Aims of a BYU Education

http://www.law2.byu.edu/law_school/foundingdocumentsnew/pdf%20documents/aimsofbyueducation.pdf

Word Count : 284

1.      Argument: A BYU education should be spiritually strengthening, intellectually enlarging, character building, and should lead to lifelong service and learning.

2.      Audience:  The audience is primarily BYU students, faculty and administrators.  A secondary audience may be people interested in becoming students at BYU.

3.      Goal: To set up a concrete set of goals that teachers can work toward providing and students can work toward achieving while at BYU.

4.      How:

-          Ethos:  This is the strongest appeal used.  Scriptures and quotes from Brigham Young and other Prophets are used to enforce the Aims.  BYU students and faculty will both respect and listen to the Prophets and the scriptures.   Also, this is an official document of BYU, and the university has credibility on its own.

-          Logos:  The goals are logical, and the way the document is set up allows the points to be made in a logical order and develops a flow of arguments.

-          Sufficient:  The goals are explained in enough detail, but they are also listed in a simple way that makes them easier to remember.

-          Reasonable:  The audience is generally fairly educated and will agree with the academic aims.  They are also primarily LDS and will agree with the spiritually strengthening and lifelong service aims.

5.      Effective or not:  I think that the Aims of a BYU education are effective in setting up a framework for the educational experience at BYU.  I think that it could be emphasized more in some ways than having it in an obscure place on BYU’s website however.  I don’t think that many students or faculty read it very often, but the fact that it is very simple makes it easy to remember.