Re: Introducing Competition into Service-Learning

I am intrigued with Curt Deberg's desire to introduce competition into the service-learning arena.  I am less concerned with the request for competition than the criteria by which to judge said competition.  I also don't understand the reasoning behind the references to President Bush's call for volunteering and Gov.Davis' desire for  graduation requirements.

Let me start with the President's call for service.  Since the average high school student already contributes between 1-2 hours of service per week, the number of hours of volunteering for an 18 year old, living to just 69, is (you guessed it)...more than 4000 hours.  So the average American already contributes more than 4000 hours over their lifetime.  Is the President asking for another 4000?  If not, he is asking for something that already exists.  And the President is asking citizens to volunteer, not to do service-learning.  I'm not sure what this has to do with competition, unless it is being suggested that people volunteer more....and we measure their self-reported hours.  Perhaps the Anderson accounting firm will verify the authenticity of the hours reported!!

Second, Gov. Davis' request reminds us of what we need to consider when we call something service-learning.  Asking students to do community service as part of their graduation requirement is not asking for service-learning.  It is far easier to do community service than service-learning.  Implementing a real service-learning requirement would take an enormous effort...and a lot of financial and human resources. Given California's large deficit, I doubt that is going to happen anytime soon.

So Mr. Deberg's reference to these two requests doesn't convince me that anyone is asking for competition for service learning, because neither request is really about service-learning.

To the more important point, by what criteria would you judge a service-learning "project?"  In the business world we can use such indicators as gross profit, profit margins, market share, total sales, productivity output per worker, etc. as criteria for comparing the relative effectiveness of one business venture over another.  Of course all these measures are subject to other factors, such as the amount of capital a business has to invest, the experience of administration and workers, the number of businesses in the market, etc. 

I am interested in knowing how Mr. Deberg compares service-learning initiatives.  If you don't use hours of service, what do you use?  Perhaps the marginal rate of learning on the part of the student, the amount of social and financial capital generated, the amount of social injustices corrected (a misery index?), or the relative alleviation of poverty might serve as measures of service-learning outcomes.  I just have a hard time conceiving of how you would compare an effort that helps senior citizens in an Alzheimer's unit with another that provides tutoring to inner city youth.  I'm not saying it can't be done,  I just need to know how.

My plea to Mr. Deberg and others who support competition in service-learning is to help me understand the basis of the competition.  Until I know that, I have a hard time supporting the notion that introducing competition into the service-learning world is going to improve the quality of service-learning theory and practice.

Rob Shumer