The Loss of Action

In 1969, the Community Studies department was founded at the University of California, Santa Cruz. This program was a pioneer for experiential/service learning. Students are sent out into the world to participate in "field studies" at non-profit organizations or government programs. They are primed before leaving to look at the organization in which they will work through an intensely critical lens. How does the organization work? What is its mission? Is it effective? Why or why not? Is the way in which the organization approaches the problem appropriate?

This is a way of teaching students to be potent, versatile, critical thinkers, and it connects them with the larger word in a way that traditional education is incapable.

Several weeks ago, Sheldon Kamieniecki, the Dean of Social Sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz, announce that he would be cutting the Community Studies undergraduate program. The excuse is the same excuse that corporate executives are using across the country to rid themselves of what they deem troublesome or unnecessary - the economic crisis. The reality of the situation is that most corporate entities (I'm forced to include public universities in that category due to the failure of state governments to support them) are willing to shift funds in whatever way necessary to preserve what is valuable to them.

What is incredible to me is that now, months after our new president announced a call to service for all Americans, bureaucrats are going to cut a program that teaches young men and women to do for others rather than to do for themselves.

Are we that far gone? Are our values that misplaced? You'll continue to fund research so that you can have a better shampoo, but you won't fund programs that teach college kids how to run a Boys & Girls Club or how to reach out to people living with HIV/AIDS?