The (Un)Sustainability of Community Service: A Service Worker's Assessment
As we witnessed a historic presidential election, one devoted to, among myriad other platforms, national service, I embarked on a one year commitment to Detroit and its surrounding communities via AmeriCorps. Primarily, my job would be tutoring students in Detroit's public schools in hopes of creating a functional and quantitative parity between Detroit's students' cognitive development and national averages. As the program progressed, it became apparent to me that the notion of “community service” was merely a concept of utility. Seemingly, the premise is designed for an individual to satisfy a temporary commitment to communal values, then pass the proverbial torch on to another individual or group. Performing “community service” has become as mechanical as assembly production; in my case, tutoring a child from 8-5 is ostensibly no different than the robotic production of any commodity. Consequently, community values such as mutualism and interdependency are absent from community-based volunteer service. More disturbingly, though, is the absence of humanism from what has turned out to be a statistically-oriented sector. Ultimately, my program's litmus for success is quota satisfactions: teams are placed in schools assigned with the tasks of increasing students' grades through tutoring and enticing them to attend after-school programs; at the end of the year, each category is compared against minimum–corporate–statistical standards which determine whether or not specific teams receive funding and are invited back the following year; if an invitation is not extended, or corporate sponsors philanthropically withdraw, the schools receiving service become jetsam, left for decay amongst other jettisoned community buildings in order to maintain institutional financial buoyancy.
Contrary to my program's proclamation that its primary concern with combating systemic impediments prohibiting students' “potential” is its collusion with systemic inequities that perpetuate the growing problem of drop-outs and collegiate unpreparedness. In addition to the problem of quota prioritization, an equally, if not more, eminent concern is the concession to pedagogical impotence. As teams enter their schools, team members' primary focus is shadowing classroom pedagogy in tutoring sessions. Rather than having the latitude to relate to students in ways that are uniquely applicable to their communal and environmental circumstances, tutors must replicate the monolithic indoctrination of students with mind-numbing information. Unfortunately, the concept of educating students is predicated on repetition and mimesis. Learning basic skills is important and in order to do so often involves repetitive learning; unfortunately, curricula beyond early cognitive development do not break from this pattern. It is no wonder, then, that students, as many have before our current generation, prefer more stimulating alternatives to memorizing facts that serve no purpose in their lives. While, indeed, government subsidized community service is an important aspect in fulfilling humanistic obligations, its misdirected nature tends to both arrest the development of meaningful community relationships and promulgate a diffuse social climate (note: I should point out that the concern expressed with my government program does not imply all similar programs are deficient; just the same, I believe that there is a lesson to be learned regardless of their competence or incompetence).
The point of contention underlying automatous government programs is seemingly veiled behind the notion that a simple one or two year contract filling vacant jobs or dedication to ailing economies is part of a collective panacea in resolving social issues. However, a collective group of national volunteers being placed in community homes, schools, and offices in an effort to either enhance employment qualifications, react to sympathy, minimize leisure time, or simply contribute to “the cause” can often times possess a superficial aura. In my experience with AmeriCorps since the job began, the work that is accomplished daily tendentiously perpetuates this superficiality: it is not sustainable, but rather a maintenance of the institutional deficiencies that continue, for example, to promote poor academic performance and academic apathy. A veteran Detroit activist aptly explained to me recently that one of the program's biggest flaws is that it is remedial. As a result, it is more inclined to regress and eventually stagnate because its primary focal point is retrospective. Until recently, I also ascribed to remediality in attempting to address and resolve social problems. What has become apparent, though, is how inadequate this approach truly is. This is not to say that engaging in historical legacies and inequities is malapropos, but it is to suggest that historical recovery is not what is needed in pursuing progress. Contemporization of social problems that have hypertrophied due to historical neglect is much needed at this nexus of history and future. Recognition of what has not worked in the past in order to move forward is how history should be addressed. We are in need of creative dynamisms that will propel developmental progress, even if that means the disruption of pre-existing systems onto which many of us still grasp. Education is one field in desperate need of this transformation. In order for sustenance to be realized, programs such as mine must pursue new paradigms that will impede the stasis it is maintaining.
One of the primary factors contributing to the terminal nature of the service I perform is that, again, there is no immediate goal identified to buttress the students' performance. As high-school drop-out rates continue to rise at exponential rates, a greater level of importance needs to be associated with education beyond anachronistic explanations that suggest making these motions is the only option available if one is to be successful. These blanket statements, though, neglect the possibility of more meaningful education. As technology grows and plays a larger part in our daily lives, incorporating technological advances into school curricula would be one emendative option that associates greater significance to the material being learned. Indeed, technological equipment is expensive and difficult to acquire, especially with a drying resource budget. However, incorporating cinematographic media in developmental learning, or at least granting students the flexibility to respond visually to assignments, may enhance the value placed on education. Moreover, moving beyond archaic pedagogies that produce proficiencies in histories, mathematics, and language arts that are inapplicable to students' lives is of immediate importance if education is to be considered worthwhile. These subjects must not be grappled with abstractly, but concretely: how do they apply to the students' daily lives at home and in their communities? Most importantly, the lessons must not be restricted to traditional classroom settings; they must be conducted outside of the classroom, in local and peripheral communities within the city's radius. Lastly, providing students the opportunity to teach their lessons, establish their pedagogical styles, will create a more dynamic, engaging, and developmental class from which all–faculty included–will benefit.
Beyond attempting to overcome pedagogical inadequacies, my program has made little effort in transcending the systemic contradictions that preclude meaningful communal transformation. Moreover, its participants–myself included–have been effectively eliminated from contributing to a positive transformation. Despite numerous efforts to understand and work with my program's philosophy, those of us interested enough in seeing it become better than it is have simply been silenced. While this is indeed frustrating, such experiences lend further credence to the ineffectiveness of government sponsorship. At an orientation session during the early stages of my program, one of the directors explained that in pursuing the program's mission, its goal was to create the most effective, idyllic democracy in order to maximize its objectives' efficacy. Similar rhetoric was espoused during my interview, during conversations with recruitment managers and other volunteers, and continues to be articulated on websites and other promotional media. Not only do such conceptual abstractions leave one confused–as I have been–as to how to reify success, but the question to be asked following such lofty articulations is: whose democracy, and how is democracy defined? Given the democratic failures of so many individuals and communities, is the gratuitous development of democratic principles appropriate, and will it be effective? Indeed, democratic values and principles effectuated the blighted conditions many Detroit public schools experience and the reason my program exists in the first place. Are democratic principles truly the foundation on which service organizations should be built? Or possibly, this democratic promotion is in the interest of government subsidized programs as blight secures jobs and revenue. As democracy in the critical context is correlative with capital gain, is profiteering and, its counterpart, exploitation, a sustainable service for communities' welfare?
In addition to abstract manifestations regarding realizing success, the program appropriates the values of notable figures such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mohandas Gandhi in its endorsement of community-based work (i.e., “the beloved community”) and embodying love (i.e., “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind”). While on paper the program's values seem to match mine in numerous ways, its praxis, paradoxically, contradicts its theory. As many of us have learned, though, the pen of the law and spirit of the law do not always parallel one another. The (mis)appropriation of committed humanitarians such as King and Gandhi has created a sour taste in the mouths of quite of few of my co-workers as they question whether or not its utilization of these images can possibly be idyllic or merely a matter of duplicitous exploitation. Unable to maintain King's ideological beloved community, my program's commitment to the communities in which it is placed is negligible, rarely working outside of the schools served to build the strong community relationships it suggests is important to forge. In the name of “being the change we wish to see in the world,” the question I pose to my program is how can you possibly catalyze change while simultaneously satisfying corporate financiers, who themselves have no obligation to the communities in which they are embedded? How can mere words, not action, produce a meaningful transformation in any community?
In attempting to resolve the dichotomy between actively developing community relationships and promoting community sustenance, and perpetuating the machinations of impersonal community interactions, I believe it is important that government subsidized community service programs devote significant time to a tripartite agenda:
- Create a venue for honest, meaningful discourse, that will identify both the incipient and immediate missions of the organization, and how those missions will be able to immediately impact the communities with whom the organization is working, as well as build a foundation for moving forward.
- Narrow the scope of the mission so that it is not as abstract, diffuse, and incapable of being realized; goals should be established, but ones that are easily attainable within the duration of the program's contract. It is important to keep in mind that these goals should be concrete, not intangible concepts such as promoting and perpetuating an “effective democracy.”
- Most importantly, government subsidized organizations must work with existing programs in communities that are being “served.” One of the most vicious agents of division is the sense of anonymity, arrogance, and self-interest (e.g., directors at my program recently acknowledged that my program was the premier service organization in Detroit; not only is this statement hyperbolic, but it is illegitimate as my program neither collaborates nor is familiar with all community-based programs in the city). Government sponsored community service programs must understand that in order to transform the communities in which they work, such an arduous task presupposes the cooperation with all other community organizations and members. Additionally, the discursive venues that are created should be open to all organizations and members, and the missions of the subsidized organizations should be synchronized with those groups and individuals.
While government sponsored volunteer programs are positive steps towards progress, they also have the potential and tendency to inhibit the type of progress that must occur at this point in post-industrial history. Institutional processes are mechanistic, like rotating cogs, so maybe it is not terribly surprising that government subsidized “community service” programs are mechanical as well. However, in order to humanistically enhance such programs, there must be greater collaboration amongst all communal agents; there must be a contemporary assessment of the direction of these communities, and of this country; and there must be a greater commitment to conflating the espousal of ideals and their practice. In order to fully benefit from the programs that we will see in greater prominence over the next few years, there must be increased accountability amongst these programs, not just to their federal and corporate sponsors, but to the communities they serve.
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