Talking Point #5

In the Service of What?

The Politics of Service Learning

By: Joseph Kahne and Joel Westheimer 

Quotes/Comments  

"Educators and legislators alike maintain that service learning can improve the community and invigorate the classroom, providing rich educational experiences for students at all levels of schooling. Service learning makes students active participants in service projects that aim to respond to the needs of the community while furthering the academic goals of students.

I agree with this quote that service learning make student more aware of what the community needs and what is going on around them. Having the opportunity to actually go out there and respond to the needs of others in the community well get you to get to experiences what real life situations can occur and what your job might be when you get to become a teacher or doctor or social work.etc. you are expose to participate an a project that makes you more aware of things and to know that you are helping around your community can make you feel better about yourself. there is such so many ways you could volunteer and help out, its charity like mention in the reading, giving to the need and caring to make a change. 

"A music director at a middle class  wanted her students to perform at a nearby elementary school in a  poor neighborhood. but some of the parents objected because they were concerned with their safety, the students also expected them to be rude, tough and very unfriendly.After they went ,their perspective on these elementary school and children changed."

Its interested how this upper-middle class students thought all this horrible things of this other students without even giving them a chance to first get to know them and how they really are. They were told by their parents it was a bad neighborhood and unsafe so that's what made them react that way because they didn't find support in their own parents to do this.Once they perform to the children they found it surprising how totally different everything turn out to be because these poor children wasn't one single thing they had imagine to be.I think that what the authors say about " service learning activities can achieve the first crucial step towards diminishing the sense of Otherness that separates students particularly privileged students form those in need." This kids didn't wanted to go perform because they were white kids that had the privileged to get a opportunity to have a music director take them to share their music skills with younger kids and what they saw was a separation that couldn't be crossed and how the poor students on the other side where just this weird and just had a horrible image of them without actually finding out they were really like.

"By contrast, those oriented towards embrace the importance of political activity. Boyte, for example, believes that services activities should develop students' abilities at public speaking, recruiting others students, organizing meetings, analyzing problems, developing action plans, and conducting evaluations." 

 I think that Boyte examples are very true because with the service activities you perform you get do develop those abilities like how to speaking at a public since you are doing something that you have to learn how to communicate with others and help them in what ever situation they are in. when you do your service activities you become more organize and plan out your meetings with what every group or community of people you have to meet and help out. There is always the the way you start to analyze a problem and try to see if you can fix it so you start to become familiar with developing solutions to a problem and come up with whats the best way to go about it and fix it, so you start to analyze the problem, you then take action plans and try to see if they can work to solve the problem. but what i think the most thing that makes you develop is conducting evaluations about yourself and of how much changed your done to that particular person or to that group if you really got to help them out in their need so that they can not struggle with what ever they are going through if you made a difference to their life.