 | Topics: Youth The Selling of Service-Learning to the Modern University:
How Much Will It Cost? By Kevin Mattson, Ph.D. and Margo Shea
The Walt Whitman Center, Rutgers University February 20, 1997
(Revised Copy) Introduction: The Crisis of the Academy The walls that have historically protected the American university are falling under the pressures of criticism and contention. Failing to live up to the expectations of citizens, the university's image as a pristine ivory tower has been soiled. From all sides of the political spectrum, there seems little to praise at institutions of higher education. As two critics put it, "Teachers don't teach; scholars fritter away their time and your tax dollars on studies of music videos; campus regulations thwart free speech; academic standards of all kinds are in tatters; undergraduates lack both reading skills and moral foundations; and, in the midst of all this, to add financial insult to intellectual injury, college tuitions are skyrocketing.[1] Complaints about the current state of academia come fast and furious. According to the late Ernest Boyer, "People are no longer willing to grant colleges and universities the unchallenged right to stand above public judgment." Universities face increasing pressure to prove their worth. Debates rage on regarding the state of classroom learning and campus life. Evidenced by numerous studies, like the one recently published in Money Magazine, experts try to determine how much higher education is worth. But how do they measure its value?[2] Worth gets judged through dollars, jobs and earning potential. How much does a degree cost? How many graduates will have high-paying jobs waiting for them upon receipt of a degree? To satisfy a society that views higher education from the vantage point of the bottom line, universities compete with one another to train students for vocational and occupational pursuits, providing opportunities for those, who pragmatically and unabashedly admit they "attend college to obtain good jobs." Therefore, it makes sense for institutions of higher education to focus on preparing young people for the work world and training the "50% of our nation's undergraduates [who] have chosen to major in vocational or occupational fields."[3] As universities strive to meet the demands placed on them, it becomes increasingly clear that they see their social obligations mainly through the eyes of the market. Professional competence and career development take precedence over attempts to prepare young people for their roles as informed, active participants in public life. In the meantime, the problems that confront our society and its citizens become more complex and more confounding. Instead of engaging young people in thinking constructively about these problems, universities provide students with the promise of protective shields. They encourage young people to focus on career advancement as a pathway to economic security, instead of challenging their students to confront the myriad problems of their society. Derek Bok, former President of Harvard University, has reminded both critics and apologists for higher education that universities have a responsibility to society, not simply to students or employers. Contributing ideas and knowledge that will help us overcome our pressing problems has always been integral to the threefold mission of universities—teaching, research and service. It is imperative that we assess how universities measure up in developing public citizens as well as private employees, in sustaining civic institutions as well as research and development institutes, in engaging in the reality of their surrounding communities as well being involved in national and global affairs. Service-learning promises to do these things. But are American universities really fulfilling their civic mission through service-learning? Or are they losing sight of the public significance of service-learning, supporting the recent shift towards the very professionalism and careerism that service-learning has so directly challenged?[4] To grasp service-learning's potential for reconnecting the university to a public sphere and facilitating citizenship education, we must understand the obstacles it faces. Turning a critical eye to history, we will show how the modern university evolved and became a training ground for professional competence —not citizenship and engagement in public life. We will then explain how service- learning emerged within the context of this history. Finally, we will examine factors that threaten to prevent service-learning from helping universities live up to their civic missions. The American College—Same As It Ever Was? A brief glance at history shows that the 19th century college was quite distinct from the 20th century university. In the first place, the college of the past perceived itself as a religious institution, often training future clerics and passing on moral and religious principles to its students. Not having the central social function it does today, 19th century colleges numbered far fewer than 20th century universities. In part, there were fewer colleges because other institutions helped educate a wider public. Take, for instance, the center of American culture in 19th century America—Boston. Here an elite group of city leaders saw to it that learning took place not only within one of America's oldest colleges—Harvard College—but in other institutions of learning that flourished there during the 19th century. There was the Lowell Institute, a central hall where city residents could hear lectures on the arts, philosophy, science, and history. In 1837, alone, the Lowell Institute held twenty six lecture courses, involving 13,000 Boston residents. The public could also attend lyceums, which were small lectures on various topics held throughout the city. The Athenaeum was the richest private library in America and by the 1830s had a reading room, art gallery, and lecture hall. This was a prime example of the civic institutions and museums of Boston.[5] Boston's elite believed that public processes of learning should be dispersed throughout the city. Only then would the city develop an educated public imbued with civic pride and responsibility. A process of civic education, it was believed, would grow out of a local set of institutions which provided the basis of Boston's "public culture." These institutions fueled a central idea of the 19th century that education was a part of an individual's continual process of "character development" and growth in enlightened virtue. Learning was a never-ending process which was connected to urban institutions open to all citizens. Due to this faith in a never-ending process of civic education, Boston's leaders envisioned the college as part of a wider network of learning institutions. Harvard did not have the sole responsibility for education in Boston. But it did have a strong sense of civic responsibility—even if this responsibility was to an elite. Derek Bok explained why this sense of civic responsibility was crucial: "The old Harvard had one advantage. There was a tacit understanding of what its social purpose was and where its ultimate significance lay. Those who came—however carefree, however content with their Gentlemen's C's—assumed that Harvard was there to prepare them to be leaders of society—to serve it, to preside over its institutions." A strong sense of civic responsibility and a relation to a wider process of civic education marked the 19th century college.[6] All of this changed with the drastic transformation of American society during the late 19th century. The industrial revolution altered American social relations, forming a national economy based on large-scale production, managerial control, and enormous transportation networks (i.e., railroads). During the late 19th century, a new model for institutions of higher education emerged. It was this new model that provided the basis of the modern university as we know of it today. [7] The new model of the university was based on German reforms in higher education. The German university trained its students in clearly demarcated disciplines and professions. This framework, which was being adopted by American university reformers during the 19th century, provided professors with a new responsibility. They no longer trained their students in religious and moral principles but in the objective body of knowledge which became the prerequisite for becoming a member of a profession—be it law, science, psychology, or the humanities. An increasing emphasis was placed on completion of a degree (the Ph.D. especially), and the student was to follow up this process by developing a career within a certain field. As Thomas Bender put it, during the 1890s, the "civic humanist ideal of public life" was replaced by "professionalized, disciplinary communities and the academic expert."[8] As this model was adopted in the United States, the repercussions for civic education were enormous. In the first place, with an increasing emphasis put on a professional degree, the process of education now seemed to end at the moment the degree was acquired. No longer was education an ongoing process of character building. Nor was education located within a wider framework of civic institutions. Since the modern university became the only institution capable of granting professional degrees, other forms of education were devalued and made to seem substandard. The modern university and the idea of professional training now dominated the educational process. As the university trained future professionals for the American nation, it lost sight of its local civic responsibilities. A profession was defined not in local terms but in national and trans-national terms. A lawyer, doctor, or professor needed to be able to perform duties anywhere in the American nation—not just in a local community. The body of knowledge necessary for becoming a professionally-trained expert transcended local borders, and as the university trained its students for these professions, it became tied into a growing national economy while distancing itself from its local civic community. Due to its responsibility for training students for nationwide professions, the modern university lost sight of its relation to a local- civic public. The Promise of Service-Learning In response to the forces that changed the nature and focus of higher education, educators, activists and intellectuals tried numerous ways to reaffirm the civic responsibilities of institutions of higher education. By building cooperative extension and adult education programs, pressing for more politicized campus cultures, enabling community groups to utilize campus space, starting campus chapters of civic and political associations and working to include previously quiet voices in academic scholarship relevant to public life, they pushed for universities to live up to their mission as civic institutions. Service-learning was one of many efforts to challenge the changing nature of higher education and to revive concepts of public life and civic commitments that were quickly becoming insignificant at universities. By making classroom learning more meaningful through community involvement and by taking seriously the issues that confront citizens in public life, some educators used service-learning as a tool to change the terms of engagement at the modern university. By the late 1980's, spokespeople for service-learning initiatives—for example, Ira Harkavy at the University of Pennsylvania and Benjamin Barber at Rutgers University—drew upon the programs they were helping to develop at their institutions and provided a democratic vision for service-learning. In doing so, they criticized the disaffection between universities and their surrounding communities, the sense that education was an artificial transfer of knowledge instead of relevant, applicable learning and the growing need to fulfill the civic mission of the university by educating students in the essentials for an informed, engaged, democratic public. Put into practice, these concepts shaped and directed service-learning. By stressing effective and authentic community-university partnerships, service-learning challenges the idea that universities can exist in isolation from the world around them. This confrontation takes place when students become engaged in community efforts to solve their problems and when the lessons of that engagement are examined through critical inquiry in the classroom. This process can break down the artificial divide between academic experts and citizens by demonstrating that communities are, at their best, learning environments. Service-learning destroys the notion that the knowledge needed to solve public problems resides only within the university by involving students in public efforts to solve community problems. Also, when active learning takes place outside the confines of the university, students understand that education is an ongoing communal process that has real effects.[9] Since the 1960s, experiential educators have argued that service can engage students in active learning. Leaders in the movement, such as Robert Sigmon, have stressed that environments where students serve, when coupled with spaces to draw lessons from their activities, invite them to become engaged in the unpredictable dynamics of experiencing and learning. Service-learning plays out the ways in which we learn through both intimate involvement and distanced reflection and examines how differences between these process enable us to better understand our complicated world.[10] For many, the promise of this educational movement lies in the unpredictable process that, "forces us out into the unknown where something genuinely novel can be discovered and where the study of a problem requires the invention of a new approach to its solution." By entering into the learning environment with the expectation of being challenged by complex forces and mutable settings, coupled with clear understanding of the processes involved in learning, experiential education defies the notion that knowledge can be strictly compartmentalized within distinct spheres and disciplines. This not only deflates the university's dominance as the sole generator of knowledge, it engages students in processes that are intrinsic to communities and society.[11] The belief that bridging the world of classroom and street makes abstract lessons about politics and ethics more concrete excites those most concerned with the movement's potential for educating citizens. Service-learning's capacity to increase reflective, critical engagement in the everyday activities of public life makes it an indispensable element of civic education. As Mary Stanley of Syracuse University states, "Community service could become a source of civic renewal not because it habituates young citizens to a life of orderly patriotism but rather because it inspires an inquiry into why the world is as it is." When young people raise questions about our society through service-learning, they do so in an environment that illustrates that both ideas and actions have consequences. In a democratic society, those consequences play out as the responsibility of all citizens, not just policy makers and think tank number-crunchers. Service-learning is a tangible reminder that in a democracy, citizens have, over and over again, remade their world to meet the challenges, visions and aspirations of their time. At its best, service-learning illustrates that we live within a political structure that affirms citizens' stake in their nation and their capacity to meet the problems of the day with pragmatism, intelligence and a commitment to the well-being of their fellow citizens.[12] More of the Same? Clearly, the original spokespeople for service-learning saw it as a means to challenge the university's historical pattern of withdrawing from public life and ignoring its implicit role in educating citizens. But the historical precedents set by the modern university—especially the concentration on professional training and career preparation—are not so easily overcome. In fact, these pressures are speeding the rise of service-learning itself as a profession. The evidence turns up in numerous corners. Practitioners have begun to carve out a safe and distinct niche for service-learning within academia. This is evident in both the recent obsession with definition and in the emergence of obscure debates from the field. Practitioners dispute various issues—to hyphenate or not to hyphenate the term service-learning; which principles of practice are essential; how to differentiate between service-learning and volunteer community service, internships, cooperative education, career training, experiential education and participatory action research. These debates, like most within academic disciplines, are irrelevant to those not intimate with the field. Bogged down by the mechanics of service-learning, debates lose sight of service-learning's dynamic, unpredictable and context-driven learning processes. Dissecting service-learning as a means of defining it has also become commonplace. Creating service-learning terminology both acceptable to university administrations and sufficiently unique from other educational models typifies the general process of specialization—the key feature of professionalism. At the same, time, by laying out distinct terms and guidelines, this process treats service-learning as an objective body of knowledge in its own right, forgetting that it is an ever-changing process, not a safely defined practice. Like other professions, service-learning is becoming consumed with measuring the objective, scientific validity of its worth. This so-called "evaluation" pushes service-learning away from its more qualitative efforts forming citizens and reengaging in public life, both far more difficult to measure. It puts emphasis not on long-term efforts, but on short-term results like hours clocked, courses taught, meals served. Instead of admitting the impossibility of placing numerical values on educational relationships, collaborations built on mutual accountability or democratic decision-making processes, programs measure what they can count. Some go so far as to place dollar amounts on service-learning, counting the number of hours served, multiplying by the minimum wage and expecting recognition based on monetary measures. These tendencies might mark any movement's drift away from its original excitement—the "routinization of charisma," as the German sociologist, Max Weber, once called it. But many service-learning spokespeople now frame service-learning in terms of academic legitimacy, professionalism, and careerism. For instance, in a series of papers organized by the New England Resource Center for Higher Education, Edward Zlotkowski, a professor of English, administrator of Bentley College's service-learning program and emerging leader in the service-learning movement, argues that service-learning must become more academically legitimate. Zlotkowski criticizes the emphasis service-learning advocates place on "moral and civic values," believing that this draws attention away from issues of professional and academic standing. Zlotkowski explains, "We have yet to concentrate sufficiently on the academic side of our work." What does this entail? Generally, this means that academics should write essays in support of service-learning using "a language and a perspective especially suited to a particular [academic] discipline" (i.e., jargon) and publish them in "professional journals in their field" (journals read only by peers in a profession). Instead of building on service-learning's challenge to the idea that knowledge can be cloistered into various disciplines and divorced from public life, Zlotkowski's argument suggests that service-learning itself be advanced on terms uncritical of the modern university. By playing on the terms of professionalism instead of challenging them, Zlotkowski is building an argument against an older vision of service-learning. This position leads service-learning away from its original challenge to the modern university's insularity.[13] Some service-learning advocates also hinge their future prospects on their prospective role in students' career advancement. In the process, they exchange the values of citizenship and public life for the values of the market. There is a historical precedent here. The arguments in favor of experiential-based education grew out of a pragmatic and experiential theory of knowledge. Early in the twentieth century, industrialists appropriated John Dewey's experience-based model of education as a means of vocational training. Now, service-learning advocates argue that experiential education can enhance careers in a postindustrial economy which constantly downsizes and shifts employees from job to job. For instance, Michael Shafer, the Director of Citizenship and Service Education (CASE) at Rutgers University, argues that "business leaders" want "flexible" employees—a flexibility enhanced by service and voluntarism in college. Other education leaders conceive of service-learning's training into civic values as a means of forming "socially-minded" employees. Daniel Ritchie, Chancellor of the University of Denver, explains, "People want to hire people who have integrity, are team players, who are socially responsible, because they have gotten into a lot of trouble with people who weren't. We don't want to graduate barracudas." Service, from the perspective of Shafer and Ritchie, can be thought of as a way to enhance students' future employability. By framing service-learning as a way to get ahead in the business world, it is easy to minimize the conflicts that may arise between career imperatives and a citizen's concern for the public good. In the long run, this perspective on service-learning overlooks students' need for an invitation to public life—free from the pressures of career development and the market. In the process, these advocates forget that training for a career and for citizenship are not the same thing.[14] Conclusion While leaders in service-learning most likely do understand and support the democratic aims of service-learning, they are pressured to justify their programs to the modern university. Professionalism and career development, two defining characteristics of the modern university, provide a rationale easily adopted for service-learning. This recent tendency is disturbing. The premises of service-learning should challenge the historical and social forces which divorce the modern university from the processes of citizenship education within local communities and the building of a democratic public. Though the tendency to define service-learning in professional and career terms has become more predominant over the years, many advocates still speak a language of democracy and citizenship. Resolving this internal debate is crucial, since it will help determine how advocates conceive of their efforts and the ideas they use to understand their work. With this said, the realm of ideas is not the only realm which matters. Indeed, experiential education teaches us the limits of ideas. And when students engage in community service, they open themselves up to an experiential process which need not conform to the conceptualizations service-learning advocates have of it. When students work in a homeless shelter or in an adult education center for newly arrived immigrants, they have contact with people of different class and ethnic backgrounds. Whether they conceive this interaction as helpful for their resume or helpful for their identities as citizens in a democratic society, the interaction pulls young people out of their private worlds into a public world where social obligation and communal problem-solving have the chance to grow. Students also become open to experiences which cannot be predetermined. Service-learning provides opportunities for young people to educate themselves for the demands and challenges of public life and citizenship. That is its inherent promise. Footnotes 1. Cary Nelson and Michael Berube, "Introduction: A Report from the Front," in Higher Education Under Fire, eds. Michael Berube and Cary Nelson (New York: Routledge, 1995), p. 1. 2. Ernest Boyer quoted in Anthony DePalma, "Higher Education Feels the Heat," New York Times , June 2, 1991, Section 4. See Money Magazine (September, 1996). 3. Russell Jacoby, Dogmatic Wisdom: How the Culture wars Divert Education and Distract America (New York: Doubleday, 1994), p. 9. 4. See Derek Bok, `'The Social Responsibilities of American Universities,'' (Commencement Address, June 6, 1991). 5. See here Harriett Knight Smith, The History of the Lowell Institute (Boston: Lamson, Wolffe, and Co., 1898),p. 10; Edward Weeks, The Lowells and their Institute (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1966); Carl Bode, The American Lyceum: Town Meeting of the Mind (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956), esp. p. 43; Ronald Story, "Class and Culture in Boston: The Athenaeum, 1807-1860," American Ouarterly 27 (1975): 178-199; and Josiah Ouincy, The History of the Boston Athenaeum (Cambridge: Metcalf and Co., 1851). 6. Derek Bok, "The Social Responsibilities of American Universities," p. 3. For the elite nature of Boston's civic leadership, see Frederic Cople Jaher, The Urban Establishment: Upper Strata in Boston. New York. Charleston. Chicago. and Los Angeles (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982), pp. 15-111. It should be noted that working people also had a culture based on the vision of continual civic education. For examples of this, see Sean Wilentz, Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class. 1788-1850 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984). 7. For this general transformation, see Alfred Chandler, The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1977); David Noble, America by Design: Science. Technology. and the Rise of Corporate Capitalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977); Robert Wiebe, The Search for Order. 1877-1920 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967); and Alan Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age (New York: Hill and Wang, 1982). 8. Thomas Bender,Intellect and Public Life: Essays on the Social History of Academic Intellectuals in the United States (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), p. 131. For the reform of the American college, see Laurence Veysey, The Emergence of the American University(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965); for the new culture of professionalism, see Burton Bledstein, The Culture of Professionalism: The Middle Class and the Development of Higher Education in America (New York: Norton, 1976). 9. See here Ira Harkavy, "University-Commnunity Partnerships: The University of Pennsylvania and West Philadelphia as a Case Study," in Rethinking Traditions: Integrating Service with Academic Study on College Campuses, ed. by Tamar Kupiec (Campus Compact Publication, Brown University, 1993), pp. 121-128. For a fuller discussion of university-community partnerships, see Ira Harkavy and John Puckett, "Toward Effective University-Public Schools Partnerships, An Analysis of a Contemporary Model," Teachers' College Record 19 (1992): pp. 556-564. 10. See here Robert Sigmon, "Service Learning: Three Principles," in Combining Service and Learning: A Resource Book for Community and Public Service, ed. Jane C. Kendall, et. al. (Raleigh, NC: National Society for Internships and Experiential Education, 1990) as well as Parker Palmer's essay, "Community, Conflict, and Ways of Knowing: Ways to Deepen Our Educational Agenda," in the same book. 11. Keaton Morris, "Dilemmas in Accrediting Off-Campus Learning," in D.W. Vermilye, ed., The Expanded Campus: Current Issues in Higher Education (San Francisco: Josey-Boss, 1972). 12. Mary Stanley quoted in "Introduction" to Rethinking Tradition p. 9. See also Benjamin Barber, An Aristocracy of Everyone (New York: Oxford, 1992), Chapter 7 and Suzanne Morse, Renewing Civic Capacity: Preparing College Students for Service and Citizenship. ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Report No. 8. Washington, DC: School of Education and Human Development, The George Washington University, 1989. 13. Edward Zlotkowski, "Does Service Learning Have a Future?" (Working Paper # 18), published by the New England Resource Center for Higher Education (Boston), Winter, 1995, pp. 9,12, 4, 15. See also "Bridging Two Worlds: Professional Service and Service Learning" (Working Paper #17) which makes a direct appeal to "the faculty member's professional expertise which contributes to the outreach mission of the university" (p. 1). But professions draw attention inwards to the demands of the profession not outwards to public life. 14. Michael Shafer's points are made in "Reach for the Future," Rutgers Focus, September 20, 1996, p. 2; Daniel Ritchie quoted in "Taking Education Beyond the Classroom," New York Times Education Life, Section 4A, August 4, 1996. For an account of John Dewey's theory of pragmatic education being misappropriated by industrialists, see Robert Westbrook, John Dewey and American Democracy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), pp. 173-182. Back to Youth Index |
