Can knowledge be promoted and values ignored? Implications for nursing education.

This paper aims to reflect upon the educational task of the university, to consider whether knowledge can be promoted and values ignored, and thus to explore the implications for nursing education. The university is the cradle which nurtures intellectuals, professionals and scientists as whole human beings. Paced by the spirit and the ideals of paideia, it cannot be limited merely to developing the student's mind. It should also inspire the student with a belief in the higher values of life, as a compass in his profession. (Paideia is an ancient Greek conception of the ideal human education. It includes modern notions such as civilization, culture, tradition, literature, philosophy and education. It means formation of the human being of any age, as an independent, free and virtuous whole person.) Values, when transmitted by all teachers of all subjects within the educational structures of the university, can increase the student's respect for truth, for the worth and the rights of other persons, his appreciation of his own worth, assets and limitations, his love of wisdom and desire to serve humanity, his outlook about man's position in the world and his inquiring mind in order to discover higher perspectives of life. Only in this way does university become a worthy centre of paideia for educating nurses committed and aspiring to provide holistic, personalized, quality nursing care to people, as well as to determine and shape the future of nursing education in the midst of our technological, computerized, and some would say dehumanized era, propelling itself into the twenty-first century.