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The
Teaching Column
continues with a
Paper from the 2001 SHCY Conference
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SERVICE-LEARNING
AND THE HISTORY OF CHILDHOOD:
A USEFUL PAIRING?
History of Childhood and Youth Conference
Marquette University
Gail S. Murray, July 28, 2001
My
introduction to the History of Childhood in America was in a graduate
course taught by Joe Hawes and my first book was edited by Ray
Hiner, so you can see that this panel is a bit incestuous! At
Rhodes (a private, four-year, liberal arts college), I have taught
the History of Childhood 8 or 9 times. Like most beginning teachers,
the first few times through I wanted my undergraduates to read
everything I had read in graduate school -- and more; I wanted
to problematize the whole construct of childhood and show that
its very definition and structure served social purposes. The
longer I taught, the more I learned, and the harder it became
to cover the chronological spectrum and as well as the themes
I wanted stressed.
I determined that I had to narrow my focus. At the same time,
I began to realize that there was a dimension to this course that
was not present in the other American history courses I taught.
I found myself focusing more on society’s construction of
childhood, the values and the public policy that flowed from that,
than on the actual lives of children and families. My own research
on children’s literature and the construction of childhood
was tracking in similar directions. In this particular course,
I found myself functioning less as an “objective” or
disinterested historian and more as a passionate advocate for
child services. However, I was very aware that for my students
-– mostly female, financially comfortable, southern, and
white -- the history of childhood was just another check on their
list of distribution requirements, albeit with a more interesting
reading list than other history courses.
I wanted students to look more critically at the socially constructed
expectations of childhood. I wanted to diffuse the Whiggish notion
of the progressive, enlightened treatment of children over time.
I wanted to engage students in the real issues facing today’s
children, to see that current practices were the result of social
choices that were neither inevitable nor “better” than
those made in previous generations. Perhaps if students could
personally encounter the dilemmas and frustrations facing parents,
childcare providers, educators, and other service-providers, they
too might raise more systemic, critical, and philosophical questions
about childhood, children’s rights, social capital, and public
policy.
Just as I was struggling with this pedagogical dilemma, Rhodes
College embarked on a program to facilitate something called service-learning
(S-L) by offering workshops and providing summer grants for course
development and restructuring. Recently the college has begun
to provide stipends for students with service-learning experience
to serve as S-L Fellows, assisting faculty with administrative
details. This fall will mark the 4th time I have taught the History
of Childhood in America incorporating a service-learning requirement.
Before discussing how this service-learning course works, perhaps
some general introduction to the concept of service-learning would
be helpful. S-L is only one of several kinds of experiential education
that has resonated with administrators and faculty seeking to
connect traditional liberal arts education to global experiences,
or citizenship, or community involvement. The term “service-learning”
was first used in the late ‘sixties by coordinators at the
Southern Regional Education Board. Two years later, the Office
of Economic Opportunity (part of President Johnson’s War
on Poverty) established the National Student Volunteer Program
to encourage community service among college students. Renaming
itself the National Center for Service-Learning, this program
joined with the Peace Corp and VISTA to form the federal agency
ACTION that encouraged campus-based service programs through the
late 1960s and early 1970s.1
However, this community involvement movement that gained a foothold
on college campuses, like much of the curricular changes of the
1960s, did not survive the next decade, as reduced federal spending,
along with financial crises at many liberal arts colleges, took
their toll. The current interest in service-learning dates from
a resurgence or reinvention of the concept circa 1987 with the
formation of Campus Compact, “an organization of college
and university presidents who have pledged to encourage and support
academically-based community service at their institutions.”2
Four years ago, there were 575 member campuses participating in
Campus Compact, with approximately 10,000 faculty teaching at
least one service-learning course.3
One of the prominent scholars in the field of experiential learning,
Jane Kendall, found in 1990 at least 147 different definitions
of “service-learning” in the literature.4
A decade later, a definition which emphasizes both halves of the
service-learning equation seems to predominate. That is, service-learning
must (1) qualitatively enhance classroom learning while it also
(2) provides a community service. A corollary to the latter includes
involving the population served in the design of the experience
to avoid a paternalistic “here-s-what-you-need” approach.
The classroom and the field experience should be linked with time
spent in reflection. For example, a student who volunteers at
a homeless shelter or is a reading tutor at the local elementary
school is providing a valuable service, but he is not engaged
in service-learning. When a soup kitchen experience is incorporated
into a class on Contemporary Social Problems, the student can
then integrate the philosophical argument for social justice,
sociological studies on homelessness, and personal experiences
of homeless people. The student begins to ask why some people
are homeless, what personal and societal obstacles stand in the
way of their finding permanent housing, and what kind of advocacy
homeless people have. When the reading tutor combines her volunteerism
with a course in Cognitive Development and meets regularly with
other tutors to track the problems they are observing, the classroom
theory and its practical application produce an enhanced learning
experience. In addition to a S-L component as part of an existing
course, some colleges use S-L as part of their required freshman
experience, as part of optional honors projects, or as Spring
Break electives. At Hobart & William Smith, professors created
new courses, like “Politics, Community and Service”
in order to encourage more students to participate in community
service.5
To convince deans and department chairs that S-L has educational
value (and that it doesn’t dilute the vigor of an academic
course), faculty may have to “prove” that the service
experience expands and/or enhances student learning about the
subject or contributes to their development as a “whole person”
or “community citizen.”6
(On this Reading List, the book by Janet Eyler and Dwight E. Giles,
Jr., Where’s the Learning in Service-Learning?, does this
very well.) And to make sure that students have access to the
type of service projects that best enhance that learning, faculty
have to convince over-worked and underpaid agency directors to
utilize student skills in their community organization.
Although service-learning might fit most easily with sociology,
psychology, religious studies, or urban affairs courses, at Rhodes
we have four history courses that have successfully introduced
service learning. Women’s History sends students through
training and service at the local shelter for abused women; Philanthropy
in America asks students to rotate work with various philanthropic
organizations; Contemporary Latin America engages students in
grant-writing with Latino organizations. In the History of Childhood
in America, I have used various agencies for the S-L component:
after school programs at community centers or churches, private
preschool programs, child-care for parents in counselling for
child abuse, respite care for children and teens with disabilities,
and YWCA self-esteem programs for adolescents. My students make
a 6-week commitment to service-learning over the 15-week semester.
This allows me to assign heavier readings in the first half of
the course and then ease up some during the 6 weeks they go into
the field. Early in the semester, I have a student panel from
previous years talk about their experiences – good and less
successful – in service learning, and then students meet
individually with the S-L Fellow to select the site for their
project. During the six or seven weeks of their S-L participation,
the course content continues in chronological fashion, meeting
as regularly scheduled for lecture and discussion. Their 2 hours
at a child-service agency is in addition to time spent in class.
Every other week, we take about thirty minutes of class time to
reflect on their S-L experience. In order to better focus these
discussions, I am going to try making some specific assignments
about the experience: (1) physical setting, neighborhood, physical
resources; (2) interview a staff member about experience &
motivation. Because the course reading can seem separate from
their experiential learning, I try to weave the S-L agencies into
the lecture and discussion on particular topics, such as “child-saving
agencies” or “mother’s pensions/ADC/AFDC/welfare-to-work.”
Students keep a journal about their service-learning participation
and in the final month of the course, student teams conduct research
on a topic of their own choosing and make group presentations
to the class. Some years, students at the same agency have worked
together on programming or evaluating for that agency; other times
students have self-selected their groups and topics. This year
I am going to have all students at the same agency design and
carry out a project for that agency: a needs assessment, interviews,
a needed physical renovation, etc.
The most difficult and time-consuming aspect of doing service-learning
involves finding cooperative child-service agencies to participate
and continuing contact with them during the semester to insure
that the agency fully utilizes the students’ skills and doesn’t
assign them mere housekeeping or “baby-sitting” tasks
(although this too teaches them how much work minimum-wage child
care providers do!) I have learned that the agency director may
intend to utilize students in a creative way, but another employee
with a different agenda may oversee their weekly participation.
I also have to make sure that at least one location is within
walking distance of the campus for those students who do not have
cars. I provide driving and parking maps for the other sites and
visit all of them personally to pinpoint any confusing entrance
procedures or safety issues. If one of the options is at night,
I require the students to travel together. When I began, all the
S-L opportunities were with “at risk” populations. Some
students complained that I was “stacking the deck” about
childhood problems, so this fall I will include one church-run
day-care in a middle-class, white neighborhood as an option.
The literature on S-L reveals high student satisfaction with their
S-L experience, which has certainly been true for me as well.
Usually 1-2 students in a class of 20-25 will give negative feedback,
either because they thought it took too much time or because they
felt manipulated into concerns they didn’t want to have.
Most attest to insights that books had not provided: personal
growth, greater multi-cultural appreciation, greater desire to
give-back to their community, or new vocational interests. A common
reaction to their S-L time is plain old-fashioned guilt. Students
become aware of their privilege and want to “help the unfortunate.”
One of my goals is to recognize those feelings as normal, but
to move beyond them to creative solutions to child-centered social
problems.
To be sure, S-L uses time that could be spent on covering more
topics, assigning more readings, or involving students in traditional
historical research. Placing 25 students in five or six agencies
guarantees at least several crises during the course of the semester!
Still, I am convinced that the gains are substantial, as measured
both in individual lives, but also in the depth and quality of
class discussions. Students are the future taxpayers, voters,
members of Boards of Directors, educators, and parents. If they
can understand the historical experience of children and the various
successful and failed social efforts on their behalf, and can
relate that history to current debates about “family values,”
child services, and children’s rights, we might all hope
for a more creative public policy toward children.
NOTES
1.
Barbara Jacoby, “ Service-Learning in Today’s Higher
Education,” Volunteerism, Frank McGuckin, ed. (New York:
H. W. Wilson Company, 1998), 20.
2. Ibid., 22.
3. Janet Eyler and Dwight E. Giles, Jr. Where’s
the Learning in Service-Learning? (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass
Publishers, 1995), 6
4. Ibid., 3.
5. Ibid. Each of ten chapters profiles a
different college’s experience with service-learning.
6. Ibid, 165-185.
