On "Community Service Pedagogy"

In the essay on community service learning, Laura Julier reports that some “see in service learning the appropriate pedagogical complement to educating for civic virtue and democratic citizenship” (134). And, while encouraging students to participate in community and service projects is a noble and worthy undertaking, is it realistic or even fair, to require this extra effort to learn to write; particularly when they can instead take a composition course from the professor down the hall who only requires them to find their own process? Interestingly, colleges and their career centers are providing information on opportunities to work in the nonprofit arena, opportunities to do service work during spring breaks and summer vacations, and composition course focusing on community service would be a perfect complement to students who have a desire to involve themselves in this kind of activity. And, writing for nonprofits could, in fact, be a very viable career alternative. A composition course offered expressly for someone looking to work in that field might be ideal. But, commitment to service and volunteering is a personal choice, and to require that of someone who might be reluctant would feel like an imposition of a teachers’ own personal, activist lifestyle on the education of her/his students.

With regard to the types of assignments given to students in Julier’s pilot program, the “public announcements...job application manual” and “articles for newsletters” sounds like the perfect training ground for someone interested in technical writing or advertisement, but seems contradictory to the more traditional assignments done in Julier’s class such as the analysis and discussion of “literary and historical texts” and “writing in response to them” (139). And, the writing projects done for social agencies seems even further away from the writing students might be expected to do in those disciplines that complain that teachers aren’t teaching students to write.