Reading the Lives of Others: The Winton Homes Library Project A Cultural Studies Analysis of Critical Service Learning for Education

Abstract

This article examines the value and usefulness of expanding a particular approach to service learning in an educational setting. As a result of participating in a graduate seminar that combined cultural studies with service learning, reflecting on involvement in a service project, and a careful reading of relevant literature, the authors advocate for a more critical engagement with the reality of overwhelming social injustice. Moreover, the authors suggest a four-step framework (critical service learning), which is informed by both cultural studies and critical pedagogy. Finally, the authors argue for the adaptation of this framework into the school curriculum--thereby providing students with particular tools--which foster a critical engagement with society. Introduction Service learning as an educative tool seems to have gained popularity in recent times (Paulins, 1999; Tice, 1999; Burns, 1998). From middle schools to graduate seminars, the allure of service learning has been that it offers the potential for students to participate in service activities thereby allowing for a more profound and expanded view of the world they live in and help to shape. However, while many service learning initiatives help to facilitate a critical engagement with the reality of overwhelming inequities, many more simply provide students an opportunity to volunteer and perform community service, or worse; a quasi-internship with no clear link to the intellectual apprehension and practical amelioration of social injustice.(1) Service learning typically involves a classroom setting (from middle school to university level) and the participation of students in a community service project. The instructor may act as a facilitator, helping the students integrate the service experience back into the classroom and beyond. It is our contention that, while school-sponsored community service often provides an enlightening and rewarding experience for participants, service learning in general and critical service learning in particular may furnish educators and students with an important opportunity to integrate and facilitate the ideals of a more radical democratic engagement with one's society. In other words, democracy can be viewed as a radical social practice that requires one to take a critical inventory of one's social location in terms of power and privilege and by understanding our relationship and responsibilities to others.(2) This paper looks at the value and usefulness of expanding a particular approach to service learning in the educational setting. As a result of our participation in a service learning project (as a requirement of a graduate seminar in our Cultural Studies in Education course-work) and reflection on our subsequent involvement with a library project in an economically disadvantaged housing community near the University of Tennessee, we have posed the following questions that we hope will guide our inquiry: Does service learning matter in education? Should one take issues of social justice seriously? And finally, can service learning projects, informed by cultural studies, help move us toward a more conversant and engaged society? As a consequence of personal experience, review of current literature, and an immersion in social theory, we contextualize and explore the increased utilization of service learning in the world of education. Using our experience at the Winton Homes Library (WHL)(3) as a departure point for our analysis, we have developed a four-step framework of critical service learning from a cultural studies perspective. In addition to evaluating the merits of this four-step framework, we share some of the ideas that emerged as our involvement in the project continued. While the analysis of the WHL itself excavates many important issues of social difference, we highlight the interplay between faith-based organizations and particular social justice agendas as an example of the kind of evaluation and interpretation that is demanded by a critical service learning approach. …