Kahne & Westheimer, "In the Service of What? The Politics of Service Learning"

Connections:

Reading "In the Service of What? The Politics of Service Learning" by Kahne and Westheimer was interesting and eye opening for various reasons. One one hand, it was great to be able to see other kinds of service learning, not just through the eyes of other students in our class, bu
t hearing real world experiences from people all over the country. Not only that, but reading this article made it apparent the real world connections our other articles can make. We talk about the inter-connectivity in class when we are given examples, but it was good to see how all of the articles we have read in class come together in this article, and how all of their ideas and messages come together as well.

The first article that I made a connection to was to Jonathan Kozol's Article, Amazing Grace. In the beginning of this article, Kahne and Westheimer introduced the idea of what service learning is by giving a couple of examples form actual classrooms. The second example was of Ms. Adams class. In her class project, entitled "Homelessness Here and Elsewhere" "examined the social, economic, legal, and political determinants of homelessness around the world and in the local school community" (Page 3). This made me think of Kozol's article because the entire purpose of his article, was, in my opinion, one big service learning project. He did not necessarily help anybody outright, but by going into really poor neighborhoods, he learned about them, and learned about the social, economic, legal, and political determinants of homelessness in that area. He learned through his conversations with Mrs. Washington and her son, that the local government, and by extension, the national government, don't really care about the poor people there. 

The second connection I made was to Kerri Ullucci's "Pathologizing the Poor: Implications for Preparing Teachers to Work in High Poverty Schools". The whole point of Ullucci's article was to explain the myths of poverty, and to show that you can't teach students differently just because of their socioeconomic background. `In Kahne and Westheimer, they show an example where a teacher in a middle class school wants her students to perform at an elementary school in a poor neighborhood. Some of the parents of the upper - middle class students had objections, saying they were concerned for the children's safety.  When they got there, however, they found that there was nothing to be afraid of, and in fact, the students were great to be around and they enjoyed every minute of being there. This example goes to the very heart of Ullucci's article. Ullucci says on Page 4 that "it is imperative for teacher educators to pay close attention to the manner in which teachers are prepared to educate students from impoverished backgrounds". She goes on to say that teachers may "adopt and maintain deficit and pathological thinking about the academic potential of students who come from impoverished backgrounds". A student is a student, no matter their background. 

The last connection I made was to Allan Johnson's Privilege, Power, and Difference. The main message of Johnson's article was to "say the words". You can't hope to address or change any problems if you can't sit down and talk about the issues. Allan Johnson has a great quote in his article "Its like our collective house is burning down and we are all tip toeing around afraid to say 'fire'". My interpretation of this article was that these service learning projects, were in fact, doing just that. They were "saying the words". Through these projects, students and educators are allowed to talk about tough issues like poverty and healthcare. 

Talking Point: What did you all think of this article? did you make the same connections? 

Joel Westheimer: link to his blog. his last post was an interesting post where he connected modern education to the Dead Poets Society, and in particular, Robin Williams character. It's definitely an interesting read.

All Children Left Thinking: a very interesting video done by Joel Westheimer at a conference called the Big Ideas Fest in 2009. His focus in this video was about school reform, testing, and the importance of critical thinking. It was very eye opening to me.