Talking Points #5 In Service Of What? The Politics of Service Learning by Joseph Kahne and Joel Westheimer

Extended Comments:

Ariel's Post:

Ariel discussed that service learning is a fundamental approach to help the improve a community. It serves as a backbone for future goals and builds character. I agree that service learning is a good experience and everyone should do it, but we have to also consider the types of service we do. Like the article mentioned, there are two levels, charity and change. I like to compare that to the band-aid on a broken leg and surgery. The charity work often times help cover the surface of the problem like donating food and to apply the Michel Foucault quote "We know what we do, we often know why we do what we do. But what we don't know is what we do does.", some people could really hate themselves for not being able to provide for their family and instead accepts donated food because there is no other option. To take a bigger step than that and potentially "perform the surgery", we could work on critical analysis of the cause and strategies to prevent the problem from happening.