A Proposal for Mandatory Citizen Education and Community Service
in New Brunswick (Rutgers University in its first
incarnation), chartered in 1766 to promote "learning for the benefit of the community."8
By the nineteenth century Benjamin Rush's
call for the nation's colleges to become "nurseries
of wise and good men" who might ensure a wise
and good country had become the motto of dozens of new church-related schools and land grant
colleges. The Gilded Age took its toll on this
spirit, however, and by the beginning of the
twentieth century Woodrow Wilson was worrying that "as a nation we are becoming civically
illiterate. Unless we find better ways to educate
ourselves as citizens, we run the risk of drifting
unwittingly into a new kind of Dark Age-a time
when small cadres of specialists will control
knowledge and thus control the decision-making
process." Wilson urged-against the specializing spirit of the new German-based research
universities, like Johns Hopkins-that the "air of
affairs" be admitted into the classrooms of
America and that "the spirit of service" be permitted once again to "give college a place in the
public annals of the nation." Much of John
Dewey's career was given over to the quest for
bridging education and experience in the name of
democracy as a way of life rather than just a
political system.9
The call for a liberal education relevant to
democracy gets renewed in each generation: In
World War II, the fate of the war in Europe and
the Pacific was seen as hinging in part on the
capacity of America's schools and colleges to
produce civic-minded, patriotic young Americans who understood the meaning of democracy
and who (Paul Fussel notwithstanding) knew the
difference between what they fought for and what
their enemies fought for. In the 1960's, concern
for democracy and the civic education of the
young led many colleges to experiment with
"relevance." Few reached as high or waxed as
hyperbolic as Livingston College, a new school
established at Rutgers University toward the end
of the decade, whose first bulletin announced:
"There will be freedom at Livingston College!
For Livingston will have no ivory towers. It
cannot; our cities are decaying, many of our
fellow men are starving, social injustice and racism litter the earth...We feel a strong conviction
that the gap between the campus and the urban
community must be narrowed." Although most
other colleges aspired more modestly, many came
to question the relationship of the ivory tower to
the democratic nation. A number tried to develop
programs of some value to the country's democratic agenda.
In recent years, the spirit that puts civic questions to the complacent professionalism and research orientation of the modern university has
again sprung to life. In the early eighties, Ernest
Boyer and Fred Hechinger asked that "a new
generation of Americans...be educated for life in
an increasingly complex world...through civic
education [that] prepares students of all ages to
participate more effectively in our social institutions."10 Over the past few years, interest in civic
education and community service has fairly exploded. At the beginning of the last decade, the
Kettering Foundation issued a report calling for
national youth service of at least a year for all
young Americans." Meanwhile, the Committee
for the Study of National Service at the Potomac
Institute issued a report on "Youth and the Needs
of the Nation" asking for closer coordination and
a genuine national policy for programs like the
Peace Corps, Volunteers in Service to America,
the Young Adults Conservation Corps, and the
Job Corps. For nearly every cynical attack on
relevance in education, there has been a thoughtful proposal for a closer link between education
and experience, learning and community. Morris
Janowitz, Charles Moskos, and Donald Eberly
are among the serious commentators who have
written deeply considered books on the link; they
have offered a powerful impetus to legislative
activity around national service.12 The cause of
service now has a plethora of sponsors on Capitol
Hill, where nearly a dozen bills have been introduced in recent years in search of a viable program of national service. These legislative efforts, along with President Bush's Youth Engaged in Service program (YES) and the newly
chartered National Commission on Service, suggest a salutatory interest reflected in the platforms
of recent electoral contenders such as Senator
Harris Woford in Pennsylvania and Governor
Bill Clinton in the presidential primary. But few
connect service directly either to citizenship in
the larger community or to classroom learning.
Many draw a misleading and dangerous (to democracy) picture of service as rich helping the
poor (charity) or the poor paying a debt to their
country (service in exchange for college scholarships) as if "community" means only the disadvantaged and needy and does not include those
performing service. William Buckley's recent
book Gratitude is typical in its celebration of
generosity and altruism and its aversion to the
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