Course Description and Requirements
This course is part of a pilot program, now in its third year, which seeks to bring together an academic, classroom-based curriculum and community service to create a holistic learning experience for the student. Although this class has been taught before, we are still trying out concepts, reading materials, and methods, and the course will still be somewhat experimental. We appreciate your willingness to be “pioneers” in this exciting exploration of a new frontier in civic learning. I will be describing more fully the content and aims of this course in class during our orientation, but a beginning statement of our ends is in order. This course will focus on what “community” means in contemporary democratic culture and will explore the role of each individual, both as individual and “citizen” in the democratic culture of the United States. We will look honestly and critically at both the promises and challenges of civic life in the U.S. context. In particular, we will examine questions of diversity and inequality in American life, especially those based on race, gender, class, religion, and sexual orientation, and the challenges these pose to contemporary understandings of democratic community.
Seminar Format
The class will be conducted as a seminar, even though our numbers will make this difficult. Therefore, it is imperative that students come to class prepared to discuss class themes and reading assignments. I will provide some context-setting and may present additional material in some instances, but for the most part the class will be an opportunity for us to reflect upon and analyze together critical questions about citizenship, democracy and community. Students will be encouraged to bring into class discussions their community service experiences as they relate to topic themes. To facilitate this discussion and your structured journal entries, you will be provided with regular handouts setting the context of particular authors/readings and asking a series of questions for reflection and for writing about it in your journals.
Readings
We will be spanning a wide range of reading materials, all meant to serve as resources to you as you think about what it means to be a democratic citizen and a member of the communities in which you find yourself. I have chosen the selections to give you as broad a range of ideas, topics, and disci-plinary perspectives as possible. You may not find all of the readings inspiring, and you may not agree with the perspective of some of the authors. But I hope they will provoke thought and discussion of the relevant matters of the course. Your responsibility is to read each work by the time it is listed in the course outline, as well as respond to journal questions about the reading in question.
Civic Community
Community Service
Because democracy is not a spectator sport, and because democratic citizens are active participants in their communities, in addition to the regular class meetings you and other students in the class will participate in approximately 4-5 hours of community service a week. Community service allows you the unique opportunity to apply theories and concepts discussed in class to your own practical experiences in serving others in the community. The additional hour of academic credit you signed up for under Political Science 399 takes account of this service work. You will have a choice among possible community service projects, and will be able to schedule your service around your other classes, work, or extracurricular activities. These projects will include (among others): Tutoring, coaching, and working with children in one of three after-school programs in New Brunswick elementary schools; Working as coaches/resources to high school students as they mentor younger New Brunswick children in a project designed to curb violence and victimization; Serving as a Literacy Tutor, ESL Instructor, or Teaching Assistant in the Adult Learning Center in New Brunswick; Working as a child care of social work assistant at Amandla Crossing, a transitional housing program for homeless families. All placement possibilities will be described and arranged in the first week of the semester.
Structured “Experiential Journal”
You will document your thoughts and experiences working in the community, reflecting critically on the assigned readings and class discussions, and responding to specific questions presented for writing. You should aim for a minimum of five pages per week of freely written material; the writing will not be scrutinized for “quality” along typical academic lines -it can be loose, informal, associative, and in alternative forms to straight prose. I will provide questions to guide you in your weekly journal writing, but there will be ample opportunity for you to write freely of your various experiences. Entries will be evaluated in light of the overall quantity of entries and the general quality of your intellectual explorations, responses to specific questions, musings, speculations, and the like. I’ll be responding to the journals along the way so that all will get feedback. Journals will count for 40% of your final grade in the three-hour portion of the class.
Group projects
We will talk much more about these in class, but they should concern issues that are related to your community service experience. You will be broken up into groups based on your choice of community service, and will have as a resource and “team leader” an advanced undergraduate student whom you can consult as you work on your project. You will work on your projects collaboratively throughout the semester, culminating in some form of written (probably) and oral presentation of your group’s findings. Group projects will be worth 30% of the final grade.
It is imperative that you do the readings, come prepared to discuss their relevance and implications each class, and faithfully participate in community service as per your agreement with your particular community service agency. Active attendance and participation in class sessions will make up the rest of your grade, so if you miss classes or don’t contribute to our seminar sessions, your grade will suffer relative to the severity of the problem.
Over the course of the semester, we hope that students and faculty will form a democratic community as we discuss and reflect upon the nature of democratic community. Please feel free to raise concerns, questions, criticisms, and suggestions as we go along, either publicly or in private consultation with me, or if you are more comfortable, with one of the student team leaders. The course outline is tentative, and should be seen as a general guide, not a box.
Course Outline
Date Topic Under Discussion
Reading Assignment
Jan. 20 Orientation; Introduction to Class; None; begin reading for next time
Community Service Placements
Jan. 25, 27 Democracy and Community
Feb. 1, 3, 8 Civic Values: The Morals,
Psychology, and Problems
of Belonging to Communities
Feb. 10, 15, The Meaning of Democratic
17 Citizenship: Historical and
Contemporary
Feb. 22, 24 The Responsibilities of
Mar. 1, 3 Citizenship: Philanthropy,
Service, “Civic Duty”
Civic Community
Katherine Mansfield, The Garden Party; John
Dewey, “The Search for the Great Community,”
The Public and Its Problems (1927)
Robert Bellah, et al., Habits of the Heart (1985), selections; Scott Peck, “‘Me True Meaning of Community,” from A Different Drum: Community Making and Peace; Simone Weil, The Need for Roots (1949), selections; Shirley Jackson, The Lottery; Ursula Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”
Thomas Jefferson, Selected Writings; Benjamin
Barber, “Neither Leaders Nor Followers”
(1985); Harry Boyte, “Practical Politics,” The
Atlantic (1993)
Martin Luther King, “On Being a Good Neighbor,” from Strength to Love (1963) 16-24; Mother Teresa, Words to Love By, selected quotations; George Santayana, “The Philanthropist,” Dialogues in Limbo (1925); Allan Luks & Peggy Payne, The Healing Power of Doing Good, selections; Edward Bloustein, “Community Service: A New Requirement for the Educated Person” (1988)
Challenges to Democratic Community: Inequality & Diversity in American Life
Mar. 8, 10 Class and Poverty
Mar. 22, 24, Race and Democratic Community
29
Jonathon Kozol, Savage Inequalities
(1991), selections
Ralph Ellison, The Invisible Man, prologue
(1947); Shelby Steele, The Content of Our
Character (1990), selections; Gloria Anzaldua,
Borderlands: La Frontera, selections
Civic Community
Date Topic Under Discussion
Reading Assignment
Mar. 3 1, Gender and Democratic
Apr. 5 Community
Apr. 7 Religion, Sexual Orientation,
and the Nature of Prejudice
Apr. 12′ Suburbanization and the
Decline of Democratic Community
Apr. 14 The Challenge of “Multiculturalisin”
Levels of Citizenship: School, Neighborhood, Nation
Apr. 19 The University as a Civic Community
Apr. 21 The Local Community & Public Space
Apr. 26 Nationalism & Democratic Community
Apr. 28, Group Project Presentations
May 1
S. Okin, “Justice and Gender”; E. Fox-Genovese, “Women and Community,” from Feminism Without Illusions (1991)
“Minersville School District v. Gobitis,’ in The Courage of Their Convictions; “T’he Gay Cadet,” The Village Voice (1990)
Kenneth Jackson, “The Loss of Community in Metropolitan America” (1986)
Catharine Stimpson, “Meno’s Boy: Hearing His Story – & His Sister’s”; Michael Morris, “Educating Citizens for a Multicultural Society” (1990); Dinesh D’Souza, “Illiberal Education” (1991)
Michael Moffatt, “What College is Really Like,” from Coming of Age in New Jersey (1989),25-53,71-73; Benjamin Barber, “The Civic Mission of the University” (1989)
Evans & Boyte, “‘The People Shall Rule,” from Free Spaces (1992); Alexis de Tocqueville, “The Local Spirit of Liberty,” from Democracy in America
John Schaar, “The Case for Patriotism,” Legitimacy in the Modern State (198 1)
Note: Dr. Rick Battistoni is currently the Director of the Feinstein Institute for Public Service at Providence College in Providence, Rhode Island.
