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November 2017
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11/6/2017 November 06th, 2017There they are, a group of students with high visibility vests collecting garbage off a beach or the local park. Their movements are slow and the dour looks on their faces exude neither excitement or contentment. A friend strolls by and poses the question: “Whatcha do wrong?” This is just a reanimation of the common mantra, where community service is seen as punishment. Sadly, it seems only inmates and defiled celebrities are accustomed to it, with brief ripples of excitement appearing in the media only with the latter. Perhaps you think my description pessimistic? Well, just wait and see what educationist Eric Sheffield has to say about the shortcomings of community service learning (CSL).
The prevalence of CSL in British Columbia's public school system is minimal. A study undertaken by Brown, Ellis-Hale, Meinhard, Foster, and Henderson (2007) determined that there has been little effort in Canada to coordinate CSL programs or even assess their potential academic outcomes. Indeed, the authors state “we have had only a vague and fragmentary idea of community service and service learning programming as it is practiced in high schools across the country” (p. 1). The picture is quite different south of the border, where the American school system has enjoyed nation-wide initiatives such as Learn and Serve America (www.learnandserve.org) and the Corporation for National and Community Service (www.nationalservice.org). But while there is more prevalence of these programs in the United States, their benefits to learners is a debated topic. Sheffield (2015) is one such thunderous critic. He wonders “how is it that CSL has become the rather mundane curricular add-on typically utilized at P–12 schools, colleges, and universities to support student retention rates, satisfy state-mandated community service hours … rather than a deeply important pedagogy meant to engender personal and communal transformation?” (p. 46). According to Sheffield, there seems to have been a transformation of the original precepts of CSL away from community and towards the individual conducting the service. Indeed, he queries, “why has CSL devolved away from its roots as a pedagogy of status quo interrogation into a pedagogy of status quo maintenance?” (p. 2). Obviously, Sheffield is at odds politically with the current CSL model but he does raise intriguing questions that need examining before such projects begin to appear more widely in British Columbia's schools. The proposed intent of CSL in schools needs to be explored. Are learners engaging in these activities to merely help improve the social fabric of their local community or is there an additional hope that education of the individual will also occur contemporaneously? In my mind, the entire exercise needs to be primarily framed in the learning outcomes of the CSL program. What use is picking up garbage off beaches unless there is a concrete knowledge structure associated with the activity? Concepts such as conservation, recycling, ecological footprint, and more all need to be well and truly cemented in learners minds before they set out. Only with an informational foundation and a created architecture for reflection will this experiential learning evolve into consolidated learning. And yet, even this does not go far enough for Sheffield! An activity such as garbage collection or singing in a retirement home does not constitute effective CSL in Sheffield’s mind. Into this criterion he throws the prefix “radical” in that the “full potential [of CSL] can only be achieved in courageously interrogating the personal and communal status quo via difficult, tragic, traumatic, and catastrophic experiences—those being the ones from which hope is born” (p. 47). Obviously there is little in garbage collection that might cause disequilibrium within students. Additionally, can we expect elementary students to engage in the type of CSL activities that will engender these emotions? How will parents and superintendents react to Sheffield’s hope of “inviting the tragedy of human existence into educational practice with the understanding that personal trauma can transform, and ultimately reconstruct, lovely Knowledge” ? (p. 50). Clearly, Sheffield is orienting his research towards the secondary grades but there are elements of his argument that hold me rapt and could still find effective employment in the elementary level. First though, in order to encounter this uncomfortable material, younger students will need the appropriate mental armor to deal with their experiences. In considering an activity such as the distribution of food parcels to the homeless in downtown cores, elementary students will require the learning of not only a basic survival skill set but also the spatial, economic, and historical geography of the circumstances they are viewing. But I agree with Sheffield, those most concrete memories of any individual, those will residual dexterity, are most often grounded in difficult or uncomfortable circumstances. It is hoped then that in engaging in these uncomfortable experiences or radical community service learning, students will in their discomfort be afforded a learning experience that will not only abide in their consciousness but also prove to be a fountainhead for further questions and interests. Call it a domino effect, where discomfort leads to authentic learning and a re-invigoration of inquiry. In my mind, this could be a very effective tool in any teacher’s kit. References: Brown, S. D., Ellis-Hale, K., Meinhard, A., Foster, M., Henderson, A. (2007). Community Service and Service Learning in Canada: A Profile of Programming Across the Country. Toronto. Imagine Canada. Sheffield, E. C. (2015). Toward Radicalizing Community Service Learning, Educational Studies, 51:1, 45-56. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00131946.2014.983637
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