Rethinking Community Service

by Simon

•Simon is a young Bahamian with things on his mind who wishes to remain anonymous. His column 'Front Porch' is published every Tuesday in the Nassau Guardian. He can be reached at frontporchguardian@gmail.com.

We are quite good at mimicking concepts and programmes with little understanding of what they mean and their relevance to The Bahamas. 

By rolling the latest buzz words from our lips or pens many pretend mastery over complex subjects, reducing them to clichés and slogans.  Big words such as sustainability and diversification often get play even when poorly understood.

As recent events in America demonstrate, diversification does not always lead to sustainability, and efficiency and effectiveness are not the same.   It is possible to be quite efficient and absolutely ineffective. 

Still, the larger point is that we too often photocopy ideas, turning them into counterfeit products similar to a Rolex knockoff.  Oh it looks like a Rolex, but eventually things falls apart and the centre will not hold. 

Or, like straw work from overseas which we decorate with raffia then promote as “Made in the Bahamas”, we import various programmes (wholesale) then slap on a local label and retail them. 

THE WHEEL

We should study international models and need not constantly reinvent the wheel.  But putting a 737 jet wheel on a tractor is foolish and expensive.  Failure to indigenize foreign models to suit The Bahamas is like planting seeds in poor soil.  

You may get some crops, but not what you might have gotten had you taken the time to understand the context in which you were planting and the spadework needed to prepare the ground.

Welcome to the world of community service programmes in the majority of our public and private junior and senior high schools, which we began to import in earnest from the U.S. in the 1990s.  Some added the word learning and promoted community service learning (CSL). 
Our intentions, though good, remained a pell-mell of vague notions never developed into a compelling vision.  You cannot develop a vision or a plan on a concept you never understood or about which there was no consensus. 

For some politicians, national or community service was a box to check-off to show that they were doing something about or for young people.  For others, it was something that bad kids did after getting into trouble.  So, cleaning the school yard became an easy form of community service. 

While some schools have had notable successes, service programmes in the public and private systems have generally failed.  Most are ad hoc, content-lite, poorly administered and uncreative.

Most lack broad public support including that of parents, students and teachers,  and typically fail to meet genuine community service needs in the country.

THE CORE

At its core community service learning (CSL) is a rite of passage that inculcates in our young people the art and practices of citizenship and civil society in a community that needs their current and life-long service. 

Community service is not a kind of do-goodism to help participants feel better about themselves or punishment for bad behaviour or an extracurricular add-on.  It is a values programme that is rigorous and potentially life-changing. 

It is as essential to teach English and math as it is to teach students the habits of good citizenship.  But as bad as the “community service” part has often been, most schools have little clue regarding the “learning” part.

The learning component should help students to reflect on their community involvement, including the service they rendered, the failures and triumphs they experienced, the talents they discovered and what comes next.

A young person who helped restore wetlands and picked up more discarded plastic bags than she can remember is a new kind of citizen, with burning questions:

How are my actions and those of others contributing to our environmental problems?  What should I say to family or friends the next time they use a road or a beach or a front yard or a wetland as a trash can? 

What kind of career can I have that might help to keep “My Bahamas” beautiful?  This is the other learning piece most of our schools don’t get.  A young person with these kinds of new questions needs a place to discover possible answers.

He may find it in a science class that teaches marine biology.  Or he may find it in a music class that teaches him to turn his questions into lyrics and melodies that will inspire his generation to action.

ADULT ACTION

But these youthful discoveries require adult action.  While denominational schools from Prince William to Bahamas Academy to Queen’s College to St. Augustine’s to St. John’s promote community service, they have generally failed to translate this rhetoric into substantial action.

Notably, some of the private secular schools have a better track record of community service than many of the named schools.

Still, some of these private non-denominational schools often demonstrate a mindset more comfortable with charitable outreach and less committed to the exploration of various justice issues including the role of privilege in society and the importance of genuine solidarity as opposed to noblesse oblige.

Community service is not simply a matter of doing something for someone else.  It is a relationship in which the one served and the one serving discover possibilities and horizons because of their encounter.

If our schools only teach our youth how to make a living, while neglecting to teach them how to make a life worth living, their community service efforts while admirable are insufficient.

Bill Gates and Warren Buffet certainly know how to make a living.  But the unprecedented gift of most of their wealth to improving global health and learning suggest that they want to leave behind an example of a life worth living as well as making life worth living for millions who suffer from disease, poverty and neglect.
If the good life is primarily a matter of material success, we have generally been successful as a country.  But if the good life also involves teaching successive generations about civic pride and the common good through programmes like community service learning we often fail to make the grade.

In a Bahamas that is increasingly becoming less civic-minded and civil in significant ways as well as more self-absorbed and ignorant of basic civics, the low priority we give to the development of more imaginative and better run community service programmes is not a side issue.  It is a matter of national survival.

Comments

[Willie]

Simon,,,, I've just read this piece and you have stuck a major chord. Pres Obama made the same point in his inaugural address and called for a return to basic values such as ethics, integrity and service. Just the act of kindness and helping each other like we did in Inagua last summer is going to be badly needed as the economic and social environment gets worse.