APA Committee on the
Teaching of Philosophy

Service Learning as a Vehicle for
Teaching Philosophy *

By John Valentine

In what follows, I will share some thoughts on service learning as a vehicle for teaching philosophy. By service learning, I shall mean integrating service and academic study into a unified learning experience. By teaching philosophy, I shall mean teaching concepts, dispositions and skills that will enable students to better acquire wisdom. By wisdom, I shall mean the intelligence to live well.

To the extent that we view living well, or the well-lived life, as a life of contemplation, we will strive to teach our students the concepts, dispositions and skills that will enable them to acquire theoretical wisdom. In a logic course, for example, we might have our students serve as tutors in logic to persons who are in need of tutoring, as this would be an excellent vehicle for helping our students to acquire theoretical wisdom in the domain of logic.

To the extent that we view living well, or the well-lived life, as a life of action, we will strive to teach our students the concepts, dispositions and skills that will enable them to acquire practical wisdom. In a logic course, for example, we might have our students serve as referees for debates in primary or secondary school civic classes, as this would be an excellent vehicle for helping our students to acquire what might rightly be called practical wisdom in the domain of logic.

Whatever combination of theoretical or practical wisdom that we are trying to imbue, however, we would have our students serve others whose lives, or whose ways of being in the world, are such that serving them would inform, reinforce or enhance our students’ efforts to acquire the desired wisdom.

In a philosophy of sport course our students might serve injured athletes or athletes with special needs. In a feminist philosophy course our students might serve residents of a domestic violence shelter. In an environmentalist philosophy course our students might serve a group of endangered animals or a polluted stream. In a philosophy of law course our students might serve clients of a legal services program. In an existentialism course our students might serve persons who are physically disabled or homeless, whereas in a course on Marx our students might serve both wealthy residents of nursing homes and poor residents of nursing homes. In an ethics course, where students enter into a moral dialogue with views other than their own, our students might perform interracial or interfaith service at a community center.

In a philosophy course on the relationship between the well-lived life and the good community, students might perform any of the services above, and many more, as long as the service performed would inform, reinforce or enhance our students’ efforts to acquire that combination of theoretical and practical wisdom that would count as civic wisdom. (Cf. Appendix #1 for a partial list of service options.) Such a course would at once be a philosophy course, a civic education course, and a service learning course. It is on such a philosophy civic education service learning course that I will focus the remainder of my remarks on service learning as a vehicle for teaching philosophy.

I – Philosophical Framework of the Course

A highly effective way to use service learning as a vehicle for teaching philosophy is to construct an explicit philosophical framework for students to think about service learning as serve. Students should be encouraged to raise philosophical questions about this framework and, upon completion of their service, should be encouraged to produce reasoned arguments as to why this framework should be expanded, modified or abandoned. This exercise in philosophical criticism provides students with a valuable philosophical learning experience.

At the first meeting of our philosophical civic education service learning course, I introduce students to Aristotle’s distinction between intellectual virtues (the disposition or habit of thinking well) and moral virtues (the disposition or habit of acting well). I try to explicate this distinction by drawing an analogous distinction between the disposition to "reflect well", and the disposition to "connect well".

I then argue that we should first and foremost try to accomplish in civic education service learning courses in public institutions of higher education is the acquisition of intellectual virtues; whereas what we should first and foremost try to accomplish in a civic education service learning course in public institutions of primary and secondary education is the acquisition of moral virtues. I argue that institutions of higher education are institutions where students are considered to be intellectually "of age" or capable of acquiring theoretical and practical wisdom. The primary goal of a civic education service learning course at a public institution of higher education should be to develop to disposition to reflect well on the relationship between a well-lived life and a good community. Its goal should be to educate citizens to participate in civic dialogue concerning how we should connect our lives to the lives of others. This dialogue would include a discussion of what moral virtues we should teach in primary and secondary school students. We may well acquire moral virtues in such a course (eg. A sense of connectedness with those whom we serve), but it is not necessary to the success of the course that we do. Students in our civic education service learning courses are generally relieved when they are informed that they will not be graded on their acquisition of moral virtues, and that a complete and consistent libertarian or feminist separatist analysis of their service experience, for example, could conceivably earn them an "A".

The following is an example of how students came to a fuller understanding of the distinction between intellectual and moral virtues because the distinction was explicitly built into the philosophical framework of our service learning course. The student was, by her own account, an evangelical Christian from a dysfunctional family. She was also a 4.0 business major. She did her service with residents in a nursing home. One of the residents was a terminally ill man who was the father of her best friend from childhood. She felt a special obligation to sit down and talk to him about the positive role he had played in her life when she was a child. She did not, however, make time in her busy schedule to do so before he died.

At the end of the quarter, the student analyzed her service experience in a term paper using the concepts of Kant and Hobbes. She was very clear in her own mind it was her Kantian obligation to make time to talk with her friend’s father. She was equally clear, however, that her highest priority had been the Hobbesian priority to maximize the satisfaction of her passions over time. She concluded that she had not only treated her friend’s father as a means to an end only, but that she also treated her own parents, boyfriend and her college education as means to an end only. Her "real goal", she went on, was to "get north of I-70" where there were good paying jobs with an opportunity for advancement. She recognized there was a "contradiction" between what was truly believed she ought to do and how she was actually living her life, but that if she were honest with herself, she did not see anything changing in the foreseeable future. Her use of the concepts and views of Hobbes and Kant was superb throughout her analysis of her service experience, and she received an "A".

The student later told me that is was the most difficult paper that she had ever written and, using Aristotle’s distinction, that she would have written her paper "much differently" had she thought that she would have been graded on her acquisition of moral virtue. It was her remarks that led me to have students evaluate the philosophic framework for the course in their term papers.

I also built into the philosophical framework of our philosophy service learning course a distinction between service learning internships and traditional academic internships, as well as a characterization of the service learning relationship that I would have our students try to establish. (Cf. Appendix #2 for a service learning taxonomy.) I have students think of service learning internships as internships which have as their goal serving rather than observing. I then introduce them to what I call the ‘paradox’ of service learning, to wit, "we may well learn more about ourselves and others through serving than observing". This ‘paradox’ helps students to think of the unique ways in which they engage themselves and others when they serve.

* from Beyond the Tower: Concepts and Models for Service Learning in Philosophy, edited by C. David Lisman and Irene Harvey. (AAHE-2000)

APA Committee on the Teaching of Philosophy

Service Learning as a Vehicle for Teaching Philosophy *

APA Committee on the
Teaching of Philosophy

Service Learning as a Vehicle for
Teaching Philosophy *