The article "In The Service Of What? The Politics of Service Learning" by Joesph Kahne and Joel Westheimer is broken up into two sections. The first part breaks down the objectives of community service/service learning. The second part describes the politics of the services.
Their are two main objectives for service. One is the actual doing part. Helping the homeless, tutoring, joining the Peace Corps, etc. This is labeled as "giving". The other is labeled "caring". That is when the person providing the service, tries to understand what the situation is that they are helping in. Some people value one of the objectives more than the other based on what they define "citizenship" to be. That is where the politics come in.
The authors argue that the best form of service learning is to combine the two objectives. However they believe the "caring" portion should be expanded so that ever person, especially students, makes an attempt to make change by analyzing the causes of the situation and trying to alter them to improve the situation. The service learning done in FNED 346 encourages both of these goals. Each student going to their assigned school is the "giving" part and the "caring" part comes in the form of journals, discussions in class and the service learning project.
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Mike,
ReplyDeleteI really liked how you explained the two different parts of Service Learning. I was a bit confused and you really made it clear to me. Thank you!
Mike,
ReplyDeletei agree explaining the parts was benifical.It was helpful for me to understand it better after you explained it
I believe that both of the objectives are equally important, you can't really do or improve much without either. More 'giving' means more of helping others, and more 'caring' means more of an in depth look of the situations at hand.
ReplyDeleteMike,
ReplyDeleteLike Brynne and Heather after reading this your explanation helped me to understand more about the article and the two different aspects of service learning.
Thanks :]
Mike I like how you related this article to our class in the end of your blog, very nice. It helps me differentiate the two a little bit.
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