Harpur College 1965 Yearbook (Binghamton, NY) - Full Access

Instruction is that which attempts to alter, reinforce or articulate our view of reality and, therefore, make one aware of what life is, and what the world is like. It is found in many places: in a lecture hall, in a music rehearsal room, an art studio, a teacher's office, the theatre, in the woods where botanists search. Harpur College of the State University of New York at Binghamton is supposed to exist for the expressed purpose of instructing and the goal is served in various ways, official and unofficial. We hear lectures, dozens of them, before we graduate. We take courses from about twenty- five different teachers: some alive, some pedantic, some inspiring, others stale. All these typ~s are found on every campus in the United States. They are our primary instructors. But a student faced with the task of shaping beauty out of a pile of clay, of creating form out of formlessness, is attempting to learn what the creative process is all about, and even if he creates something, he may never understand the process. A student staring at a blank sheet of paper, wondering how to create living, breathing human figures is faced with the same problem. This is also true of the actor. The process of discovery is a process of instruction. We hear lectures from those who visit and we can say that we have learned, if nothing else, that great names mean nothing, that rhetoric is not a substitute for ideas. Has not the Guarneri Quartet taught us something, not only about chamber music, but about beauty itself? We have learned as much from the films shown here as from a great mass of lit. and camp. and soc. sci. lectures. All of these things, this amalgam of experience, is instruction. But instruction is not merely we give out. The tutoring Club and Services for for us to instruct participated in deny that there ing about play- mentor, of shar- ledge with people of knowledge. We others; college is a legends and wisdom that which we receive, but which programs of the Civil Rights Youth make it possible others. No one who these programs can was something excit- nstruction ing the role of ing meager know- starved for any kind are taught to teach transmission line for the of the West. We are taught by people paid to teach us, but also by a host of others. We are taught by townspeople who think we are abominable, by other students whom we argue w1th, by the accumulated wisdom on men's room -walls, by crazy people. We learn from fighting for things we feel are important (some may suggest that violins are necessary here; this is cynical) and we learn from conceding intellectual defeat. We learn from getting drunk. We learn from making love. Instruction is that which attempts to alter, reinforce or articulate our view of reality, and therefore make one aware of what life is, and what the world is like.