Civic Engagement across the Curriculum: A Resource Book for Service-Learning Faculty in All Disciplines (2003)

Civic Engagement Across the Curriculum: A Resource Book for Service-Learning Faculty in All Disciplines Richard M. Battistoni Providence, R.I.: Campus Compact, 2002 Not since the time of John Dewey has so much critical attention been directed at the responsibilities of American institutions of higher learning. This renewed scrutiny has three main sources. First is the cascade of statistical evidence documenting a seemingly bottomless disaffection with politics and public affairs among successive cohorts of college students. Second is a quickening trickle of dissatisfaction among the faculty, a growing sense that relentless pressure to publish instigates far too much research that is as irrelevant to important issues of the day as it is disconnected from timeless questions of the ages. Third is a freshet of philanthropy to support applied projects that attempt to (re)connect institutions of higher learning to the larger communities in which they are embedded. Campus-based community is caught up in these currents. In little more than a decade its emphasis has shifted from extracurricular charitable to service-learning-that is, community that also intentionally promotes academic learning-to civic engagement. The multiple meanings of that last term, and how community can promote it among college students in all (or at least many) disciplines, is the subject of this slim yet insightful monograph by Rick Battistoni. Battistoni begins by reviewing briefly the evidence of a crisis in education and higher education's response to that crisis. Not counting the uncountable progression of committees, task forces, and blue-ribbon panels that engage in much hand wringing and speechifying, the most common strategy for stemming the tide of favored by college presidents has been to endorse (and even fund, to varying degrees) efforts to place more students in community-based activities. The key question, of course, is whether that strategy makes sense: can service-learning in fact promote engagement? Battistoni's considered reply to that question is in the affirmative-but not without some caveats. He demonstrates convincingly that both the question and its answer are more complicated than many of service-learning's champions may be willing to admit. For one thing, there is the troublesome fact that college students' expressed interest and involvement in public affairs has plummeted just as their participation in school-organized community has reached all-time highs. Of course, gross trends can conceal as much as they reveal, and one can always speculate about how much worse the crisis in disengagement would be the emphasis on community service. Even so, that all the time, money, and effort poured into campus-based community programs has thus far been unaccompanied by any detectable upswing in engagement among young adults nationally is a fact that cannot be swept under the rug. Battistoni also directs our attention to such thoughtful critics of community as Harry Boyte, director of the Center for Democracy and Citizenship at the University of Minnesota. Boyte argues that the vocabulary and practice of community stand at odds with the concepts and skills required for effective participation in democratic public life (pp. needed). The service paradigm rarely grapples explicitly with issues of power, interest, and accountability, for example. It emphasizes direct person-to-person helping behavior rather than engaging in public work with others to address matters of shared interest. Indeed, to the degree that students seek opportunities as an escape from a larger political world in which they feel powerless and alien, expanding opportunities for conventional may actually feed disengagement-and probably has. As for the research literature on service-learning, Battistoni believes that while it offers some tantalizing suggestions, it is plagued by substantial weaknesses that undermine any convincing claim that widespread service-learning will lead to a reversal of the disengagement among youth (pp. …