Connecting Past and Present: Concepts and Models for Service Learning in History

221 Pages·2000·8.659 MB·English

by  Ira Harkavy, Bill M. Donovan

Stylus_ConnectPastPresent_PB 8/20/05 12:28 PM Page 1
AAHE’S SERIES ON SERVICE-LEARNING IN THE DISCIPLINES
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AAHE’S SERIES ON SERVICE-LEARNING IN THE DISCIPLINES ER
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Connecting Past and Present: Concepts and C
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Models for Service-Learning in History -
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One in a series of 18 volumes covering a range of specific
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Connecting
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Series Editor HE Past and Present

Edward Zlotkowskiis professor of English and founding director of D
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the Service-Learning Project at Bentley College. S
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History Volume Editors P
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Bill M.Donovanis associate professor of history at Loyola College N
E Concepts and Models
in Baltimore,Maryland.He is a specialist in early modern Atlantic S
history and the history of the Portuguese Empire.He has been a
Fulbright Fellow to Brazil and a 1997 Vasco da Gama Lecturer for Service-Learning
sponsored by the Portuguese Commission on the Discoveries.His
publications include the award-winning article “Gypsies in Early
Modern Portugal and Changing Conceptions of Social Deviancy” in History
and essays on early modern crime,immigration,and trade.
Ira Harkavyis director of the Center for Community Partnerships
and associate vice president at the University of Pennsylvania.He
teaches in the departments of history,urban studies,and city and
regional planning,and is executive editor of Universities and
Community Schools.The West Philadelphia Improvement Corps Ira Harkavy and Bill M. Donovan, editors
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(WEPIC),a 15-year partnership to create university-assisted
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community schools that connect the University of Pennsylvania s
and the West Philadelphia community,emerged and developed t
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from seminars and research projects he directs with other r DUCATION•PSYCHOLOGY•COMPOSITION•ACCOUNTING•SOCIOLOGY•NURSING•PEACESTUDIES•ENV
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AAHE'S SERIES ON SERVICE-LEARNING IN THE DISCIPLINES
Concepts and Models
for Service-learning
in History
HarK8vy and Bill M. Donovan, volume editors
Edward Zlotkowski, series editor
STERLING, VIRGINIA
Originally published by AAHE
15573 Connecting Past . . . 8/11/05 3:55 PM Page 2
Connecting Past and Present: Concepts and Models for Service-Learning in History
(AAHE‘s Series on Service-Learning in the Disciplines)
Ira Harkavy and Bill M. Donovan, volume editors
Edward Zlotkowski, series editor
About This Publication
This volume is part of AAHE’s Series on Service-Learning in the Disciplines. Copyright © 2000
American Association for Higher Education. Copyright © 2005 Stylus Publishing, LLC. All rights
reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information about additional copies of
this publication or other AAHE or Stylus publications, contact:
Stylus Publishing, LLC.
22883 Quicksilver Drive
Sterling, VA 20166-2102
Tel.: [phone] / Fax: [phone] ISBN 1-56377-020-2
www.Styluspub.com ISBN (set) 1-56377-005-9
15573 Connecting Past . . . 8/11/05 3:55 PM Page 2
Contents
About This Series
Edward Zlotkowski .......................................................................................................................................................v
Introduction
Ira Harkavy and Bill M. Donovan ................................................................................................................................1
Part 1
Perspectives on History and Service-Learning
Service-Learning as a Strategy for Advancing the Contemporary
University and the Discipline of History
Bill M. Donovan .............................................................................................................................................................1 1
Service-Learning, Academically Based Community Service, and the
Historic Mission of the American Urban Research University
Ira Harkavy ....................................................................................................................................................................2 7
Emerson's Prophecy
John Saltmarsh ............................................................................................................................................................4 3
Service-Learning and History: Training the Metaphorical Mind
J. Matthew Gallman ....................................................................................................................................................6 1
Part 2
Case Studies: American History
The Turnerian Frontier: A New Approach to the Study
of the American Character
Michael Zuckerman .....................................................................................................................................................8 3
Reflections of a Historian on Teaching a Service-Learning Course
About Poverty and Homelessness in America
Albert Camarillo ......................................................................................................................................................... .103
Connecting Past and Present: Concepts and Models for Service-Learning in History History as Public Work
(AAHE‘s Series on Service-Learning in the Disciplines)
Elisa von Joeden-Forgey and John Puckett .........................................................................................................1 17
Ira Harkavy and Bill M. Donovan, volume editors
Edward Zlotkowski, series editor Reclaiming the Historical Tradition of Service
in the African-American Community
About This Publication
Beverly W. Jones .......................................................................................................................................................1 39
This volume is part of AAHE’s Series on Service-Learning in the Disciplines. Copyright © 2000
American Association for Higher Education. Copyright © 2005 Stylus Publishing, LLC. All rights
reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information about additional copies of
this publication or other AAHE or Stylus publications, contact:
Stylus Publishing, LLC.
22883 Quicksilver Drive
Sterling, VA 20166-2102
Tel.: [phone] / Fax: [phone] ISBN 1-56377-020-2
www.Styluspub.com ISBN (set) 1-56377-005-9
15573 Connecting Past . . . 8/11/05 3:55 PM Page 1
Part 3
Case Studies: Latin-American and European History
Service-Learning as a Tool of Engagement:
From Thomas Aquinas to Che Guevara
Bill M. Donovan ..........................................................................................................................................................1 49
Serving and Learning in the Chilean Desert
Marshall C. Eakin .......................................................................................................................................................1 59
Classical Studies and the Search for Community
Ralph M. Rosen ..........................................................................................................................................................1 73
The Unspoken Purposes of Service-Learning: Teaching the Holocaust
Steve Hochstadt .........................................................................................................................................................1 89
Appendix
Annotated Bibliography
Bill M. Donovan and John Saltmarsh .................................................................................................................... 199
Contributors to This Volume ........................................................................................................................ 209
STERLING, VIRGINIA
Originally published by AAHE
About This Series
by Edward Zlotkowski
The following volume, Connecting Past and Present: Concepts and Models for
Service-Learning in History, represents the 16th in a series of monographs on
service-learning and the academic disciplines. Ever since the early 1990s,
educators interested in reconnecting higher education not only with neigh
boring communities but also with the American tradition of education for
service have recognized the critical importance of winning faculty support
for this work. Faculty, however, tend to define themselves and their respon
sibilities largely in terms of the academic disciplineslinterdisciplinary areas
in which they have been trained. Hence, the logic of the present series.
The idea for this series first surfaced late in 1994 at a meeting convened
by Campus Compact to explore the feas\ibility of developing a national net
work of service-learning educators. At that meeting, it quickly became clear
that some of those assembled saw the primary value of such a network in
its ability to provide concrete resources to faculty working in or wishing to
explore service-learning. Out of that meeting there developed, under the
auspices of Campus Compact, a new national group of educators called the
Invisible College, and it was within the Invisible College that the monograph
project was first conceived. Indeed, a review of both the editors and contrib
utors responsible for many of the volumes in this series would reveal signif
icant representation by faculty associated with the Invisible College.
If Campus Compact helped supply the initial financial backing and
impulse for the Invisible College and for this series, it was the American
Association for Higher Education (AAHE) that made completion of the proj
ect feasible. Thanks to its reputation for innovative work, AAHE was not only
able to obtain the funding needed to support the project up through actual
publication, it was also able to assist in attracting many of the teacher
scholars who participated as writers and editors. AAHE is grateful to the
Corporation for National Service-Learn and Serve America for its financial
support of the series.
Three individuals in particular deserve to be singled out for their contri
butions. Sandra Enos, former Campus Compact project director for
Integrating Service With Academic Study, was shepherd to the Invisible
College project. John Wallace, professor of philosophy at the University of
Minnesota, was the driving force behind the creation of the Invisible College.
Without his vision and faith in the possibility of such an undertaking,
assembling the human resources needed for this series would have been
very difficult. Third, AAHE's endorsement - and all that followed in its wake
ZLOTKOWSKI V
- was due largely to then AAHE vice president Lou Albert. Lou's enthusiasm
for the monograph project and his determination to see it adequately sup
ported have been critical to its success. It is to Sandra, John, and Lou that the
monograph series as a whole must be dedicated.
Another individual to whom the series owes a special note of thanks is
Teresa E. Antonucci, who, as program manager for AAHE's Service-Learning
Project, has helped facilitate much of the communication that has allowed
the project to move forward.
The Rationale Behind the Series
A few words should be said at this point about the makeup of both the gen
eral series and the individual volumes. Although history may seem a some
what unusual choice of disciplines with which to link service-learning, "nat
ural fit" has not, in fact, been a determinant factor in deciding which disci
plines/interdisciplinary areas the series should include. Far more important
have been considerations related to the overall range of disciplines repre
sented. Since experience has shown that there is probably no disciplinary
area - from architecture to zoology - where service-learning cannot be
fruitfully employed to strengthen students' abilities to become active learn
ers as well as responsible citizens, a primary goal in putting the series
together has been to demonstrate this fact. Thus, some rather natural choic
es for inclusion - disciplines such as anthropology and geography - have
been passed over in favor of other, sometimes less obvious selections, such
as history. Should the present series of volumes prove useful and well
received, we can then consider filling in the many gaps we have left this first
time around.
If a concern for variety has helped shape the series as a whole, a con
cern for legitimacy has been central to the design of the individual volumes.
To this end, each volume has been both written by and aimed primarily at
academics working in a particular disciplinary/interdisciplinary area. Many
individual volumes have, in fact, been produced with the encouragement
and active support of relevant discipline-specific national associations.
Furthermore, each volume has been designed to include its own appro
priate theoretical, pedagogical, and bibliographical material. Especially with
regard to theoretical and bibliographical material, this design has resulted in
considerable variation both in quantity and in level of discourse. Thus, for
example, a volume such as Accounting contains more introductory and less
bibliographical material than does Composition - simply because there is
less written on and less familiarity with service-learning in accounting.
However, no volume is meant to provide an extended introduction to
service-learning as a generic concept. For material of this nature, the reader is
VI HISTORY
referred to such texts as Kendall's Combining Service and Learning: A Resource
Book for Community and Public Ser1Jice (NSEE 1990) and Jacoby's Service-Learning
in Higher Education Uossey-Bass 1996).
February 2000
ZLOTKOWSKI VII

Introduction
by Ira Harkavy and Bill M. Donovan
The question that animates this volume is: Why connect service-learning to
history courses? The authors of its essays answer that question in different
ways. Indeed, this volume illustrates and highlights a diversity of historical
approaches and interpretations. Nonetheless, the authors tend to agree that
they do their jobs better as teachers (and in some cases as researchers) by
engaging their students in service-learning.
Service-learning helps history teachers teach history better for a variety
of reasons. Primary among them, perhaps, is that service-learning courses at
their best tend to focus on pressing real-world problems. Problems such as
poverty, poor schooling, hunger, homelessness, urban crises are troubling
and compelling. Service-learning - by engaging students in activities
designed to help others; to make things better; to contribute to a specified
community, school, or agency - adds an immediacy and relevance that
increase meaning and student motivation. The complex, interrelated real
world problems of real communities are, of course, historical problems -
problems that are profoundly shaped by past events and experience.
Students "discover" this through their reading, activity, and reflection, and
they also "discover" that historical knowledge is essential for understanding
and effective action. Moreover, service-learning engages students in active
doing, thus providing an opportunity for them to put their ideals into prac
tice and make a contribution. It provides (to paraphrase Dewey) a starting
point for history, a present situation with immediate and pressing problems.'
In short, service-learning is a powerful catalyst for historical research and
scholarship.
Integrating service-learning into history courses also leads to new learn
ings and insights for faculty members. In other words, it results in "creative
surprises," unexpected findings and conclusions.' The majority of the
authors in this volume emphasize how their thinking and pedagogy changed
as a result of their developing and teaching a service-learning course.
Historians involved in service-learning courses clearly learn much as they
teach. Based on the "reports from the field" that follow, we believe that it is
not extravagant to claim that service-learning can help historians better
contribute to the core mission of American higher education; namely, to
advance, preserve, and transmit knowledge, as well as help produce the
well-educated, cultured, truly moral citizens needed to develop and main
tain an optimally democratic society.
This volume begins with four essays that provide different takes on histo-
INTRODUCTION 1