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attitude of government toward a particular group or about a particular problem. Through
service learning, students seemed to realize that the government’s reluctance to foster and
encourage individual engagement in community institutions affected the particular issues
they were studying. However, due to the structural analysis provided in the course,
students also seemed to realize the limits of community organization and community
service:
•
I don’t see community service as particularly effective means to achieve
the goals of economic, racial, gender equality, or any sort of widespread
social injustice. I think that problems are so out of hand that many of them
will never be solved without some commitment from the
government…Working for CRA (Chicago Recovery Alliance) drove this
point home for me. While we were helping users, we were viewed by
‘legitimate’ authorities, particularly police, as downright subversive. It
was hard to miss the political implications.
A more interesting question is whether or not these types of service activities encourage
students to participate in other forms of political engagement. This paper cannot even
attempt to assess this “spillover effect” from service to political action. However, there
were a few students that indicated the course also helped foster a sense of civic
engagement in the political process not directly related to their service or the particular
topic studied (for example a few students suggested that the service-learning experience
had lead to volunteer in political campaigns unrelated to HIV/AIDS).
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The third element in an effective pedagogical model of service learning must
deconstruct the discourse of service learning in order to expose the political/power
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There are significant individual and social “derivative” or side benefits associated to teaching such
course as well. For example in my course students quickly learn that HIV/AIDS does not discriminate and
that their own sexual behavior may put them at risk. Certainly, a significant economic and social pay off.
Convention