Talking Point #5

Joseph Kahne and Joel Westheimer, In the Service of What? The Politics of Service Learning

1. "These curriculum theorists and education reformers wanted students to engage in service learning projects so that they would recognize that their academic abilities and collective commitments could help them respond in meaningful ways to a variety of social concerns." (Kahne and Westheimer, 3)

This quote is in reference to the service learning projects that were assigned by Mr. Johnson and Ms. Adams. Even though each project was slightly different in the sense of what they provided the students, they both focused on the "transformation potential" that was explained in the article. Both of these projects provided the students with the opportunity to use their knowledge, beliefs, goals, and curiosities to take action and make use of them. These assignments also allowed the students to take the information that they were learning in the classroom and apply it to the real world; to actually make a change and take the assignment to the next level. By assigning the service learning piece to their lesson, these two teachers were forcing their students to think of these issues outside of the four walls of the classroom. This reminded me of both Johnson and his idea of being the change, and Linda Christensen's technique of taking an assignment to the next level in order to push her students to put their knowledge to good use in their community.

2."He experienced the joys of service, but he had few opportunities for meaningful interactions through which caring relationships and understanding might develop." (Kahne and Westheimer, 6)

This citation focuses on a particular student in Mr. Johnson's class who completed a service learning project. For his assignment, this student created "Daily Life Kits" and passed them out to homeless people. Unfortunately, most of the work that this student completed, in relation to this project, was done on his own. He never worked with the homeless before making these kits and was never informed of the types of things to include in these kits. Therefore, this particular student was able to give back to his community and feel the gratitude of giving to someone less fortunate. However, he was unable to make deep enough connections to make real, significant changes to the people he was giving to. This is an example of the idea of emphasizing charity more than change, which was highlighted in the article. Many people believe that service learning often focuses primarily on pushing students to give to their community in any form rather than truly investigating and working toward making changes to lives of these needy individuals. Even though I think both charity and change are important, there must be a strong balance of both in order to truly gain from service learning.

3."In a written evaluation, the students said that they had imagined 'horrifying children running around on a dirty campus.' They had expected them to be 'rude, tough, noisy, and very unfriendly.'...One of the students wrote, 'I was scared because my mom told me it was a bad neighborhood and to be careful" (Kahne and Westheimer, 7)

This quote refers to an example of a service learning project where students from a upper-middle class school were asked to visit a lower-class school. The preconceived thoughts that the students had before entering this lower-class school were absolutely awful. Considering none of these students had been to this school prior to their assignment, all of these expectations were based on hear-say; some of these ideas even originated from the mouths of their parents. After completing this particular service learning assignment, many of the students viewed this school, and many schools alike, very differently. They realized that the students were friendly, polite, and well behaved and that the school was not a scary place after all. I think this is a perfect example of how helpful service learning projects can be to students and how these experiences can show the students things that they could not learn in a classroom setting.

This article was fairly hard to read. The style that the authors used was hard to get into. I found the article easier to read once I was four or five pages in and the authors began providing examples of particular service learning projects. This article definitely related to other articles that we have read in the past. Like I had mentioned before, Johnson as well as Christensen would agree with the purposes of service learning that were highlighted in this article.

I found myself drawn to the examples that were provided about the experiences that people have had with service learning. The example where the upper-middle class students were asked to go to a lower-class school reminded me a lot of my service learning project. I, too, had awful expectations of the providence public school system due to a variety of things that I have heard in the past. On the first day working in Edmund W. Flynn Elementary School, I was absolutely blown away by how wrong my expectations were. The children are awesome and the school was like any other ordinary school. I understand the problem that deals with overemphasizing charity and not emphasizing change enough. I think both change and charity are important to service learning, but that people learn from the experience the most when both are equally balanced. Below is a video which captures just a few of the ways that service learning can be successful.