling possible alternatives  and
considerations to the attention of the student the advisor
must of necessity choose among many possibilities to  call
to  the  student's  attention.   Such choices are made  in
terms of the values and ideals of the advisor. Neither the
advisor  nor the student has enough time to consider   all
that the  advisor  might  bring up for discussion.  If the
advisor is in a hurry, little will be brought up,  and the
student's  confusion  and  ignorance will be confirmed  as
satisfactory   in   the  eyes  of  the   advisor.     That
confirmation   is  a  value  judgment  motivated  by   the
advisor's  values and ideals which say that the student is
not worthy of the time it would take to advise; or perhaps
which say that one should  not get involved in a situation
which   requires   the  embarrassment  of   making   value
judgments.

     An  advisor  who  does not have  a  well  articulated
conception of  values and ideals will be embarrassed by  a
situation  in which decisions regarding how to advise will
of necessity entail value laden judgments about ideals and
appropriate  means.    Technocrats  who have  avoided  the
embarrassment  of  the articulation their own  values  and
ideals thus do not make helpful advisors.   High levels of
technocratic  knowledge   do  not  compensate  for  having
avoided the articulation of values and ideals.

     Pretending  to be value neutral in the performance of
advising does not make the ritual value neutral.    Values
and  ideals  of  some kind are inevitably affirmed  by all
persons cast into the role of advisor.  If  those  persons
who  are so cast into the role of advisors can not discuss
among themselves their ideals and values,  they can not be
properly  helpful  to the student whom they are to advise.
They will be prone to communicate their values and  ideals
in  disintegrative covert manner.   When values and ideals
can not  be  dealt with in open  and  honest  dialogue  to
consider    whether    they   will   be   integrative   or
disintegrative;   they  are  inevitably  going   to   have
disintegrative  consequences  because  of the context  and
manner of their affirmations.

                                                                                                                               
                         (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in      
                    (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy)  
                                                                                                                               
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