After reading Professor Borna's Your Turn" article, I was intrigued by the notable reactions from faculty to the new Ball State University slogan: "empty phrase," "pure nonsense," "promotional phrase," etc.
Because faculty members are engaged in the business of education I would have expected to see statements that reacted to the implication in the new slogan that education needed to be redefined.
To me, the fact that no faculty member was reported as asserting that education has already been properly defined is a more important issue than how the university should implement its new slogan.
As devised, the new slogan may be only a tag line in a new promotional campaign, but it goes to the heart of the mission in which Ball State, along with the larger fraternity of institutions of higher learning, is engaged.
Have we ever truly defined education? Do we really know what education is?
Education has been redefined but Ball State cannot take credit for that feat.
According to UNESCO [United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization], "Education provides you with knowledge and information, in turn bringing about desirable changes in the way you think, feel and act.
Education also builds in you a strong sense of self-esteem, self-confidence.
It contributes very effectively to the realization of your potential. Therefore, education is considered as a social instrument for developing human resources and for human capital formation."
Education was the engine that brought humans from the primitive conditions of our early years to the sophistication of the twenty-first century.
I don't think we can truly claim that what occurs in out colleges and universities truly qualifies as education.
It appeals to me that a long time our educational system was transformed, redefined if you will, into an instructional system. A century ago G.Benson Clough called instruction the "handmaid to Education," because "it involved the direct imparting of knowledge already accumulated from one who knows to one who is at the time ignorant."
This is what goes on in our colleges and universities.
Education has already been redefined as Instruction. We have abandoned the lady for her handmaiden.
Ball State was not responsible for that unfortunate turn of events but the tag line in out new promotional campaign should serve as a challenge for us to rediscover the true definition of Education.
This is uncharted territory in which Ball State can blaze a trail.
Darius Lecointe is a research design consultant for University Computing Services and wrote this 'Your Turn' for the Daily News. His views do not necessarily agree with those of the newspaper.
Write to Darius at dalecointe@bsu.edu
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