The Way of Oz: A Guide to Wisdom, Heart, and Courage

12: Serving: An Integrated Perspective

To be fulfilled we need to recognize, all of us, that the world doesn’t owe us a living— rather we owe the world a living. And in the brief time that is given to us, we must somehow learn to give ourselves away. F. Forrester Church (1948–2009), American author, senior minister of All Soul’s Unitarian Church, New York City Let’s think about people who adopt the principles of the Way of Oz. Imagine the hero who balances his commitments to learning, loving, and serving—Baum’s wisdom, heart, and courage—and the heroine who has a similar balance but also brings together the three components into an integrated whole: she learns new ways to serve through unselfish giving to noble causes; she develops a love for the recipients of her service; and she realizes the need for greater understanding as she continues serving others. When our heroine and hero realize the extraordinary interactions of learning, loving, and service, they come to see how these can be integrated through the heart, mind, and resolve. Now, if the integration of our hero and heroine’s efforts sounds so ideal as to be impossible, think about another real example of the way the integrated elements of learning, loving, and serving came together in a great American institution, the land-grant university . America’s land-grant institutions were the brainchild of 12 Serving: An Integrated Perspective The Way of Oz and Serving.........................148 Jonathan Baldwin Turner (1805–1899), who, in the 1850s, tried to convince the Illinois legislature to develop a university for the working classes. Turner ’s ideas were adopted by a Vermont storekeeper, Justin Smith Morrill (1810–1898), who served in the US House of Representatives (1855–1867) and the US Senate (1867–1898). He embraced Turner’s altruistic idea and crafted the language that became the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act of 1862, which was signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln on July 2, 1862, at the height of the Civil War. It provided federal land subsidies for establishing universities that would offer liberal and practical education for the working classes. As President Lincoln said at the bill’s signing, “The land-grant university system is being built on behalf of the people, who have invested in these public universities their hopes, their support, and their confidence.” The legislation emphasized agriculture, mechanical arts (engineering), and military tactics. The land-grant university, as it evolved, not only blended liberal and practical studies but also had at its core extension (also referred to commonly as cooperative extension) efforts that would help identify community problems that could be addressed through research . The research and extension efforts were codified and received funding through two congressional acts, the Hatch Act of 1887 and the SmithLever Act of 1914. Driven by problems in the real world, other universities emulated what became land-grant universities. Problems in food production, for example, were brought to universities for problem-solving research, the results of which were incorporated into course syllabi and curricula that would guide the teaching mission of land-grant programs. The land-grant model is directly analogous to the learning-loving-serving paradigm of the Way of Oz, in which learning is the equivalent of research, loving is equivalent to teaching , and serving is equivalent to extension under the land-grant system. What is needed is to emphasize the blending of the interactive components, which, if done well, results in a synergy that positively influences creativity and productivity. Consider, for example, the case of Juan Muñoz of Lubbock, Texas. Mu- ñoz was born of Mexican immigrant parents in Southern California. After an English teacher encouraged him to go to college, he enrolled at the University of California–Santa Barbara, where he earned a baccalaureate de- 149.........................Serving: An Integrated Per