Toward a Civil Society: Civic Literacy and Service Learning

by C. David Lisman

Overview

Addressing the need for marshaling the resources of education to help promote a more civil society, this book argues that education has a critical role to play in challenging the dominant views of politics and education. Service learning, or academically based community service,is seen as a promising educational pedagogy that can help students acquire civic virtue and serve as a mechanism to enable institutions of higher education become stronger community partners. However, there is currently is a lack of theoretical grounding for the service-learning movement; consequently,service learning is in danger of being co-opted by academic traditionalism, which could vitiate service learning's social transformative potential and in fact undermine efforts at democratic revitalization.

The author provides a basic explanation of service learning and how it is connected to promoting civic virtue. It examines the underlying public philosophy debate between weak and strong democracy theorists, or procedural and civic republicanism. This book argues that certain approaches to service learning, such as the voluntarist or charity model, the experiential education model, and the justice model are ineffective because of their association with weak democracy theory or procedural republicanism. The central argument of this book is that a progressive communitarian public philosophy maintaining that individuals attain meaning and significance in the context of community is the most appropriate grounding for service learning.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780897895675
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	08/30/1998
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

C. DAVID LISMAN is Professor of Philosophy at the Community College of Aurora in Colorado. He has served on several national projects with the American Association of Community Colleges and the Campus Compact National Center for Community Colleges and is the author of The Curricular Integration of Ethics (Praeger, 1996), Beyond the Tower: Philosophy in Service Learning (forthcoming), and co-author of Promoting Community Renewal Through Civic Literacy and Service Learning (1996).

Table of Contents

The Need for a Civil Society
The Concept of the Civil Society and Weak and Strong Democracy
Service Learning
Service Learning as Volunteerism and the Neo-Conservative Theory of Civic Literacy
Service Learning as Experiential Education and Consumerist Politics
Service Learning as Justice
Service Learning and Strong Democracy
A Community-Development Approach to Service-Learning
Principles and Best Practices of Campus and Community Partnership
The Social Responsibilities of Higher Education
References
Index

Editorial Reviews

Realistically examines the potential of academically-based community service as a force for civic development. The author explains basic aspects of service learning while discussing ways that education innovation can be more effective in promoting civic literacy. Criticizing privatism and the hegemonic values of corporate America, he argues for more thorough social analysis that understands concerns such as racism and unemployment in terms of their root causes. Distributed by Greenwood Press. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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