Service-Learning as a Political Act in Education

• In Event: (Re)Imagining a Liberatory Pedagogy

Abstract

The notion of service has enjoyed historical longevity—rooted deeply within our institutions (i.e., churches, schools, government, military, etc.), reminiscent of indentured servitude, and rarely questioned as a colonizing practice that upholds and produces oppression. As a result, the sacrosanctity awarded and commonsensically given to service must be challenged and understood within its colonial, historical, philosophical, and ideological machinations. Service and by extension its contemporary counterpart—service learning, lives in, moves in, and embeds itself within disenfranchised bicultural communities. It does not live in, move in, or even visit spaces of affluence. This leads to the recognition that service is predicated upon the possession of an inferiorized group. Accordingly, the recent emergences of critical forms of service learning fall short as they uphold the structure of a one-sided, unidirectional practice that does not question why those that are privileged are never the recipients of “service” or in need of “help”.



Paulo Freire (1970) maintained that any approach to the oppressed by the elites was, as a consequence, couched in terms of false generosity. Darder (2002) referred to Freire’s notion of false generosity as a “feigned benevolent concern” for those that are poor and culturally diverse, which in turn strips away their power and identity, directly interfering with their ability to act on their own behalf. Freire (1970) argued, that education is a political act and by extension, the service learning discourse is political, too. To state that service learning is a political act is to unveil the hidden dimensions that have constructed the practice and insulated it into depoliticizing realms that further uphold the status quo. Service learning as a political act, then, must be understood at the nexus of its dialectical tension, in that according to Darder (2015a), it functions as either “a politicizing (or depoliticizing) institutional process” (p. 8) that can socialize students into the dominant ideologies that inform the phenomenon.



In concert with Freire’s emancipatory quest for true generosity, this radical political project embodies a Darderean approach to cultural democracy and liberation that is rooted in critical bicultural pedagogy (Darder, 1991, 2012) and decolonizing interpretive methodology (Darder, 2016). This research examines the phenomenon of service learning through a critical decolonizing interpretive analysis (Darder, 2015b) that unveils dominant epistemologies and supports a conceptual rethinking of hegemonic norms. Within the culture of service learning, dominant epistemologies support commonsense practices and protect the interests of actors within it. It is this hegemonic mechanism of knowledge construction that silences or dismisses non-Western epistemological traditions born out of lived histories of struggle. Therefore, what is most crucial for the service learning movement is that critical bicultural voices be brought to the front and center of the dialogue. Removing the service learning veil of privilege will allow for the deconstruction necessary, in order to not only peel back the layers of oppressive practices within this educational movement, but to make a place for the voices of historically dispossessed populations, who remain, unfortunately, the targets of what Freire (1970) termed false generosity.

Author

• Kortney Hernandez, California State University - Los Angeles