The role of service learning in promoting active citizenship and unifying society | Vanderbilt Project for American Unity and Democracy

The role of service learning in promoting active citizenship and unifying society

Written by Billy Austin, Assistant Professor of Service Learning at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand

A longtime resident of Christchurch, New Zealand, said in response to an army of 10,000 Canterbury students who volunteered after the devastating 2011 earthquakes.

By clearing debris, delivering food and water, and a myriad of other tasks large and small, the students turned the text around what was an entrenched, negative relationship between the city/robe. This work drew students to areas far from the usual hotspots on campus, allowing for the formation of new and unexpected relationships across socioeconomic backgrounds.

While these post-earthquake experiences had a profound impact on many of the students involved, they were not unique, according to Rebecca Solnit’s A Paradise Built in Hell, which provides case studies of five disasters. After each one, she notes, “Disasters provide an extraordinary window into desire and social possibility, and what we see there matters in other places, in ordinary times, and in other extraordinary times. Desires and possibilities awakened so strong that they sparkle even from the wreckage, the carnage, and the ashes” .[1]

However, extending this limited utopia beyond chaos is a much more difficult task. The American philosopher, William James, addressed this matter in his speech and essay The Moral Equivalent of War[2]Which President Jimmy Carter referred to for rallying national unity in the face of the oil crisis in the 1970s. Like chaos, the crucible of war can create a sense of national unity, but today’s leaders still struggle to add the challenge James addressed to positive engagement. Service learning, a combination of academic content, critical thinking, and service, may be one way to expand Solnit’s window of social desire and potential.

Building on the work of the SVA in the aftermath of the earthquake, I developed a service learning course, CHCH101: Rebuilding Christchurch, at the University of Canterbury. This new academic offering was based on the work of John Dewey, who was best known for his progressive approach to education with a particular emphasis on the role of experience and transition. In Dewey’s view, education is not a preparation for life but rather life itself and must include experiences that occur outside the classroom. The classroom is then used to reflect on the experiment and transfer those thoughts to the next experiment. By validating each student’s experience as a legitimate learning activity, Dewey lays the foundation for a democratic model of education.

Thousands of miles and hundreds of years before Dewey’s work, the indigenous people of New Zealand, the Maori, shared his belief in the validity of personal experience in education. The Maori word for both teaching and learning is “aku” with the belief that we are all, at the same time, teachers and learners and that these roles are flexible and interchangeable. Thus, rather than conveying information in one direction through a “stage sage,” ako establishes a more democratic approach in which individual experience is recognized, validated, and shared.

This democratic approach to learning and engaging all participants (community members, students, and educators) has been implemented in several ways such as the Active Citizenship Initiatives of the Highlander Center in East Tennessee, and Paulo Freire’s work with indigenous peoples in Brazil, based in Auburn. Rural Studio Engineering Program, and Social Justice Actions by the Boggs Center for Promoting Community Leadership in Detroit. Combining academic content, service, and critical thinking, service learning is a democratic approach to engaging students intellectually, personally, and civic. Research on this method of experiential education has been shown to achieve these results and its value has been recognized by the establishment of service learning centers at most US universities.

The opportunity on the University of Canterbury campus allows students to use their volunteer experiences as a highly personal text in which they can connect with relevant academic content and reflect on their actions, beliefs and values ​​with other students. These service learning opportunities foster a culture of service in New Zealand, which relies on volunteers on school boards of trustees, lifesaving surf patrols, and ambulance crews. As Academy Award-winning producer Sir Peter Jackson has pointed out, New Zealand is more like a big village than a small country. This is based on the Maori culture where service is expected for one’s community and is not seen as a separate or separate activity.

Although New Zealand has this well-established expectation that members of a community will contribute to society’s daily functioning, there is evidence to suggest that there is a risk of isolation and a lack of opportunities to interact with people in different or different social areas. Economic wallpapers. Thus, service learning, such as that done at the University of Canterbury, has the potential to strengthen unit bonds.

This learning and teaching process is well suited to a modern democratic society, while being inspired by the Aku tradition. The qualities of service learning represented by the marriage of students’ social engagement with reflection and a more traditional academic content enable it to positively influence both the student and the community member and act as a meeting point or commons that would not otherwise exist. At a time of increasing secession in the United States, New Zealand, and other democracies, service learning can strengthen the university and its students’ ties to society, while addressing some of society’s toughest challenges.

It may have taken an earthquake to open the window of interaction across the Christchurch town/gown gap, but students working knee-deep in the mud left by the earthquake have demonstrated the importance of dedicating similar opportunities to service-learning in the university’s academic curriculum. They all provided an earthquake-ravaged nation with an example of how to work together by seeing the perfect possibilities of neighbors helping neighbors.

[1] Rebecca Solnit, “How to Survive a Disaster,” https://lithub.com/rebecca-solnit-how-to-survive-a-disaster/.

[2] William James, “The Moral Equivalent of War,” Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 1 (1), 17-26.

Billy Austin is Associate Professor of Service Learning at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, where he created an educational response model for natural disasters for the 2011 Christchurch earthquake, Hurricane Irene in 2011, and Cyclone Pam in Vanuatu in 2015. He received his BA from Vanderbilt in Language English and history before earning a master’s degree in medicine. and a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia.

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