Agent of Democracy - Society for College and University Planning

Agent of Democracy
use Deweyan vocabulary, the public is the population when it deliberates
and acts on common concerns. As Maria Farland noted in HEX:
Despite the enormous diversity of approaches that
characterize the new public mindedness among today’s
academic professionals, there is ample evidence that
“the public” has emerged as a common concern in fields
as diverse as urban planning and English literature. 12
To prize civil society and deliberation is to take a political
stance that is open-ended about outcomes, but strongly committed
to values like participation, equity in discussion, freedom of speech,
civility, and problem solving.
New Forms of Public Work
When Boomer intellectuals, increasingly focused on public
deliberation and civil society, encountered young people who were
disillusioned with formal, state-centered politics (but optimistic about
the potential of “service”), the two generations began to experiment
with innovative forms of voluntary public work that exemplified
their new theories of citizen-centered deliberative democracy.
The most prevalent example was service learning, defined as an
intentional combination of community service with reflection on the
same issue or topic. The phrase seems to have been coined in 1967. 13
By then, there was already a rich history of such work, including
the Settlement House movement, the Appalachian Folk Schools (of
which Highlander was most famous), and the Civilian Conservation
Corps, which provided formal civic education programs connected to
service work. 14 However, service learning grew and was institutionalized
rapidly in higher education during the 1980s and 1990s, partly
20
12 Maria Farland, “Academic Professionalism and the New Public Mindedness,”
Higher Education Exchange (1996): 54.
13 Peter Titlebaum, Gabrielle Williamson, Corinne Daprano, Janine Baer, and
Jayne Brahler, “The Annotated History of Service-Learning: 1862-2002” at
http://www.servicelearning.org/welcome_to_service-learning/history/
index.php (accessed August 8, 2007).
14 Melissa Bass, “National Service in America: Policy (Dis)Connections Over
Time” (CIRCLE Working Paper 11) and “Civic Education through National Service”
(CIRCLE Working Paper 12).