The Editor, Sir:

The article in your newspaper on the 23rd May 2007 entitled 'Scared to talk - Children affected by AIDS do not trust guidance counsellors'. Sir, the day before I was having a conversation with a child in a rural parish when the child said, "I have a problem. I cannot go to the guidance counsellor I do not trust her The other children tell me she calls me names behind my back and always blames me for everything when I go to her with a problem, I am afraid of her and I avoid her totally, if she is on the right I make my way on the left."

Sir, this, I do not think, is unique to that child and may well be an epidemic throughout the education system which needs immediate attention. It seems to me that many guidance counsellors are either immature, too religious, need to be replaced, removed, or they themselves need guidance.

The criteria and method of selecting guidance counsellors may need to change or the present method of providing counselling for students should be disbanded or revised to having more inde-pendent and non-teaching unattached professionals dealing with that.

It has to be looked at seriously because if the child in need withdraws and is counselled by their friends or unsavoury characters in whom they can confide we could have a time bomb waiting to explode.

I say explode because while speaking to the child I could sense militancy and a rebellion in the making supported by other children with the same untrustworthy opinion of the guidance counsellors.

I am, etc.,

MICHAEL SPENCE

Micspen2@hotmail.com

Liguanea P.O

Box 630, Kingston 6