A Reaction to Hipolito-Delgado and Lee

Abstract

In their article in this issue, Hipolito-Delgado and Lee contend that empowering students from marginalized communities is a fundamental role of school counselors and consistent with both the Education Trust's (2003) and the American School Counselor Association's (ASCA, 2004) emphasis on social justice. To help school counselors further this role, the authors make use of empowerment theory, the roots of which are found in Paulo Freire's educational theory. Hipolito-Delgado and Lee do an impressive job of integrating empowerment theory with the role of the school counselor and generating practical suggestions as to how the school counselor might begin to effectuate a process of personal empowerment for students with internalized oppression. The authors are to be congratulated on helping school counselors to understand in very real and pragmatic terms the implications of the commitment to social justice. Empowerment through counseling, as the authors rightly point out, has been a longstanding emphasis of the profession. Equally longstanding has been the debate around how to empower clients and the emphases accorded to the different dimensions of an individual's existence--for example, intrapsychic, interpersonal, and sociopolitical. In a very convincing fashion, Hipolito-Delgado and Lee describe how school counselors can aid in a process of personal empowerment for students from marginalized communities by fostering critical consciousness, facilitating the development of a positive identity, and encouraging social action. These are designed to effectuate systemic changes in schools so they are no longer instruments of internalized oppression but rather help students to understand their victimization by sociopolitical forces and eventually take action to combat those forces. By the very nature of their existence, schools are designed to help students achieve an education--always seen in the country as a means toward achieving greater economic and political power. Hipolito-Delgado and Lee argue that when schools are culturally monolithic and insensitive to cultural differences, they do not help students from nondominant cultural backgrounds advance in educational attainment and achievement. While the authors do not explicitly state such, one has to believe that their use of empowerment theory is ultimately designed to help students from marginalized communities succeed academically with the recognition that this may require certain structural changes that the authors imply will result from a process of personal empowerment. Throughout the reading of this important article, we kept being reminded of current research informing us about the importance of course-taking variables in determining success in education beyond high school (see, e.g., Adelman, 1999; Trusty, 2002; Trusty & Niles, 2003). Based on the Adelman study, the Education Trust (2005) has called the high school curriculum the biggest predictor of college success. While Hippolito-Delgado and Lee make mention at the beginning of their article of how schools perpetuate oppression of students from marginalized communities because these students are less likely, among other things, to receive college preparation classes, the authors seem to lose this connection when discussing empowerment theory as it relates to professional school counseling. In writing about how school counselors can help disempowered students to build a positive identity, develop critical consciousness, and take social action, they fail to relate such laudable tasks to the promotion of educational achievement and attainment--the ultimate goal of all school counseling activity. By helping students become aware of how schools are and can be instruments of oppression and by encouraging students to participate in ethnic student groups and social action groups, school counselors may be indirectly promoting higher achievement and attainment. When a disempowered student refrains from taking more advanced college preparation courses, what is the response of the school counselor? …