Service-Learning Responds to Technological Enchantment and Intellectual Isolation
Student participation in service-learning can counter the over-reliance on technology to improve education. Furthermore, service-learning raises consciousness about the mutual obligations students and the surrounding community incur. This heightened social awareness instills a sense of caring for others in an educational system that tends to equate learning with individual effort. ********** Discussing how service-learning could be taken more seriously throughout the academy, Edward Zlotkowski (1996) commented that educators who study and engage in service-learning should write for broader academic audiences, rather than singing to the choir of their fellow service-learning practitioners. This paper represents one effort to widen the scope of the conversation about service-learning. Specifically, participation in service-learning is framed as a way to (1) avoid or minimize the dangers of technologically induced social alienation, (2) correct the misconception that learning is solely an individual achievement, and (3) enact an ethic of care. These objectives closely align with the research agenda Giles and Eyler (1998) compile as the ten most important issues to confront regarding service-learning. The present essay addresses three of them: 1. How does service-learning affect educational institutions, especially in regard to higher education reform? 2. What value does service-learning bring to the communities in which service takes place? 3. How does service learning contribute to the development of social capital and a social ethic of caring and commitment? (p. 65) Service-Learning Can Offset Technological Elitism A sizable body of literature chronicles the democratizing nature of service-learning (Lisman, 1998; Eyler and Giles, 1999) in the sense that participation is open to anyone willing to serve. Through their collaboration not only with other students, but with diverse populations in the community beyond the college environment, students develop greater appreciation for people who do not enjoy a full range of social privileges. Perhaps more importantly, students begin to recognize that active intervention in public affairs may be necessary to help others reap the benefits of democracy. As a counter to ivory tower intellectualism, service-learning places students and educational institutions in direct contact with surrounding communities. Service-learning is inherently democratizing apart from combating the mandarin separation of higher education from its beneficiaries. Service-learning is the quintessential low-technology program. The students, bearing knowledge, skills, and concern, propagate educational missions directly to populations that might not notice or have become jaded with the abstract mission statements of institutions. Aside from efficient low-tech outreach, service-learning also counters the growing temptation to rely on technology to improve educational experiences for the students. Lisman (1998) somewhat cynically identifies drives toward technologies such as distance education and computer-based instruction as signs of instrumental reasoning in education (p. 66). According to Lisman, these sorts of technologies are essentially scalable investments, allowing institutions to economize by having burgeoning enrollments with the fewest possible faculty hires and direct contact hours. This economizing reduces student-faculty collaborations in learning by attenuating face-to-face contact and personal involvement with student learning. Service-learning, while labor-intensive, could restore the student-faculty partnership in learning by involving everyone as learners from their contributions to the community. A vast armada of expensive high-tech gadgetry is being imported into classrooms and employed as adjuncts to--and sometimes replacements for--teaching. While equipment such as live Internet feeds, interactive tests, and read-write CDs can increase student interest and perhaps enhance student satisfaction with a course, no innovative instructional delivery method can substitute for direct student experience. …