Blog 2

Connecting Brown and Gibson

Brown has given me a new set of glasses for looking at career development theory with his question, "Is career development theory unintentionally racist?" In Chapter 3, Brown introduces us to Sue (2000) and Pedersen's (1991) ideas that "most of the theories included in training programs for professional counselors, psychologists and others are culturally oppressive because they are rooted in Eurocentric beliefs" (Brown, 2016, 46).  Certainly the traditional approach to career development in our country is an individualistic one, involving personality and aptitude tests, as well as self-directed questions about one's own personal desires, interests and values. However, as is pointed out, many groups, such as Native Americans, Asian Americans and Hispanics "believe that the welfare of the group should be placed ahead of the concerns of the individuals. They hold a collateral, or collective, social value and thus may reject the idea that the individual is more important than the family, for example" (Brown, 2016, 46).  I genuinely appreciated that this collectivist point of view was highlighted, as I myself have always taken an individualistic approach to my own career (being naturally drawn to theories such as Holland's Model), and I needed to be educated that I cannot assume my students will take the same approach. Moving forward, as I plan to work with children from a variety of cultures and backgrounds in my future, I will remind myself to guard Brown's question closely when working with counseling theories: is this theory unintentionally racist? I am grateful that the seed has been planted.

To connect this idea to Gibson's article, as powerful as I felt the genogram project could be with students as a career counselor, my mind kept returning to certain aspects that I felt were culturally insensitive. Students from various cultural backgrounds may not feel comfortable sharing their genograms in a larger group, even a very small group setting.  Operating from a Eurocentric, individualistic background, many educators may not even consider the implications of asking an entire group to share this private information. While a teacher or counselor may think they know which students they need to modify the lesson for (such as ones with blended families, same sex parents, foster families and adopted families), there may be many issues within a child's culture that an educator is unaware of. For example, as my classmates have pointed out, children of undocumented immigrants would be especially anxious during this class project and the counselor may inadvertently lose their confidence and trust.  Children of immigrants in general, of marginalized people and of minorities may feel uncomfortable during the exercise-- for reasons that we can guess and for others we can't even assume to know. The more I marinate on this topic, the more I feel a genogram is to be done one-on-one with a trained counselor if it is to be done sensitively and effectively. While Gibson writes that "Children... should be encouraged to participate... but should not be forced or penalized if they are hesitant" (Gibson, 2005), I believe the opportunity for true connection and growth in use of the genogram exists with a child and counselor one-on-one, while unintentionally hurting, isolating, and losing the trust of children with the genogram in the group is too great a risk.

Brown, D. (2016). Career Information, Career Counseling, and Career Development (11th ed.). New York: Pearson Education, Inc. ISBN 978-0-13-391777-2.

Gibson, D. M. (2005). The Use of Genograms in Career Counseling with Elementary, Middle, and High School Students. The Career Development Quaterly, 53, 353-362.