Experiencing Service-Learning

1. Stepping into a New Culture

Chapter 1 Stepping into a New Culture Culture means the total way of life of a people; the social legacy the individual acquires from his group. Clyde Kluckhohn, Mirror for Man Peter Vaill (1989) defines culture as “a system of attitudes, actions, and artifacts that endures over time and operates to produce among its members a relatively unique common psychology” (p. 147). Culture is absorbed and transmitted intuitively; we usually do not think about it. Only when we bump up against people who behave in ways we do not understand and perhaps do not care for does culture become significant to us. Drawing on the classic work of anthropologist Clyde Kluckhohn, we believe strongly in the concept of “cultural tensions” and see them exhibited every day in our Full-Service Community Schools Project (see the preface for an explanation of this project). These cultural tensions play out among teachers and students generally and may occur between university student service-learners and Title I K–5 students . As Clyde Kluckhohn (1961) notes, “The principal claim that can be made for the culture concept as an aid to useful action is that it helps us enormously for predicting human behavior” (p. 21). Culture as defined by Kluckhohn is more than environment, though environment is a major facet of culture. The effective service-learner adapts to the culture in which he or she serves. This chapter is about service-learners seeking to understand and appreciate cultures other than their own. Understanding the concept of culture and how it unconsciously colors the way we see, talk, and act is important for building positive relationships with those whom we seek to serve. Robert Coles, a major historical force in service-learning, highlights the fact that learning may occur in unexpected places, particularly in servicelearning , and shares the wisdom of important historical figures who have engaged in service. Physician and poet William Carlos Williams told Coles to learn “what you can where you can,” just as Williams learned from his 8 Stepping into a New Culture patients while making home visits in Paterson, New Jersey. Dorothy Day, a Catholic social activist and journalist who ran a soup kitchen in New York, told Coles that he could learn more from her guests/clients than he could from his professor friends at Harvard. Indeed, while such Harvard colleagues as Anna Freud and Erik Erikson did help shape Coles’s theoretical work as a child psychiatrist, he would ultimately venture on his own to the South to learn about the children there and about civil rights. On his early trips to Alabama from Boston, Coles described rural southern children as “slow.” Later, after spending more time in Alabama, Coles (1967) would change his mind, exclaiming how smart they were! Like Coles, service-learning students often cross a personal cultural divide as they begin their service-learning. Responding to Cultural Cues The service-learner who is aware of important cultural cues and responds sensitively gains credibility with others because he or she knows how to act. Our service-learning college students are generally middle class and white— racially, culturally, and economically different from those whom they serve. They learn to refrain from assigning a stereotyped pathology to the students they work with, and they reflect as they share their experiences with their classmates and professor. The university students who take our servicelearning class learn problem-solving skills and become more tolerant and adopt a less stereotypical attitude toward cultural difference. Whatever their major or field of study, they come to reflect on what they read and connect theory to practice. Service-learners observe professionals having difficulty collaborating, and children and families paying the price for their inability to collaborate. Students learn about problem-solving in social situations and appreciating cultural difference. For example, an elementary school student told his mentor that he couldn’t study because it was too noisy in his house and neighborhood. The service-learner suggested that he turn down the boom box. The child said, “I mean gunshots.” Because she was raised in a different cultural context, it did not even occur to the service-learner that the noise distracting the student from studying might be gunshots; she was bumping up against a “foreign” culture within two miles of her “normal” life. Rather than responding with a directive or answer when facing an ambiguous situation, the service-learner would do better to ask for more information and then ask for suggestions for ways to deal with...