Kahne & Westheimer Quotes

The article titled "In The Service Of What? The Politics of Service Learning" written by Joseph Kahne and Joel Westheimer discusses the purpose, goals, and outcomes of service learning projects for students. For this blog post, I've chosen three quotes I found important from the article and explained their relevance.

Quote #1 - "Educators and legislators alike maintain that service learning can improve the community and invigorate the classroom, providing rich educational experiences for students at all levels of schooling. Service learning makes students active participants in service projects that aim to respond to the needs of the community while furthering the academic goals of students"
I chose this quote because it explains in great detail what a service learning project does for not only the community, but the student as well. It also appears at the beginning of the article and introduces the topic. In our class, we are helping the Providence community by volunteering in various classrooms for less fortunate students. We are gaining insight on social, economic, and cultural aspects of society while gaining experience for our future in the field of education.

Quote #1 - "Ms. Adams' students, by contrast, began their work with a systematic and critical analysis of the causes of homelessness and the strategies employed to prevent it. The class discussed the growing economic disparity between rich and poor, the impact of homelessness on children, and the difficult balance between individual rights and collective responsibility."
I chose this quote because Ms. Adams class reminds me much of our class in the way they analyzed and discussed the reasons for homelessness before taking action to help aid the issue. In our class, we talked about poverty and the economic barriers to education before going to our placement in schools where these issues are present.

Quote #3 - "Almost all discussions of service learning practices emphasize the importance of reflection. For the most part, however, descriptions of reflective activities do not include the kind of critical analysis that might help students step outside dominant understandings to find new solutions."
I found this quote intriguing in the fact that a lot of what we have been doing in class has indeed been reflection. 

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