Acting and Understanding

"Service is the rent each of us pays for living."

—Marian Wright Edelman

The last 15 or 20 years of the 20th century in America have seen a modest growth of interest in "service learning," along with an intense and almost rabid enthusiasm for additional "academic learning." A Nation at Risk , published in 1983, has become the bible of academic learning, and its shrill rhetoric pervades every corner of almost every schoolhouse. This call to worshipers sets forth the virtues of the major academic disciplines as the lessons to be mastered--lessons seen primarily as weapons to beat other nations in economic competition. This highly individualistic, competitive emphasis on learning is verified by standardized tests to sort out its students.

Definitions of "service learning" vary widely, but none of them draw on A Nation at Risk . An author writing in the newly released volume on this subject published as the 96th Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education provides this useful starting point: "The term 'service learning' can be loosely defined as an educational activity, program, or curriculum that seeks to promote student learning through experiences associated with volunteerism or community service." This somewhat wordy statement might be summarized into: Service learning emerges from helping others and reflecting on how you and they benefited from doing so. A still briefer statement might go back to the Bible: "Love thy neighbor" and...