Reflecting on Jonathan Kozol's Challenge:
Who Really Benefits from Service Learning?
by Heather Manchester with Lauren Baiocchi
The following article is reprinted with permission from Currents:
The Newsletter of Youth Service California,Volume IX,
Number 3, 2001. It was one of the Plenary Speeches from the
National Service-Learning Conference
Can service learning do more harm than good? Who actually benefits
from service learning? In some cases the motivation to serve
may overlook the community voices and actual needs defined by
the community being served. While the well intentioned goals
of service learning may be to develop healthy, well-rounded
citizens, is this being done at the expense of communities?
These sentiments ran through educator and author, Jonathan
Kozol's speech, at the 2001 National Service-Learning Conference
in Denver, Colorado. He challenged service-learning leaders
and practitioners to examine the conscience of service learning,
focusing on which side of the relationship truly benefits from
"service." He urged the audience to listen to the
voices of those they serve; to meet the needs of the community
as defined by the community. And equally as important, he challenged
us to make a long term commitment to the communities in which
we are serving.
Recently I was back home, on the flower farm I grew up working
on, in a rural Northern California town, to help prepare for
a large wedding. It was late afternoon and a female co-worker
and I had been making floral arrangements since 7:30 am. Our
mouths moved as fast as our hands, as we talked about everything
from split-ends, to our families, to the elementary school I
went to that her four children now attend. In the middle of
our conversation about the price of Barbie dolls, she paused
and said, "Yesterday someone dropped off a large bag of
used children's clothes at the house. I can't stand it when
people do that. I did not ask for anything. I do not take handouts.
What is that woman saying? That my children are dirty and poorly
dressed?" I muttered some excuse about good intentions
and then caught myself. My friend's story is not uncommon.
My friend's story and Kozol's challenge ran through my head,
forcing me to reflect on my work in service learning. As a student,
community member and practitioner I am a strong advocate for
service learning. I realize, however, I am only an advocate
for service learning when it is implemented with a community,
not for them. As a field we must ask ourselves how often we
actually work with a community to define their needs, as opposed
to just assuming that we know what its members want? We must
be open to hearing that some service learning projects are not
helpful to the communities they are intended to serve.
The woman who dropped off the clothes, like the majority of
service learning practitioners, probably did not have the intent
of oppressing anyone for the benefit of her own personal growth.
However, when the community is not involved in defining their
own strengths and challenges, there can be negative consequences.
Instead, as Wokie Weah of the National Youth Leadership Council
states, "We must teach (young people) to understand the
reciprocity in service learning, whereby they become both the
server and the recipient of service. In other words, both the
students and the community members become learners and teachers
in the service learning process."
According to Kozol, "inner city kids have seen five generations
of benevolent white people pass by by the age of ten."
Is service learning adding to those statistics? Tutoring and
mentoring--common service learning projects--fulfill the undisputed
needs that young people have for mentors and that schools have
for more tutors. With good intentions many short term service
learning projects make the students and tutors feel good and
then end. What is the long-term result? What is this final impact
in the community? Kozol emphasizes that, "poor children
were not created by God to be the research (subjects) of rich
children." He questions whether, by passing through their
lives with the good intentions of service learning, we are teaching
kids another lesson in betrayal and abandonment.
By quoting Cesar Chavez in his speech, "Some give time,
some give their lives," Kozol challenges us to examine
our service intentions and stick around for a while. Kozol encouraged
young people to not just teach or work with a community for
a day or even one year, but to reexamine why they are there
in the first place and commit themselves to work with a community
for the long haul. Why did the woman in my story go out of her
way to drop off clothes? What was she assuming about the farm
working community on the west side of town? Did she need to
be there at all? How could the situation have been more reciprocal?
Only when the voices of all involved are represented and respected
will real change occur in a community.
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Service Learning
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Permission is granted for organizations to download and reprint this article. Reprints must provide full acknowledgment of source, as provided:
Excerpted from Currents:
The Newsletter of Youth Service California,Volume IX,
Number 3, 2001.
Found in the Energize website library at: http://www.energizeinc.com/art.html
