"While additional emphasis on charity might lead to service learning activities that raise self-esteem, impel students into new experiences, and demonstrate the value of scholastic abilities in real-world contexts, educators who focus on a transformative vision would want to carry this work one step further. For them, it is the combination of service and critical analysis, not either by itself, that seems most likely to promote interest in and insight into these complex social issues." (Kahne and Westheimer)
This quotation from Kanhe and Westheimer's piece, In The Service of what? The Politics of Service Learning, focuses on their main argument of the different between service for charity and service for change. This article suggests that educators and policy makers spend too much time focusing on promoting service learning rather than determining the values and goals they are set out to accomplish through this process. By describing a few different examples, Kahne and Westheimer prove that service learning projects can individually serve different purposes and highlight a variety of values. The idea of service for charity is based upon the notion that an individual volunteers his or her time to give back to the community and to experience the joy of committing a civic duty. Service for change, on the other hand, includes a deeper analysis of why and how a particular group needs service which aids the volunteers with an understanding to form relationships and help solve the problem together.
Even though both forms of service learning provide substantial learning experiences for the volunteers, Kahne and Westheimer would argue that service learning for change provides much more successful experiences for the groups receiving the help. Service learning for change focuses more time on a successful action plan rather than mindlessly volunteering time for the benefit of the volunteer. If people would focus on the goals of their service learning projects and determine who they are trying to aid, more time could be spent putting together activities that make positive impacts on the lives of others instead of donated time, money, and effort to causes that leave people continuously in need.
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I had an experience a few weeks ago as a volunteer for a service learning project, when I truly established the difference between service for charity and service for change. The two girls that I had been working with for a month or so, Jade and Keryn, were assessed on their blending skills in order to determine if they were ready to move on to segmentation, which works on separating words into individual sounds rather than putting the sounds together, which is worked on through blending. Both of the girls tested so strongly that their reading coach, moved then passed segmentation, addition, deletion, substitution, the letter names/sounds to C.V.C. (consonant-vowel-consonant). She also retested their sight words which she does just once a year to determine which category they fall under and which words need to be worked on weekly with their flashcards. Last year, both girls were at a pre-primer level. After the test, Keryn was moved up one level to primer and Jade was moved up three levels to second grade. Even though it was exciting to hear that each student showed improvement, I felt as though they were held back, Jade especially. These tests clearly showed that the girls have been working with me on skills and sight words in which they are already competent. Therefore, all of the time that we have been spending on blending and sight words was wasted when I could have been helping them with skills that they are less familiar with. If the teachers and staff performed these tests more frequently and spent more time monitoring their growth, these girls and other students in the same situations could be improving their skills at a much faster rate. This glitch in the program draws a line between what Kahne and Westheimer would call service for charity and service for change; The time that I spend working with these students only provides real changes in their education when they are assessed correctly and frequently. If changes in their education are not being made, the time that I spend volunteering simply becomes a service for charity.
ReplyDeleteVery well said! -LB :)
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