Many people mistake community service as service learning. Perhaps they feel that learning is automatic when one performs community service. Often, organisations send out students to help underprivileged children with their school work - without training, supervision, or followup. It is valuable service of benefit to the children. But it is doubtful whether the student tutors are learning something significant, and what exactly they are learning.
On the other hand, we may send our students to do a study on the difficulties faced by underprivileged children in their schooling - with prior training on the method of study, proper support throughout the study, and structured reflection in follow-up. Our student researchers certainly learn a lot from the project. But what is the benefit to the children under study?
However, when we combine the two together, it may make a balanced, challenging, impactful, and fruitful service-learning project.
The first two are not necessary bad things to do. It is just that they are not balanced. But they can be improved.
Unfortunately, many unworthy things are also done in the name of service-learning. For example, many organisations claim to organise service-learning trips to exotic foreign countries. They may spend an afternoon singing and playing games at a primary school in Sri Lanka, for example. For the rest of the one-week trip, they visit temples, beaches, watching fishermen catch their fish in their special ways, and other tourist attractions. And they call it service-learning. The students are happy because it is fun. Their parents are happy because they think their children are doing a good deed. But this is FAKE service-learning. And it is often these kinds of things that give service-learning a bad name.
1 comment:
In the spirit of "勿以善小而不爲", I guess I wouldn't necessarily call the last one fake. It could be a stepping stone to something bigger and better.
I agree that a balanced approach would be the best, and I wonder if you have any advice on how to maintain that balance. I also wonder if there are situations where one of the two ("service" and "learning") takes a higher priority over the other.
Following the analogy of "chocolate milk" versus "milk chocolate", it seems that "service learning" is in essence learning enhanced/enriched with service. The whole idea of balance, then, reminds me of this good old TV ad from Vitasoy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RD9fOvviDwo
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