Dear Larry,
I'm not exactly sure what the purpose of the book popularity contest was.
The books mentioned the most often are, not surprisingly, the ones with
the most authors who are members of the network and who also happen to be
in positions in the service learning hierarchy or who have been annointed
gurus of this new "movement". So now we know which
authors and their friends are on the network. Is this what we are about?
The Colorado site has an excellent bibliography. Perhaps what would be
useful would be to further annotate that list on the basis of:
-- types of syllabi offered;
-- whether the work is created by students or faculty;
-- whether there are outlines of proposals for funding or accreditation;
-- whether there is financial advice on managing programs in the books;
-- how various books present the very different conceptions of service
learning so that we can think critically about them;
-- which books include assessment models of learning of skills and
concepts of various disciplines;
-- which alternatives are developed by the community;
-- which books discuss education theory or democratic theory; and so on.
Or perhaps we can open debate on particular books and
critiques/alternatives on a regular basis, so that the listserv operates
as a kind of electronic seminar.
As someone coming to "service learning" as an educator who was as
frustrated by classroom education as I was by most internships and
packaged programs, I feel uncomfortable with any kind of movement towards
a "best" approach or a "best" set of books or about who the most
inspirational guru happens to be. I thought we were about
creating the most diverse approach to meet the greatest variety of needs
in the most informed way, on the basis of full sets of measurements, with
learning as our fundamental goal and developing active responsible
citizens who can think independently, second.
David H. Lempert, Ph.D., J.D., M.B.A.
Founder and CEO, Unseen America Projects, Inc.
Associate Professor (Adjunct)
George Washington University
226 9th Street, SE, Suite 2
Washington, DC 20003
202-544-2445
914-693-6823