Toward higher learning

Abstract

Toward Higher Learning Frances K. Stage (bio) Rhoads, Robert A. Community Service and Higher Learning: Explorations of the Caring Self. New York: State University of New York Press, 1997. 246 pp. Rhoads, Robert A., and Valadez, James R. Democracy, Multiculturalism, and the Community College: A Critical Perspective. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1996. 231 pp. The recent refocus on learning at the college level has brought with it new consciousness regarding who students are, what they experience while at college, and how we might better serve them. Since Pascarella and Terenzini’s (1991) illumination of the state of research on college students, scholars have concentrated on filling gaps in a rich literature. However, much of the writing on how students learn remains general, discursive, and merely speculative (Stage, Muller, Kinzie, & Simmons, 1998). The two volumes reviewed here, Robert Rhoads’s Community Service and Higher Learning: Explorations of the Caring Self and Rhoads and James Valadez’s Democracy, [End Page 203] Multiculturalism, and the Community College: A Critical Perspective, take us beyond conjecture. Employing a critical approach, the authors describe for us a variety of programs and models designed to promote learning on a range of campuses. Their criticism allows us to learn from others’ mistakes as well as their successes. Additionally, because criticism is easier than creation, the authors conclude by assembling the elements of programs of their own designs, thus inviting critical analyses of these two endeavors as well. In the first book, Community Service and Higher Learning: Explorations of the Caring Self, Rhoads builds his tome on the foundations of the postmodernist call for communities of difference. He sets for himself the task of delineating higher education’s role in the struggle to create such communities. He argues that “fostering a sense of self grounded in an ethic of care is a necessity as our society becomes increasingly diverse and diffuse” (p. 2). The premise is that higher learning, by fostering an ethic of care, can promote a sense of otherness on the part of college students. The book focuses on college students’ knowledge of self derived from involvement in community service activities in a variety of contexts. His analysis invokes the work of symbolic interactionists Blumer (1969), Stone (1962), and Denizen (1977) along with Gilligan’s (1982) notion of relational self. In the second book, Democracy, Multiculturalism, and the Community College: A Critical Perspective, Rhoads and Valadez critically examine community college efforts to serve increasingly diverse college students. Their study is based on three years of research conducted at five community colleges selected for the diverse populations they serve as well as for varied academic programs meeting a wide range of student needs. The analysis, focusing on the multiple roles community colleges necessarily serve, suggests that, contrary to conventional wisdom, simplicity in role definition is not the answer. Rather, for the institutions they showcase, complexity comes closest to serving multiple needs. The authors argue for acceptance of a mission embracing multiple identities with multiculturalism as the connective thread. Together these books provide examples of the circumspection with which we must regard our educational programs and practices if we are to move successfully into the twenty-first century. Learning and Community Service The concept of reflection on experiences and the importance of its role in enhancing learning, while not new, has seen a resurgence in both the higher education literature as well as in practice. While John Dewey (1916) is probably the most widely known of those who have advocated for the [End Page 204] connection, many others have as well (e.g., Gergen, 1991; Vygotsky, 1978). In fact, within the sciences, connecting to academic content through constructivist (Fosnot, 1996) and social constructivist (Vygotsky, 1978) experiences form the basis of individual and group laboratory practices. Much of higher education however, has been reluctant to see the value or the possibility for such experiences—until recently. However, the renewed interest in and focus on learning adds a timeliness and an urgency to the material in Community Service and Higher Learning: Explorations of the Caring Self where Rhoads goes beyond mere advocacy of learning connected to experiences, and seeks ways in which such learning might be maximized. In his volume...