Monthly Archives: November 2003

service-learning research

Salt Lake City: I gave the keynote luncheon address today at the International

Service-Learning Research Conference. I argued that we need research

to test whether service-learning (i.e., combinations of community service

with academic study) works as well or better than competing approaches

to civic education. The best way to prove causality is an experiment

in which students are randomly assigned to the "treatment"

(here, service-learning) or to a control group, and then the two groups

are compared. That’s the "gold standard," although there are

ways to approximate random selection if it proves to be impossible.

There has never been anything like a random experiment to test whether

(or how well) service-learning works as civic education.

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Dean and the working class

In JFK Airport, en route to Salt Lake City: Two decisions regarding

the Dean presidential campaign appear imminent. Gov.

Dean is likely to refuse federal funding (thus gaining the freedom to

spend unlimited private money); and he is expected to receive the endorsement

of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU, pronounced "see

you"). These events are symptomatic of the collapse of a set of

institutions that, 20 years ago, amplified the political voice of ordinary

people. In those days, federal funding for presidential campaigns was

adequate to replace private money, so there were no big donors in presidential

politics. Everyone counted the same under the presidential campaign

finance system. As for major unions, they had a powerful influence on

the institutional Democratic party and supported candidates with whom

they had lasting relationships—politicians who had risen through

the political ranks mainly because of organized labor. Today, SEIU evidently

thinks that it cannot afford to support the man who best fits that description,

Dick Gephardt, because his chances of winning the presidency are too

low. Instead, they are backing someone who owes them nothing, who has

never had much to do with them, but who has harnessed mostly white-collar

support through clever use of the Internet and a strong anti-War stance.

Evidently, they think Gov. Dean has the best chance of winning and they

want to have some leverage over him.

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Renaissance humanism today

I think that Renaissance humanist philosophy is often

misunderstood; and this mistake matters to me because I favor a revival

of the real methods of the humanists. The standard view is that Renaissance

humanists taught original doctrines, especially the "dignity

of man" that was the theme of Marsilio

Ficino‘s famous oration. They are thought to be "humanists"

because they believed in the centrality of human beings as opposed to

God.

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“progressives” are conservative

My Oct. 30 entry argues that

today’s "progressives" are best understood as conservatives,

seeking to maintain a set of institutions that they do not believe are

well designed, but which they prefer to the speculative market alternatives

promoted by the Right. I did not mean this as a criticism, since such

conservatism is valuable. Edmund Burke taught that we should hesitate

to overturn interrelated social systems that have evolved over generations;

they embody the experience of the people who have learned to live with

them. It is easy to prove that their design is inefficient or inequitable,

compared to some chalkboard alternative. But radical changes often go

awry. On these grounds, Burke rightly preferred the Old Regime in France,

for all its aribitrary, wasteful, unjust features, to the revolutionary

system that fell apart after it had cost millions of lives. Similarly,

I respect people who believe that public schools, unions, and welfare

programs are better than the radical alternatives suggested by economic

theory. The problem with progressivism is not that it is wrong. Rather,

it is politically and rhetorically weak, for it’s always difficult to

win elections with a grudging defense of the status quo.

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community mapping

I spent this morning walking around Hyattsville, MD, with high school kids, who were entering data about each street segment into Palm Pilots. We want to collect information that will help us see what features of each block make it attractive or unattractive for walking. For example, are the sidewalks clear and continuous? How much vegetation is there? Are there curb cuts? Is there an incline? We will later collect information about (a) people’s eating and exercise habits; and (b) the availability of various types of food and recreation in the neighborhood. When we put everything together, we should be able to build a statistical model showing what features of the local environment influence people’s choices to walk and buy food. We’ll also be able to generate public maps showing where one can walk most safely and buy the healthiest food in the community.