Community service, widely touted as the cure for young people\u27s political apathy, in fact teaches little about the arts of participation in public life. To reengage students in public affairs requires redefining politics to include, in addition to electoral activity, ongoing citizen involvement in solving public problems. It requires a conceptual framework that distinguishes between public life and private life. And it calls for a pedagogical strategy that puts the design and ownership of problem-solving projects into the hands of young people

Boyte, Harry C.

English

The University of Nebraska, Omaha

Community Service and Civic Education Advocates claim that community service prepares a self-centered generation for citizenship. Not so, Mr. Boyte asserts. BY HARRY C. BOYTE /1/..strotion by Brva V.tu1, lNtlll Joluum Dnig~ COMMUNITY service, wide-ly touted as the cure for young people's political ap-athy, in fact teaches little about the arts of participa-tion in public life. To reengage students in public affairs requires redefining pol-itics to include, in addition to electoral activity, ongoing citizen involvement in solving pu~lic problems. It requires a conceptual framework that distinguishes between public life and private life. And it calls for a pedagogical strategy that puts the design and ownership of problem-solving projects into the hands of young people. According to conventional wisdom, teenagers and young adults are deeply disenchanted with politics ahd public is-sues. The Times Mirror Center reports that, for the first time since World War n, young people show less interest in public affairs than their elders. Only one in five follows major issues "very close-ly."• In fact, youths today have a complex set of attitudes about the world. More detailed probing finds a generation not so much apathetic as furious at adults' ap-parent inaction in the face of mounting social problems. Today's young people are jaded with Sixties-style protest and uncertain about what else there is to do. It is clear, however, that senior-class trips to Washington, D.C., or exhortations to be "good citizens" - the stuff of earlier generations' civic education - are not go-ing to interest young people in politics. Community service is proposed as the resolution of this dilemma. Advocates HARRY C. BOYTE is director of Project Public Life, Minneapolis. JUNE 1991 claim that service prepares a self-centered generation for citizenship. Thus, for in-stance, the William T. Grant Foundation Commission on Work, Family and Citi-zenship has argued that, "if the service commitment begins early enough and continues into adulthood, participatory citizenship would become what Robert Bellah and his colleagues call habits of the heart, family and community tradi-tions of local political participation that sustain a person, a community and a na-tion. "2 Using this rationale, community ser-vice initiatives are on the rise. Detroit schools now require 200 hours of com-tutoring projects and literacy campaigns. In addition, the phrase sometimes encom-passes activism with regard to such is-sues as homelessness and drug abuse. Service involvements can produce a number of desirable educational out-comes: connection with other cultures,-experiential learning, personal growth. But service does little to connect stu-dents' everyday concerns with the politi-cal process. Nor do service projects nor-mally teach the political skills that are needed to work effectively toward solv-ing society's problems: public judgment, the collaborative exercise of power, con-flict resolution, negotiation, bargaining, EvEx soPHISTIC.\ TED CO}t\IUXITY SERVICE PROGRAMS rSE PERSO~AL GROWTH AS THEIR ~tAl~ SELLIXG POI.\'T. munity service for graduation. Atlanta issued a 75-hour minimum requirement to increase "understanding of the obliga-tions of a good citizen." Minnesota and Pennsylvania have developed statewide financing for student service. Congress passed the National and Community Ser-vice Act of 1990 to provide federal sup-port.3 Community service refers mainly to a variety of individual voluntary efforts, from working in food banks and shelters for the homeless to helping in nursing homes or hospitals to participating in [(![) Q~7 c:.c..__j ~Ito "You don't need an access code -you just play with it. " 766 PHI DELTA KAPPAN and holding oneself and others account-able. Adults often see community service as a renewal of the political tradition of civic republicanism, in which citizens learn to "put aside" their self-interests in altruis-tic concern for others. To younger Amer-icans, steeped in a culture that glorifies "lifestyles of the rich and famous" and praises the virtues of free enterprise, calls to renounce self-interest sound disingenu-ous at best. Instead, young people find that ser-vice meets their needs for personal rele-vance and a sense of membership in a community. Volunteers usually disavow concern with larger policy questions, see-ing service as an alternative to politics. "I do community service for myself," ex-plained one young woman at a North Carolina college who had begun a suc-cessful mentoring program for pregnant teens. "I have a passion for it. I can't save the world."4 In schools where learning seems dry and remote, service experi-ences create a sense of usefulness and connection. A young student from Ohio who does volunteer work with retarded children explained, "I like to see people gain from what I can do for them. I like myself better for helping them. "s FROM THE perspective of civic education, the weakness of com-munity service lies in a conceptual limitation. Service lacks a vocabu-lary that draws attention to the public world that extends beyond personal lives and local communities. Most service pro-grams include little learning about the policy dimensions of issues that students address through person-to-person efforts. Volunteers rarely have the wherewithal to reflect on the complex dynamics of power, race, and class that are created when middle-class youths go out to "serve" in low-income areas. Most notably, without a conceptual framework that distinguishes between personal life and the public world, com-munity service adopts the "therapeutic language" that now pervades society. From television talk shows to election campaigns, such public concepts as ac-. countability, respect for public contribu-tions, and recognition of varying interests and viewpoints have given way to a lan-guage of self-development and intimacy. Thus even sophisticated community ser-vice programs designed for high school students use personal growth as their main selling point. Educational objectives include self-esteem, a sense of personal worth, self-understanding, independence, personal belief in the ability to make a difference, consciousness of one's per-sonal values, openness to new experi-ences, capacity to persevere in difficult tasks, and the exploration of new identi-ties and unfamiliar roles. Politics is ab-sent.6 A different way to teach politics is es-sential if we want to reengage students with citizenship - understood as play-ing an ongoing role in public affairs. Partly, this new approach means retriev-ing older definitions. The word politics comes from the Greek politikos, mean-ing "of the citizen." A citizen-centered politics re-creates the concept of a pub-lic realm, as distinct from private life, in which diverse groups learn to work to: gether effectively to address public prob-lems, whether or not they like one anoth-er personally. To be meaningful, public work also requires an experience of pow-er that can come only from self-directed action. Project Public Life of the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the Univer-sity of Minnesota 7 has found that teens and younger students alike have great interest in "problem-solving politics" in which they are central actors. The Pub-lic Achievement program of Project Pub-lic Life - undertaken with the coopera-tion of St. Paul Mayor James Scheibel, Minnesota 4-H, and others - is based on a pedagogy that allows youths to define their own concerns and design and man-age their own projects in the context of public environments in which they learn how to work constructively with diver-sity. A Public Achievement training effort conducted in the fall of 1990 with the In-ner Urban Catholic Coalition - a group of 13 St. Paul Catholic schools - illus-trates the approach. Principals, teachers, and students asked to participate in Pub-lic Achievement in order to lend new energy and meaning to Martin Luther King Day celebrations, which many felt had grown stale. At the outset, educators agreed to hand over authority for the project to teams of junior high school students. The students, with educators watching but not talking, received train-ing in public skills and concepts in order to design King Day celebrations relevant to their own lives. In the training, Peg Michels and Re-becca Breuer of the Public Achievement staff emphasized such skills as public speaking, recruiting other students, or-ganizing meetings, analyzing problems, developing action plans, and conducting evaluations. They also structured public meetings to ensure that students would in-teract across school lines, delivering re-ports and obtaining diverse feedback. The King Day activities that emerged from these sessions varied, but on bal-ance administrators and teachers were amazed at the creativity, zeal, and skill that students displayed in response to be-ing "taken seriously" and having the free-dom to plan their own public projects. The process allowed students to design events that were connected to their own lives and reflected their own capabilities. At St. Luke's Catholic School, for in-stance, the initial team of students who participated in the training recruited a task force from grades 4 through 8 to plan class activities that would culminate in a large public event for the school and community on January 18. Students from each grade participated in and reported on proj 'Cts in which they applied to prob-lems in their own lives the principles that King's life exemplified, such as the non-violent resolution of conflicts and the disavowal of prejudice. Jeff Maurer, a THE SERVICE LANGUAGE OF "CARING A.~1l COMM~1TY" IS SIMPLY NO ANTI-DarE FOR TODAY'S YOUTHFUL CYNICISM ABOUT POLITICS. teacher at St. Bernard's, another Catho-lic school involved in the project, said, "I have developed a new appreciation and respect for my students as I watched them identify issues, devise strategies to deal with those issues, and evaluate their own progress." The service language of "caring and community" is simply no antidote for to-day's youthful cynicism about politics. Moreover, the predominantly one-on-one character of typical service experiences leaves little room for political learning. As this generation defines itself political-ly, it will focus on finding practical an-swers to the problems of the nation. Teaching the skills and concepts of such problem solving will require a far more public pedagogy. I. For figures on the disenchantment of youth with politics. see Michael Oreskes, "Profiles of Today"s Youths: Many Just Don't Seem to Care," New York Times, 28 June 1990; "An Indifferent Age?," Chns-tian Science M011itor, 9 June 1990; and Rushmore M. Kidder, "Children's Moral Compass Wavers: Christian Science Monitor, 16 May 1990. 2. William T. Grant Foundation Commission on Work, Family and Citizenship, "Pathways to Suc-cess: Citizenship Through Servioe," in Jane Ken· dall, ed., Combining Service and Learning (Raleigh: National Society for Internships and Experiential Education, 1990), p. 441. 3. The figures on service are from Alonzo Crim. "The Obligation of Citizenship," in Kendall, pp. 240-41. 4. Dan Conrad, "Learner Outcomes for Commu-nity Service," The Generator, January 1989, pp. 1-2. 5. Ernest Boyer, "Service: Linking School to Life," in Kendall, p. 100. 6. For a representative listing of learner outcomes. see, for example, Conrad, op. cit. 7 _ For further information on the program, write to Project Public Life, Humphrey Center, Rm. 147. 301 19th Ave. S., Minneapolis, MN 55455. IK "It's the weekend, mom. Read me one without a moral." JUNE 1991 767 I 

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