Lobbying school - Education

Reason, April, 1994 by Mark Parenti

Mandatory community-service programs are turning school-children into lobbyists

THE FOURTH-, FIFTH-, AND SIXTH-grade students in Barbara Lewis's classroom do not ot spend all of their time in school struggling with dividing fractions and memorizing spelling words; some of their school time is taken up fighting city hall. These children, from some of the poorest families in Salt Lake City, are "responsible" for the cleanup of a hazardous waste site, the planting of hundreds of trees, and the passage of seven new laws. In her book, The Kids' Guide to Social Action, Lewis tells children that "solving social problems will bring excitement and suspense into your life. Instead of reading textbooks and memorizing what others have done, you'll create your own history with the actions you take."

Across the country, schools are adding a new subject to the curriculum--political activism. While Lewis's students receive grades in her class for their political activities, scores of school districts have set up programs that require all students to perform community service before they graduate. Parents and school-board members may believe these programs are meant to develop in otherwise apathetic students an ethic of voluntarism and the habit of serving their communities. But many of those who have designed and administered student service see their mission much differently; they want to train a corps of young political activists.

Community-service programs, which are common in many private schools, have been adopted by some 500 public school districts in the United States. Atlanta, Detroit, and the District of Columbia are among the major school districts that require community service. In many areas, officials barely keep track of the students' activities. Maryland, however, requires student service as a condition of graduation--the only state to do so. With nearly 200,000 students enrolled in public high schools, Maryland's service program is easily the largest in the nation.

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, the former president of the Maryland Student Service Alliance (MSSA), which administers the program for Maryland, considers community-service programs laboratories for teaching democratic values. Townsend, who now works for the Clinton administration, told the Associated Press, "You have to do a lab for science; think of this as a lab for citizenship."

Students who participate in service programs are not simply talking to lonely and forgotten nursing-home residents or wading in trash-filled creeks hauling out old tires. They are being taught that to solve the problems in their communities they have to lobby their state senator, pass out petitions, or demonstrate in front of the county courthouse.

MARYLAND IS THE SELF-PROCLAIMED leader in this new movement, known as "service learning." The MSSA defines service learning as "making a difference through actions of citizenship, by participating in advocacy projects to assist the disenfranchised or to correct an injustice through petitioning, making presentations, conducting surveys, and presenting results." Margaret A. O'Neill, the current head of MSSA, cannot say exactly what the definition means. She declines to state what constitutes "correcting an injustice." O'Neill says such terms have to be defined by individual communities.

The MSSA's program is not community service in any traditional sense. The alliance states in its materials that "the term community service carries connotations of restitution for committing a non-violent crime." (One joke circulating around the state asks, "What do criminals and Maryland high-school seniors have in common?" Answer: "They both get out by doing community service.") The MSSA also says, "Volunteering refers to a person demonstrating good will to offer time and energy to address a need, rather than a structured learning experience." Making service part of the school curriculum means making it more than simply helping others. It means teaching students something, in this case a lesson about citizenship. And that requires some political content.

The model for service learning in Maryland and in most of the educational literature consists of three elements: preparation, action, and reflection. First, says O'Neill, students are asked what they believe the community's problems are. In the curriculum materials Maryland has developed, the most commonly mentioned issues are senior citizens, people living in poverty, and the environment. O'Neill says these are the issues that come up "when teachers tell us what they care the most about."

After the issues are chosen, the students "analyze" them. Beverly Durham, a teacher at Wicomico High School in Salisbury, Maryland, describes student service in a video prepared by the MSSA: "The first part of the year, the students study the issues of disability, handicap-ism, age-ism, abject poverty, conservation and ecology, and health-care issues. They do this by having community people come into the classroom, provide round-table discussions, pass out pamphlets. It is a stimulus and response, question and answer period."