Barber
cation approaches is the focus on learning
outside the classroom, integrated into the classroom. Students will utilize group projects in
community service and in other extraseminar
group activities as the basis for reading and
reflecting on course material. Experiential learning permits students to apply classroom learning to the real world, and to subject real world
experience to classroom examination. To plan
adequately for an experiential learning focus
and to assure that projects are pedagogically
sound and responsible to the communities they
may engage, particular attention will be given
to its design in the planning phase.
THE TEAM APPROACH is a special feature of the Rutgers proposal. All experiential
learning projects will be group projects where
individuals learn in concert with other; where
they experience community in part by practicing community during the learning process.
We urge special attention be given to the role of
groups or teams in the design both of the
classroom format and experiential learning
component of the basic course.
COMMUNITY SERVICE is only one among
the several options for experiential learning,
but it will clearly be the choice of a majority of
students, and is in fact the centerpiece of the
Rutgers program. We believe that community
service, when related to citizenship and social
responsibility in a disciplined pedagogical setting, is the most powerful form of experiential
learning. As such, it is central to our conception of the civic education process.
AN INCENTIVE PROGRAM FOR CONTINUING SERVICE is built into the Rutgers
project, because our objective is to instill in
students a spirit of citizenship that is enduring.
It is thus vital that the program, though it is
centered on the freshman-year course, not be
limited to that initial experience, and that there
be opportunities for ongoing service and participation throughout the four years of college.
The Rutgers pilot program-at this stage it is
still experimental and voluntary-is only one
among many new efforts at a number of different
schools and universities aimed at incorporating
service learning into academic curricula. Service
learning, in turn, is only one example of a number
of approaches that, without abandoning the intellectual integrity of autonomous educational institutions, attempt to give practical meaning to the
philosophy which places teaching liberty at the
center of liberal education.
In a vigorous democracy capable of withstanding the challenges of a complex, often undemocratic, interdependent world, creating new generations of citizens is not a discretionary activity.
Freedom is a hothouse plant that flourishes only
when it is carefully attended. Without active
citizens who see in service not the altruism of
charity but the responsibility of citizenship on
which liberty ultimately depends, no democracy
can function properly or, in the long run, even
survive. Without education that treats women
and men as whole, as beings who belong to
communities of knowledge, there may be no
stopping place on the slippery road from dogmatism to nihilism. Without schools that take responsibility for what goes on beyond as well as in
the classroom, and work to remove the walls that
separate the two worlds, students will continue to
bracket off all that they learn from life and keep
their lives at arm's length from what they learn.
Without teachers who are left alone to teach,
students will fall prey to the suasion of an illiterate society all too willing to make its dollars their
tutors.
National service is not merely a good idea; or as
William Buckley has suggested, a way to repay
the debt owed to our "patrimony." It is an
indispensable prerequisite of citizenship and thus
a condition for democracy's preservation. Democracy does not just "deserve" our gratitude;
it demands our participation as a price of survival.
The Rutgers program and others like it offer a
model that integrates liberal teaching, experiential learning, community service, and citizen education. It also suggests a legislative strategy for
establishing a national service requirement without raising up still one more elephantine national
bureaucracy. Require service of all Americans
through federal guidelines; but permit the requirement to be implemented through servicelearning programs housed in schools, universities, and, for those not in the school system, other
local institutions, such as the YMCA or the Chamber of Commerce. Employing the nation's schools
and colleges as laboratories of citizenship and
service might at once offer an attractive way to
develop civic service opportunities for all Americans and help educate the young to the obligations
of the democratic citizen. This would not only
serve democracy, it could restore to our educational institutions a sense of mission they have
long lacked.
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