Benefits of Service Learning

A detailed Summary of Benefits of Service Learning

Who is Benefiting from Service Learning?

When a high school senior is looking at colleges to further their education they have many deciding factors that lie ahead of them. Do they attend a college that is known for its academics? Do they choose a university that is known for just its name? Or do they choose an institution that is known for its history of doing good in the community? These are certain dilemmas that young people face when trying to do decide where to go to school. The first two questions seem reasonably common, but the last question is not one that arises very often. A college that has gained a reputation for doing good in a community? It's almost unheard of, however that is what Defiance College has achieved in its years since achieving annual recognition for their efforts to incorporate service learning into the curriculum. Service learning is a method of experimental education that takes the student out of the classroom and into the local community. The service learning project requires the student to volunteer and relate their experiences to the knowledge they have learned in the classroom. The mission behind service learning is to mold students into responsible citizens and to create a solid communi

Adam Smith stated that the baker does not bake bread for the customer, but for his or her own benefit. Can this hold true for service learning? Is it in the student's own best interest to put in the time to do service learning? And how many of the students that do community service projects for service learning would actually do them if not required by the college? At what point does Darwin's theory of "looking out for number one" come into play. Would a student rather spend their time watching television in their dorm room, or go down to a soup kitchen on a Saturday morning to help out? Nine times out of ten you would probably find that they would choose the Saturday morning cartoons over the soup kitchen. But why, is it like Thorstein Veblen brought up, "a lightning calculator of pleasures and pains, who oscillates like a homogenous globule of desire," in his thoughts of man. This statement brings out that the student would not find pleasure in serving a homeless person at the soup kitchen, but would find it sitting on the couch doing nothing. How does this explain the student who would rather go to the soup kitchen and not stay at home?

As brought up in the article about economics and law, has the service learning program served as an altruistic way of inexpensive promotion of the college? Public image is a major factor for a higher education institution. That is the reason you see larger universities pouring millions of dollars into athletic programs, name recognition. The business ethics article brought out the points of correcting bad behavior and trust for a company to be ethical, this to can be applied to colleges. If a college like Defiance is known for giving back to the community it can gain national recognition, as it has done, and build a large community backing. Besides if Defiance College does not place its students out into the community to do service who would do it? Defiance College has created a legacy, so to speak, of doing continued community service. The service learning program has generated positive feed back for the coll

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