Blaming Me, Blaming You: Assessing Service Learning and Participants' Tendency to Blame the Victim

Abstract

This study uses a comparative case study to explore the effect of service learning on the political socialization of participants and, in particular, on participants' patterns of blame attribution. Although numerous scholars have acclaimed the benefits of service learning, others have suggested that involving students in service learning may actually reinforce their tendency to blame victims of social problems for their own conditions. Little research has considered the role of service learning in the political social-ization of America's youth and how it might relate to the political intolerance that characterizes the current era. The study suggests that two different approaches to service learning have very different impacts on students' attitudes toward the poor and how they explain the associated conditions and stresses the need for structure in service learning activities. The author discusses the possible implications of these findings for contemporary research on adolescent political socialization.