They encamp in church basements, youth hostels, spare rooms in homeless shelters, low-cost motels and alumni homes. They are plunging into the real city, the throbbing Washington that has the nation's highest child poverty rate and the highest high school dropout rate, where social workers, public interest lawyers, clergy, health care specialists, teachers and others who, unapplauded, keep on delivering the works of mercy and rescue. These students come to gain a tutored clue or two on how political and policy decisions here relate to their community service at their home campuses. Alternative spring breaks took hold in the early 1980s. Students fanned out to tutor on Indian reservations, serve meals in big city homeless shelters, renovate houses in Appalachia, build homes with Habitat for Humanity, teach reading in prisons.
International sites are now common for service learning.
This week, student groups from American University are in Cuba and Honduras. Witness for Peace is taking students to Guatemala. Initially, fretful professors dismissed this experiential learning as academic whipped cream. Colleges now routinely offer courses tied to service. While it's true that a spring break of ladling stew on a soup line or banging nails into floorboards can be an exercise in dabbling, the Washington experience is designed for a different outcome.