I essentially gave up my whole Saturday to feed the hungry. But after watching these teenagers, who had so little material wealth compared to myself and who could be satisfied with what I considered garbage, I began to see the truth. A very uncomfortable notion crept into my mind - the idea that these kids were, if anything, superior to myself. Not in what they had, but in who they were. More and more districts across the country are infusing service into their K-12 curriculum, seeing it as central to their educational mission and as a powerful tool for creating partnership between communities and schools.
Service fosters an ethic of caring and community within the school.
Until recently, psychologists believed that we peaked in intellectual and psychological development at 20 or 21, remained stable until late middle age, then declined. Because there had been little research on how and why adults develop cognitively and on the developmental effects of different types of adult learning programs, I conducted a four-year study of these questions. The research findings were startling. Two psychological tests, a questionnaire, and interviews all revealed congruent results - as though the research snapped multiple, identical pictures of a barely visible phenomenon. Adults in the traditional authoritarian programs actually regressed developmentally, while those in the self-directed learning program grew significantly.