Composition: History & Theory: 1900 - 1919
Service-Learning
Description
Julia Garbus, in her article “Service-Learning, 1902” (College English 64.5, May 2002) provides a wonderfully researched “close look” at one woman’s contribution to the service-learning tradition. Garbus begins this essay by defining service learning as “a form of experiential education in which students engage in activities that address human and community needs together with structured opportunities designed to promote student learning and development” before tracing service learning back to the Progressive Education movement and the development of settlement houses (547-548). Instead of focusing on theory, Garbus focuses on “Progressive-era work at the level of practice—what college students actually learned and did—as opposed to examining Progressive reformers’ theories, on the one hand, or the workings of a large institution, such as a university, on the other” (548). In order to do this, she focuses on the life and work of Vida Scudder (1861-1954), a rebellious, radical woman who used teaching as a way of promoting social criticism and change during her tenure at Wellesley College.
Under Scudder’s guidance, students would read traditional literary texts from the canon and relate social issues from the texts to their own lives as well as to the text of other authors. Some of them would even “move into a house in a poor city neighborhood, where they would live simply and use their skills to help and ‘uplift’ the neighborhood residents in whatever ways needed” (549). Although this method of service learning, Garbus writes, can be seen as a form of “paternalism and assimilation” today, she argues that Scudder was being as progressive as she could for the time period. She radicalized her students’ views of society, taught them to speak their minds, encouraged interdisciplinary studies and collaborative learning, rejected philology in English Studies, and, it was revealed in later surveys of her students, influenced 127 out of 145 students to continue in “social and civic work after leaving the settlement” while 40 women went on to further identify themselves as socialists (562). Even though Scudder left the settlement house model because she felt that the rift between the classes could not be addressed effectively in this manner, Garbus argues that the same questions that Scudder faced are important to teachers involved in service learning today: “Does service learning lead students to increased community involvement in their future lives, and, if so, to what extent? How can a teacher encourage independent thought? How can we foster self-confidence in students who have been told they are second-class citizens, like the women Scudder taught and many low-income students and students of color today? Is offering humanities instruction to the very poor empowering, or irrelevant, or even insulting? Can local organizations advance systematic change?” (562).
Date of Upload
3/13/09