Service-Learning: A Catalyst for Constructing Democratic Progressive Communities
To exist, humanly, is to name the world, to
change it. Once named, the world in its turn
reappears to the namers as a problem and
requires of them a new naming... Consequently, no one can namefor another, in a prescriptive act which robs others of their words.
(1970, p. 69)
To facilitate the positive transformation described
in Freire's passage, service-learning advocates
need to rupture a second fallacy about power relationships that may go unchallenged by Greenleaf's
criterion.
The second misconception portrays the powerrelationship between server and servee as linear,
monolithic, and static. Despite Greenleaf's valuable contributions to notions of reciprocity, his
construction of the "servant leader" seemingly sustains a binary opposition between the leader and
the person(s) the leader is serving. From my interpretation, Greenleaf fails to problematize the
leader/servee relationship by ignoring the following questions: Within the service-learning relationships, is it understood that everyone is being
served? If so, are all participants the "servant leaders"? If not, are the leader and servee roles fluid
enough to allow for transformations? To some
extent, Michel Foucault's postmodern insights on
the fluidity of power can help address these questions. Using a Foucauldian perspective, servicelearning's mutuality and reciprocity can be better
understood because for him the relationships
between server and servee are alterable instead of
static or linear. Everyone in the service-learning
relationship has power. But, this power is not
equal, constant, or unidirectional. Because power
is constantly realigned and redistributed, no stagnant duality exists between servers and servees
(Foucault, 1978); all who participate in servicelearning play both roles. As server and servee relationships are constantly produced and reproduced,
they create a complex and changing web where no
set(s) of relationships exist apart from the others
(Foucault). In this sense, the "normal" can no
longer create a whole category or class of "abnormal" to subsume, control, and manipulate under
their surveiling gaze (Foucault, 1979).
The Philosophy and Pedagogy
The previous discussion of mutuality and reciprocity moves service-learning into new levels of
interrelated meaning: philosophy and pedagogy.
Bruce Dollar and Val Rust summarize the servicelearning philosophy as:
an integrative process that includes participation in society, critical reflection on that partic
ipation, and the relation of experiences to theoretical knowledge, while maximizing the participation of all learners in decisionmaking
affecting both the programme as a whole and
their individual activities in the programme.
(in Kendall, 1990, p. 23)
Although theirs is not a meta-narrative description,
it does highlight some of the fundamental premises
of the service-learning philosophy.
First, it positions service-learning philosophy
within the experiential education movement in
which learning by direct participation is essential.
For service-learners, the world is their classroom;
they "learn" and hopefully come "to know" by
merging reading and reflection with seeing, doing,
and participating. This approach differs from
many traditional classrooms, where students
"learn," and may eventually come to "know,"
through reading and passive acquisition of "knowledge" from their "learned" teachers.
Second, Rust and Dollar's philosophy recognizes the importance of relating service to theory,
without assuming that the practical will actually
mirror the theoretical. Although their philosophy
does not explicitly identify the relationship
between service and knowledge/theory, their definition is a useful starting point to frame service as a
"text," one that not only promotes the application
of theory to practice, but also demonstrates how a
specific text - the practical, concrete service experience - can challenge, confirm, and perhaps even
improve the "theory." As teachers and learners
engage with and examine the service text, they sustain the program's academic rigor and critical pedagogy. Service-learners, then, do not get credit or
receive a grade for passively "reading" their service project as a "text." What "counts" in servicelearning are the reflections, the writings, and the
discourses that ensue because of the participants'
reading of, involvement with, and reaction to "the
text" at hand. When service-learning situates and
problematizes "service" and the power relationships derived from it, it is likely to produce critical
reflections, writings, and discourses that simultaneously link and disconnect service and theory.
Finally, Dollar and Rust's description accentuates another critical component of the servicelearning philosophy - the maximization of each
participant's input and output. Ideally, servicelearning allows faculty, students, and servees to
gain an audible voice (input) both to unravel the
discourses that produce oppressive contextual realities and to produce new, more empowering discourses (output). This maximization reiterates the
"relational nature of reality" (Palmer, 1990) discussed earlier. Such a reality is nurtured by "car
97
