Race, the College Classroom, and Service Learning: A Practitioner's Tale

Abstract

This practitioner's tale is one college professor's account of how service learning might serve as a tool to facilitate meaningful discussions on in an undergraduate course on Social Foundations of Education. It describes the dynamics that tend to unfold in the author's experiences whenever rises to the surface of class discussions and analyzes the impact of service learning on students' thinking about race. The article discusses both the benefits and potential pitfalls of service learning and makes suggestions as to how to help students without the creation or reinforcement of prejudice and unfounded generalizations. Race and ethnicity continue to matter in education just as they do in society at large and, accordingly, it can be argued that teachers must see color and culture in order to be effective (Ladson-Billings, 1994). As Linda Valli (1995) points out, however, the popular seeing color slogan contradicts another belief widespread in educational institutions: You have to be color-blind in order to be fair and see students as individuals rather than stereotypical members of a racial or ethnic group. The tension created by these two, mutually exclusive ideas reflects a dilemma typical of relations as they play out not just inside but beyond the schools. The implication for teacher educators is that they ought to prepare future teachers who are race conscious in the sense that they are able to see the impact of and ethnicity on education without stereotyping. The following practitioner's tale delineates how this tension manifests itself in a college classroom. In particular, it discusses the possible role of one form of experiential learning (service learning) in the process of doing both-talking about (thus seeing color) without reinforcing or even creating new prejudices. In other words, the question addressed in this article is: How can service learning serve as a tool to facilitate meaningful discussions on in the college classroom? The first section describes dynamics in the college classroom that tend to unfold in this author's experience whenever surfaces in class discussions. Subsequent sections of the article discuss the impact of service learning on students' thinking about race. Both benefits and potential pitfalls of service learning are analyzed, followed by suggestions of how to maximize the former and avoid the latter. Definition of Terms Ethnicity can be defined as cultural characteristics shared by a group of people, including religion, ancestry, national origin, and language. Members of an ethnic group may be able to trace their roots to a particular ethnic background or a combination of ethnic backgrounds (Bennett deMarrais & LeCompte, 1995). Even people of different ethnicities-Irish Americans, Italian Americans, or Polish Americans-are seen as belonging to the same race. Race, however, is best understood as a social construction that, as scientists have demonstrated, lacks any credible basis in biology. The construct continues to be important, however, because it powerfully defines a person's social and professional opportunities, privileging some at the expense of others. Culture, furthermore, can be defined as unique ways of doing and thinking about things, including habits, norms, values, rituals, and shared understandings or expectations. Race and ethnicity both have often been used synonymously with culture, as if membership in a racial or ethnic category automatically produces a singular set of cultural idiosyncracies, which it certainly does not. Yet, both and ethnicity tend to have cultural consequences. Just as membership in a particular social class affects one's quality of life, and ethnicity shape people's lives and encourage certain behaviors, mindsets, value systems-in other words, culture. The Significance of Service Learning Service learning is one form of experiential learning, an idea dating as far back as the progressive educator John Dewey (1938) who strongly advocated learning grounded in experience. …