There are several identities that distinguishes learners within academia including but not limited to race, ethnicity, gender identity, socioeconomic status, native language, culture, national origin, religious beliefs, age, disability status, political perspective, military service, documentation status and being family college attendance generation status. The one shared identifier by all of the aforementioned categories among all the persons we serve and impart knowledge to is the outdated term of “student.” I am urging my fellow academicians from this day forth to address all learners in your classrooms, institutions, churches, non-profit organizations, mentor programs in Pre-K-12, undergraduate and graduate studies as “scholars”.
Definition and Exploration:
Students are typically defined as individuals who are learning at a school or in a teaching environment, whereas a scholar is often described as a learned person who has exhibited accelerated learning competencies and/or possesses high content knowledge of a particular subject.
Unfortunately, in most cases the scholars are viewed as having more potential than the student. The framework of simultaneously enrolling scholars and students who are reaching for the same goal is antiquated and problematic on several levels. Often times, the academic gap between the honors “scholar” and the special admit “student” is couched in privilege, historical discrimination and varied expectations. The difference in the two terms is a subtle disenfranchisement that can limit the academic ceiling for the general learner tagged with the “student” label. Separate from the rigidity of specific scholarship requirements, irrespective of categorization, students and scholars are both expected to flourish academically and socially. As such, all athletes should be referred to as Athletic scholars; those in campus housing are resident scholars and their counterparts are commuter scholars. Honors program participants and other cohort programs, if necessary, can simply have the appendage of “honors” added to the term scholar.
High School to College Transition:
The national disconnect with the transition between high school and college learning competencies highlights further rationale to adopt the term “scholar” for all those enrolled in an institution of higher learning. The universal “scholar” term may boost the learners perception of their academic expectations during the college transition. As such, the term “scholars” may also be employed within marketing materials, orientation related events/literature, in new student seminar courses and during academic advising touch points to further illuminate the philosophy of the scholarly title in the minds of future graduates; thus introducing a culture where learners are expected to flourish academically.
Personal Experience:
