Human Rights as a Framework for Reflection in Service Learning: Para que Otro Mundo es possible’
Human Rights as a Framework for Reflection in Service Learning:
‘
Kathleen de la Peña McCook
“Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world…”
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
“Reflection” is the most important aspect of the student service learning experience in library settings. Through reflection service learning abides in a larger context as part of librarianship’s broader connection to the public sphere. Reflection allows students to realize ‘
The reflective aspect of service learning placements in librarianship requires three components:
1) A faculty supervisor/mentor who is a reflective being;
2) A placement that is an opportunity for reflection through the work being done and interaction with other workers;
3) The student’s preparation to encounter the service opportunity in a reflective manner and the student’s post-experience assessment of the placement.
Faculty as Reflective Beings
Before faculty can incorporate reflection as an aspect of service learning for students, professors must be reflective beings ourselves. In Oneself as Another the hermeneutic philosopher, Paul Ricoeur, has explained that “The autonomy of the self… [appears] to be tightly bound up with the solicitude for one’s neighbor and with justice for each individual"(18). Or, as Saul Alinksy stated in Reveille for Radicals, “In order to work with people we must first approach them on a basis of common understanding (93).” Faculty who supervise service learning placements will provide successful oversight characterized by a reflective and integrated worldview that values social justice and human rights. These first years of the 21st century have been a difficult period for members of the academy who hold concerns for human rights, intellectual freedom and social justice. Political considerations and conservative forces have discouraged speaking out and dissent. After the tragic events of
Today, the very essence of librarianship is threatened as the academy becomes more and more compromised. As teachers in universities, LIS faculty must understand and debate efforts by authoritarian forces to neutralize free speech within academe. There has been a post 9/11 McCarthyism to remove from the university “all vestiges of dissent and to reconstruct it as an increasingly privatized sphere for reproducing the interests of corporations and the national security state” (Giroux, 2007, 145). At my own place of work-- the
Recognition of the increasingly repressive 21st century academic environment is the most important aspect of faculty reflection that can be brought to our work with service learning. Library educators in the
We ought to learn from history that the vitality of institutions of higher learning has been damaged far more by efforts to correct abuses of freedom than by those alleged abuses. We ought to learn from history that education cannot possibly thrive in an atmosphere of state-encouraged suspicion and surveillance.
Those supervising service learning must, above all, be reflective individuals. The definition of reflection in the glossary of the National Service-Learning Clearinghouse is at once applicable to those who supervise service learning experiences as well as those who enroll:
Reflection describes the process of deriving meaning and knowledge from experience and occurs before, during and after a service- learning project. Effective reflection engages both teachers and students in a thoughtful and thought-provoking process that consciously connects learning with experience. It is the use of critical thinking skills to prepare for and learn from service experiences.
Library workers reflected on their role in the 21st century at two historic events in 2006-2007: the Joint Conference of Librarians of Color (JCLC) and the United States Social Forum (USSF). Faculty who participated in these transformative events are prepared to work with students at a level of engagement that transcends traditional classroom experiences. Both events connected librarians to over-arching societal issues and concerns such as war, economic injustice, environmental challenges, poverty, and racism.
The JCLC brought together library workers of all ethnicities to
The US Social Forum, “Another World is Possible” (
Faculty involvement in conferences and forums like the JCLC or the USSF provide the opportunity to interact with thoughtful library workers who embrace values of equality and justice. Faculty who supervise service learning should be judicious and discerning. We hope they will answer affirmatively to the question asked by Lesley Rex of the Wingspread Access, Equity and Social Justice Committee: “Are more faculty becoming engaged and increasing their efforts toward solving broad social problems?”
Placement as
Service learning is collaboration between the community and the classroom that gives equal priority to student learning and community service. Unlike field work which focuses on skills, the student role is determined by the community’s needs (Lemieux and Allen, 312). Students must be prepared to work with the community at hand. This can be achieved by an understanding of principles of community organizing and involvement and by application of this understanding to the library context (Adams, 203-216; McCook, 2000, 37-43). Librarians’ involvement in community building has been long standing, but is not well articulated at the local level.
Reflection can happen in most contexts if the placement is done in a manner that fosters understanding of overarching socio-economic and political considerations. Careful deliberation on the concept of library as ‘place;’ literacy as an adult education endeavor; homelessness as a product of economic injustice; incarceration as a result of a society that does not nurture people of all classes and colors; and lack of effort to develop cultural competence to serve people of different backgrounds are examples.
Twenty-first century leaders in the American Library Association (ALA) have endeavored to establish the librarian’s role in building and transforming communities. During the presidency of Leslie Burger (2006-2007) the Association adopted an agenda for the 21st century: “Libraries Transform Communities; Communities Transform Libraries.” And in 2007-2008 the presidency of Loriene Roy included initiatives to operationalize the ideas of community transformation through the project ‘Supporting LIS Education through Practice.’ It should be noted for purpose of expanding discussion that the use of community as synonymous with place can be problematic (Leckie and Buschman 13). Libraries as culturally constructed places may succeed in supporting community or not.
To understand how communities can be transformed we can look at The Library as Place by Buschman and Leckie and find different analyses of place that provide means of reflection—the Habermasian influence that allows us to make “normative and democratic claims about libraries as places (15).” Establishment of locations for service learning that provide an opportunity for reflection and community transformation have been discussed by
Cuban and Hayes have reported on students placed in a community literacy agency and described the need for literacy education curricula in LIS education. The connection of the service learning experience to curriculum reform demonstrates a mechanism by which the classroom and the external site re-enforce values. Reflective service learning placements require a setting where co-workers are intellectually knowledgeable about the philosophical and theoretical basis of service provided. Literacy for adults must be viewed as far more than a library challenge and this can only be done through active engagement in the work of the American Association for Adult and Continuing Education (AAACE) and involvement with colleagues imbued with the AAACE vision “that lifelong learning contributes to human fulfillment and positive social change.”
At the University at Buffalo Peterson has written how students engaged in a service learning seminar worked to turn a homeless shelter library into a satellite of the
Ours is a prison nation with over 2 million people incarcerated. Any of the hundreds of local, state or national jails and prisons are sites for service learning through libraries and provision literacy education. Clarke and MacCreaigh demonstrate how a public library model can be used in correction facilities. Amy Mark discusses an internship at the Oshkosh Correctional Institution that she undertook after involvement with the student group at the
In Still Struggling for Equality, a thorough assessment of U.S. librarian initiatives to serve immigrants and minorities from 1876 to the present, Plummer Alston Jones Jr. provides hundreds examples of librarians who have looked to serve marginalized people and developed programs to provide basic information and literacy. The use of Jones’ book in concert with state and national policies and programs that were the framework for the JCLC help students and their faculty supervisors to recognize the variety of opportunities for service learning that will contribute to a world without old structures and tired ideas.
So, there are many opportunities for students to be placed in service learning situations where the work being done transcends a particular library or system and allows the student to address issues that are societal in scope though, perhaps, individual in the here and now. By working with the homeless and reflecting on the factors that create homelessness; by working with people in jail and reflecting on the reasons they have been incarcerated; and by assuming a reflective mode of thinking about these issues we will find that the opportunity to create change is amplified.
==============
Student Preparation and Post-Experience Assessment
Students prepare for service learning beyond the acquisition of the skills and theories of librarianship. They must learn about the placement and the conditions that surround the point of service. Reading is a reflective act. Writing is a reflective act. Those who choose to study to become librarians come in the main from that group of people for whom reading and writing are important. In spite of society’s aggrandizement of technology with a concomitant undervaluing of traditional skills, these skills—reading, writing—form the essence of reflection. Before reflection on the service learning experience can take place the larger philosophical questions must be addressed; there is a need to step back and have students read broadly to examine the context of service. This includes primary human rights sources such as the Vedas, the Bible, the Qur'an, Analects of Confucius, and the Magna Carta on up to more recent documents like the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National, or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities (1992), or the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (2006).1
See for example, how one local effort connects to the universal. Irene Sweeney’s family literacy project in rural
Students may also find that librarians who have struggled for social justice and human rights provide inspiration and encouragement. The Information for Social Change journal (summer 2007) edited by Lowe and Samek highlights people who provide information and help to others, who are caught up within conflict situations. They cover aspects of the work of peace libraries and of resources to aid those who are working within or upon various conflict situations throughout the world.
These are deplorable times. Immigrants and refugees suffer, the poor have little access to health care or food security, torture is condoned by the George W. Bush administration. The reflective student can review and examine these examples of human suffering and seek a close-up way in connection with an individual to enable change to make another world possible. In Moorehead’s book, Human Cargo, the chapter “Fence” is about migrants in
And service learning can take place in all types of libraries. In “Leaning by Serving,” Sitter develops the argument that teacher-librarians in school library media centers ‘have a unique opportunity to work with students, teachers, and community partners …to help our young citizens develop sensitivity to human need and a responsibility to serve.’
And sometimes service learning can be work within a system of services librarians provide rather than direct service. Paul Farmer has written of the new war on the poor in terms of structural social violence and lack of access to health care. His examination of social inequity relies upon the Universal Declaration as he pleads that everyone has the right “to share in scientific advancement and its benefits” (Article 27). Farmer’s emphasis on human rights finds voice in the work of the National Library of Medicine’s Environmental Health Information Outreach Program which includes representation from HBCUs, institutions serving Hispanic students, and tribal colleges. In addition to working with these institutions to promote the use of and access to electronic health information and related technology, this program brings attention to scientific research related to health issues that disproportionately affect minorities (Dutcher, et al). In the quietest ways librarians can develop resources that will make a difference in people’s lives.
=
Conclusion-
The Meaning 21st Century Librarianship:
Service-Learning for Human Rights
Students placed in service learning programs must reflect on the meaning of 21st century librarianship. Adama Samassékou asserts that “the development of the information society must be based on the framework of human rights, and should respect and uphold the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (vii).” Although a specific service learning experience might require certain technical skills (assisting with information commons; digitizing archival materials), it is the core values of the profession that will illuminate the experience. And it is on these core values that reflection rests. As Katharine Phenix and I have argued these core values should be based on a human rights model (59).
For librarianship Toni Samek has gone farthest of all scholar-philosophers in defining manifestations of social action. The faculty member and student who plan a reflective service learning experience should review Samek’s monograph, Librarianship and Human Rights, for models (2007, 47-180). These provide tangible opportunities for service learning if the faculty supervisor is attuned to human rights and social justice considerations in librarianship. Samek gives many examples of specific forms of social action that would be the opportunity for reflective service learning. These include AIDS information and awareness (72); protests of library closures (150-151); serving the homeless (166-167); digitization and development of memory programs (132-134).
Reflection requires quiet thought. And we librarians will find the topics and concerns not just in technical or professional literature but in the work of those men and women, those writers, who likely first brought us to this calling. We close with the words of José Saramago, Nobel Laureate in Literature whose speech was given on the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
--“Let us think that no human rights will exist without symmetry of the duties that correspond to them. It is not to be expected that governments in the next 50 years will do it. Let us common citizens therefore speak up. With the same vehemence as when we demanded our rights, let us demand responsibility over our duties. Perhaps the world could turn a little better.”
-- José Saramago's speech at the Nobel Banquet,
============
1The Vedas, the Bible, the Qur'an, Analects of Confucius, Magna Carta (1215), Milton’s Areopagetica (1643), Locke's Letter Concerning Tolerance and Second Treatise of Civil Government (1690), Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Social Contract (1761), Thomas Paine's The Rights of Man (1791-92), the Declaration of Independence (1976), Abigail Adams, “Remember the Ladies,” (1776), U.S. Bill of Rights (1791), French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789), Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792), Kant’s Perpetual Peace (1797), Britain Outlaws Slave Trade (1807), Robert Owen’s New View of Society (1817), Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, “Declaration of Sentiments at Seneca Falls,” (1848) Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau (1849), John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859), Amsterdam Resolution Against Colonialism (1904), Mahatma Gandhi’s Passive Resistance (1909), Declaration of the Rights of Toiling and Exploited Peoples (1918), International Labor Organization Charter, (1919), International Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women and Children (1921), Declaration of the Rights of Children (1924), League of Nations Convention to Suppress the Slave Trade and Slavery (1926), Franklin Delano Roosevelt, “Four Freedoms” (1941), the Universal Declaration of Human rights (1948), Declaration of Rights of the Child (1959), Declaration of Rights of Disabled Persons (1975), Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention (1989), U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National, or Ethnic, Religious an Linguistic Minorities (1992), Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and Ocher Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (2006).
Human Rights as a Framework for Reflection in Service Learning:
‘
References
Abilock, Debbie. 2006. So close and so small: Six promising approaches to civic education, equity, and social justice. Knowledge Quest 34 (May/June): 9-16.
Adams, Frank with Myles Horton. 1975. Unearthing seeds of fire: The idea of Highlander.
Alinsky, Saul D. 1946. Reveille for radicals.
American Association for Adult and Continuing Education. http://www.aaace.org/index.html
American Association of University Professor. Freedom in the Classroom (
http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/comm/rep/A/class.htm
American Library Association. Policy Manual. 50.6.2. http://www.ala.org/ala/ourassociation/governingdocs/policymanual/policymanual.htm
Anderson, Debra K. and Barbara M. Harris. 2005. Teaching social welfare policy: A comparison of two-part pedagogical approaches. Journal of Social Work Education 41 (fall): 511-26.
Berkowitz, Bill. 2001. Mrs. Cheney’s campus crusade. Working for Change. http://www.workingforchange.com/printitem.cfm?itemid=12355
Burger, Leslie. 2007. So long, farewell...American Libraries 38 (June/July).
Buschman, John E. and Gloria J. Leckie. 2007. The library as place: History, community, and culture.
Christodoulidis, Emilios. 92007) Presentation of Ronald Dworkin for the Holberg International Memorial Prize. (November).http://www.holberg.uib.no/HP_prisen/en_hp_2007_christodoulidis_dworkin.html
Clark, Sheila and Erica MacCreaigh. 2006. Library services to the incarcerated: Applying the public library model in correctional facility libraries.
Connors, Kara and Sarena D. Seifer. 2005. Reflection in higher education service-learning. http://www.servicelearning.org/resources/fact_sheets/he_facts/he_reflection/index.php
Cuban, Sondra and Elisabeth Hayes. 2001. Perspectives of five library and information studies students involved in service learning and a community-based literacy program. Journal of Education for Library and Information Science 42 (spring): 86-95.
Dutcher, Gale A., Melvin Spann and Cynthia Gaines (2007). Addressing health disparities and environmental justice: the National Library of Medicine’s Environmental Health Information Outreach Program. Journal of the Medical Library Association 95 (July): 330-336.
Dworkin, Ronald. 2007. Terror and the attack on civil liberties. The
Farmer, Paul. 2003. Pathologies of power: Health, human rights, and the new war on the poor.
Felton, Peter, Leigh Z. Gilchrist and Alexa Darby. 2006. Emotion and learning: Feeling our way toward a new theory of reflection in service-learning. Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning 13 (spring).
Giroux, Henry A. 2005. Against the new authoritarianism: Politics after Abu Ghraib.
Giroux, Henry A. 2007. The university in chains: Confronting the military-industrial-academic complex.
Goodes, P.A. 2006. Historic gathering draws hundred to
Harger, Elaine and Kathleen de la Peña McCook. 2007. PLG – presenté! 2007 Report from the
Librarian (Winter 2007/08).
Harkavy,
JESSE. http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/jesse.html.
On Sun.August 5, 2007 Gretchen Whitney [JESSE moderator] wrote:
This is off topic - it has to do with librarians, and not LIS education. Jesse is focused on LIS Education, and not on librarians or libraries. As important as this topic is, there are other sources from which to receive such announcements for those who are interested in them. If the general topic of "librarians" were included in the scope of
Jesse, I'd have to forward the entire contents of AUTOCAT, the ALA Council list, and who knows what else. And that would be a mess. Jesse is not a general "library" or "Librarian" list, it is tightly focused on the education of librarians and information scientists, and their research, teaching, and service concerns. HTH -- gw.. Gretchen Whitney.
On
Did not see this post; could you re-send, please?
Thanks.
=======
The Vancouver Library Workers have been on strike for a week. I have
a lot of entries and today posted a very moving video-clip about the 'Read-
In.' Some of the striking librarians are wearing signs that say "Sam's
Strike." The mayor is Sam Sullivan. More information plus a link to short and
artful video clip are here: http://unionlibrarian.blogspot.com/
Joint Conference of Librarians of Color. 2006. Progressive Librarians Guild. http://libr.org/plg/jclc2006.php
Jones, Jr., Plummer Alston. 2004. Still struggling for equality: American public library services with minorities.
Jorgensen, Rikke Frank. 2006. The right to express oneself and to seek information. In Human rights in the global information society.
Labadie Collection.
Leckie, Gloria and John E. Buschman. 2007. “Space, place and libraries,” in The library as place: History, community, and culture.
Leite, José Corrêa. 2005 The World Social Forum: Strategies of resistance. Translated by Traci Romine.
Lemieux, Catherine M. and Priscilla D. Allen. (2007). Service learning in social work education: The state of knowledge, pedagogical practicalities, and practice conundrums. Journal of Social Work Education 43 (Spr/Summer): 309-25.
Libraries & information in World Social Forum context. (2006-07). Information for Social Change 24 (winter).http://libr.org/isc/toc.html
Lowe, Martyn and Toni Samek. 2007. Libraries and information workers in conflict situations. Information for Social Change Journal 25 (summer). http://libr.org/isc/index.html
Mark, Amy E. 2005. Libraries without walls: An internship at Oshkosh Correctional Institution library. Behavioral & Social Science Librarian 23 (2): 97-111.
McCook, Kathleen de la Peña 2007a. "Librarians as advocates for the human rights of immigrants," Progressive Librarian 29 (summer).
McCook, Kathleen de la Peña. 2000. A place at the table: participating in community building.
McCook, Kathleen de la Peña. 2006/2007. There is power in a union. Progressive Librarian 28 (winter):101-104.
McCook, Kathleen de la Peña. 2007b. Ya es hora ciudadania. REFORMA Newsletter 25 (spring/summer): 9-10.
McCook, Kathleen de la Peña and Katharine J. Phenix. 2006. Public libraries and human rights. Public Library Quarterly 25 (1/2): 57-73.
Miranda-Murillo, Diana. 2006. New immigrants center at the
Moorehead, Caroline. 2005. Human cargo: A journey among refugees.
National Service-Learning Clearinghouse. Glossary. http://www.servicelearning.org/welcome_to_service-learning/glossary/index.php?search_term=glossary
O’Connor, John S. 2006. Civic engagement in higher education. Change 38 (September/October): 52-58.
Phenix, Katharine J. and Kathleen de la Peña McCook. 2005. "Human rights and librarians." Reference and User Services Quarterly 45.
Rex, Leslie A. 2006. Higher education has done well, we can do more: A report from the Wingspread Access, Equity and Social Justice Committee. In Taking responsibility: A call for higher education’s engagement in a society of complex global challenges. By Pasque, P. el al. National Forum on Higher Education for the Public Good. www.thenationalforum.org/
Peterson, Lorna. 2003. Using a homeless shelter as a library education learning laboratory: Incorporating service-learning in a graduate-level information sources and services in the social sciences course. Reference and User Services Quarterly 42 (summer): 307-310.
Progressive Librarians Guild. 2006. Report from the Joint Conference of Librarians of Color. http://libr.org/plg/jclc2006.html
Ricoeur, Paul. 1992. Oneself as another.
Roy, Loriene. 2001. Diversity in the classroom: incorporating service-learning
experiences in the library and information science curriculum. Journal of Library Administration 33 no. 3/4 (2001). 213-28,
Samek, Toni. 2007. Librarianship and human rights: A twenty-first century guide.
Samassékou, Adama. 2006. Foreword in Jorgensen, Rikke Frank. Human rights in the global information society.
Saramago, José. Speech at the Nobel Banquet,
Sennet, Richard. 2003. Respect in a world of inequality.
Sitter, Clara L. 2006. Learning by serving. Knowledge Quest 34 (May/June): 23-26.
Sweeney, Irene. 2002. Learning by doing: Engaged service and the MLS. American Libraries 33 (February): 44-46.
Union Librarian. July 29-
Universal Declaration of Human Rights. United Nations. http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html
Yontz, Elaine and Kathleen de la Peña McCook. 2003. Service learning and LIS education. Journal of Education for Library and Information Science 44 (spring): 58-68.
‘
Kathleen de la Peña McCook
“Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world…”
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
“Reflection” is the most important aspect of the student service learning experience in library settings. Through reflection service learning abides in a larger context as part of librarianship’s broader connection to the public sphere. Reflection allows students to realize ‘
The reflective aspect of service learning placements in librarianship requires three components:
1) A faculty supervisor/mentor who is a reflective being;
2) A placement that is an opportunity for reflection through the work being done and interaction with other workers;
3) The student’s preparation to encounter the service opportunity in a reflective manner and the student’s post-experience assessment of the placement.
Faculty as Reflective Beings
Before faculty can incorporate reflection as an aspect of service learning for students, professors must be reflective beings ourselves. In Oneself as Another the hermeneutic philosopher, Paul Ricoeur, has explained that “The autonomy of the self… [appears] to be tightly bound up with the solicitude for one’s neighbor and with justice for each individual"(18). Or, as Saul Alinksy stated in Reveille for Radicals, “In order to work with people we must first approach them on a basis of common understanding (93).” Faculty who supervise service learning placements will provide successful oversight characterized by a reflective and integrated worldview that values social justice and human rights. These first years of the 21st century have been a difficult period for members of the academy who hold concerns for human rights, intellectual freedom and social justice. Political considerations and conservative forces have discouraged speaking out and dissent. After the tragic events of
Today, the very essence of librarianship is threatened as the academy becomes more and more compromised. As teachers in universities, LIS faculty must understand and debate efforts by authoritarian forces to neutralize free speech within academe. There has been a post 9/11 McCarthyism to remove from the university “all vestiges of dissent and to reconstruct it as an increasingly privatized sphere for reproducing the interests of corporations and the national security state” (Giroux, 2007, 145). At my own place of work-- the
Recognition of the increasingly repressive 21st century academic environment is the most important aspect of faculty reflection that can be brought to our work with service learning. Library educators in the
We ought to learn from history that the vitality of institutions of higher learning has been damaged far more by efforts to correct abuses of freedom than by those alleged abuses. We ought to learn from history that education cannot possibly thrive in an atmosphere of state-encouraged suspicion and surveillance.
Those supervising service learning must, above all, be reflective individuals. The definition of reflection in the glossary of the National Service-Learning Clearinghouse is at once applicable to those who supervise service learning experiences as well as those who enroll:
Reflection describes the process of deriving meaning and knowledge from experience and occurs before, during and after a service- learning project. Effective reflection engages both teachers and students in a thoughtful and thought-provoking process that consciously connects learning with experience. It is the use of critical thinking skills to prepare for and learn from service experiences.
Library workers reflected on their role in the 21st century at two historic events in 2006-2007: the Joint Conference of Librarians of Color (JCLC) and the United States Social Forum (USSF). Faculty who participated in these transformative events are prepared to work with students at a level of engagement that transcends traditional classroom experiences. Both events connected librarians to over-arching societal issues and concerns such as war, economic injustice, environmental challenges, poverty, and racism.
The JCLC brought together library workers of all ethnicities to
The US Social Forum, “Another World is Possible” (
Faculty involvement in conferences and forums like the JCLC or the USSF provide the opportunity to interact with thoughtful library workers who embrace values of equality and justice. Faculty who supervise service learning should be judicious and discerning. We hope they will answer affirmatively to the question asked by Lesley Rex of the Wingspread Access, Equity and Social Justice Committee: “Are more faculty becoming engaged and increasing their efforts toward solving broad social problems?”
Placement as
Service learning is collaboration between the community and the classroom that gives equal priority to student learning and community service. Unlike field work which focuses on skills, the student role is determined by the community’s needs (Lemieux and Allen, 312). Students must be prepared to work with the community at hand. This can be achieved by an understanding of principles of community organizing and involvement and by application of this understanding to the library context (Adams, 203-216; McCook, 2000, 37-43). Librarians’ involvement in community building has been long standing, but is not well articulated at the local level.
Reflection can happen in most contexts if the placement is done in a manner that fosters understanding of overarching socio-economic and political considerations. Careful deliberation on the concept of library as ‘place;’ literacy as an adult education endeavor; homelessness as a product of economic injustice; incarceration as a result of a society that does not nurture people of all classes and colors; and lack of effort to develop cultural competence to serve people of different backgrounds are examples.
Twenty-first century leaders in the American Library Association (ALA) have endeavored to establish the librarian’s role in building and transforming communities. During the presidency of Leslie Burger (2006-2007) the Association adopted an agenda for the 21st century: “Libraries Transform Communities; Communities Transform Libraries.” And in 2007-2008 the presidency of Loriene Roy included initiatives to operationalize the ideas of community transformation through the project ‘Supporting LIS Education through Practice.’ It should be noted for purpose of expanding discussion that the use of community as synonymous with place can be problematic (Leckie and Buschman 13). Libraries as culturally constructed places may succeed in supporting community or not.
To understand how communities can be transformed we can look at The Library as Place by Buschman and Leckie and find different analyses of place that provide means of reflection—the Habermasian influence that allows us to make “normative and democratic claims about libraries as places (15).” Establishment of locations for service learning that provide an opportunity for reflection and community transformation have been discussed by
Cuban and Hayes have reported on students placed in a community literacy agency and described the need for literacy education curricula in LIS education. The connection of the service learning experience to curriculum reform demonstrates a mechanism by which the classroom and the external site re-enforce values. Reflective service learning placements require a setting where co-workers are intellectually knowledgeable about the philosophical and theoretical basis of service provided. Literacy for adults must be viewed as far more than a library challenge and this can only be done through active engagement in the work of the American Association for Adult and Continuing Education (AAACE) and involvement with colleagues imbued with the AAACE vision “that lifelong learning contributes to human fulfillment and positive social change.”
At the University at Buffalo Peterson has written how students engaged in a service learning seminar worked to turn a homeless shelter library into a satellite of the
Ours is a prison nation with over 2 million people incarcerated. Any of the hundreds of local, state or national jails and prisons are sites for service learning through libraries and provision literacy education. Clarke and MacCreaigh demonstrate how a public library model can be used in correction facilities. Amy Mark discusses an internship at the Oshkosh Correctional Institution that she undertook after involvement with the student group at the
In Still Struggling for Equality, a thorough assessment of U.S. librarian initiatives to serve immigrants and minorities from 1876 to the present, Plummer Alston Jones Jr. provides hundreds examples of librarians who have looked to serve marginalized people and developed programs to provide basic information and literacy. The use of Jones’ book in concert with state and national policies and programs that were the framework for the JCLC help students and their faculty supervisors to recognize the variety of opportunities for service learning that will contribute to a world without old structures and tired ideas.
So, there are many opportunities for students to be placed in service learning situations where the work being done transcends a particular library or system and allows the student to address issues that are societal in scope though, perhaps, individual in the here and now. By working with the homeless and reflecting on the factors that create homelessness; by working with people in jail and reflecting on the reasons they have been incarcerated; and by assuming a reflective mode of thinking about these issues we will find that the opportunity to create change is amplified.
==============
Student Preparation and Post-Experience Assessment
Students prepare for service learning beyond the acquisition of the skills and theories of librarianship. They must learn about the placement and the conditions that surround the point of service. Reading is a reflective act. Writing is a reflective act. Those who choose to study to become librarians come in the main from that group of people for whom reading and writing are important. In spite of society’s aggrandizement of technology with a concomitant undervaluing of traditional skills, these skills—reading, writing—form the essence of reflection. Before reflection on the service learning experience can take place the larger philosophical questions must be addressed; there is a need to step back and have students read broadly to examine the context of service. This includes primary human rights sources such as the Vedas, the Bible, the Qur'an, Analects of Confucius, and the Magna Carta on up to more recent documents like the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National, or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities (1992), or the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (2006).1
See for example, how one local effort connects to the universal. Irene Sweeney’s family literacy project in rural
Students may also find that librarians who have struggled for social justice and human rights provide inspiration and encouragement. The Information for Social Change journal (summer 2007) edited by Lowe and Samek highlights people who provide information and help to others, who are caught up within conflict situations. They cover aspects of the work of peace libraries and of resources to aid those who are working within or upon various conflict situations throughout the world.
These are deplorable times. Immigrants and refugees suffer, the poor have little access to health care or food security, torture is condoned by the George W. Bush administration. The reflective student can review and examine these examples of human suffering and seek a close-up way in connection with an individual to enable change to make another world possible. In Moorehead’s book, Human Cargo, the chapter “Fence” is about migrants in
And service learning can take place in all types of libraries. In “Leaning by Serving,” Sitter develops the argument that teacher-librarians in school library media centers ‘have a unique opportunity to work with students, teachers, and community partners …to help our young citizens develop sensitivity to human need and a responsibility to serve.’
And sometimes service learning can be work within a system of services librarians provide rather than direct service. Paul Farmer has written of the new war on the poor in terms of structural social violence and lack of access to health care. His examination of social inequity relies upon the Universal Declaration as he pleads that everyone has the right “to share in scientific advancement and its benefits” (Article 27). Farmer’s emphasis on human rights finds voice in the work of the National Library of Medicine’s Environmental Health Information Outreach Program which includes representation from HBCUs, institutions serving Hispanic students, and tribal colleges. In addition to working with these institutions to promote the use of and access to electronic health information and related technology, this program brings attention to scientific research related to health issues that disproportionately affect minorities (Dutcher, et al). In the quietest ways librarians can develop resources that will make a difference in people’s lives.
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Conclusion-
The Meaning 21st Century Librarianship:
Service-Learning for Human Rights
Students placed in service learning programs must reflect on the meaning of 21st century librarianship. Adama Samassékou asserts that “the development of the information society must be based on the framework of human rights, and should respect and uphold the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (vii).” Although a specific service learning experience might require certain technical skills (assisting with information commons; digitizing archival materials), it is the core values of the profession that will illuminate the experience. And it is on these core values that reflection rests. As Katharine Phenix and I have argued these core values should be based on a human rights model (59).
For librarianship Toni Samek has gone farthest of all scholar-philosophers in defining manifestations of social action. The faculty member and student who plan a reflective service learning experience should review Samek’s monograph, Librarianship and Human Rights, for models (2007, 47-180). These provide tangible opportunities for service learning if the faculty supervisor is attuned to human rights and social justice considerations in librarianship. Samek gives many examples of specific forms of social action that would be the opportunity for reflective service learning. These include AIDS information and awareness (72); protests of library closures (150-151); serving the homeless (166-167); digitization and development of memory programs (132-134).
Reflection requires quiet thought. And we librarians will find the topics and concerns not just in technical or professional literature but in the work of those men and women, those writers, who likely first brought us to this calling. We close with the words of José Saramago, Nobel Laureate in Literature whose speech was given on the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
--“Let us think that no human rights will exist without symmetry of the duties that correspond to them. It is not to be expected that governments in the next 50 years will do it. Let us common citizens therefore speak up. With the same vehemence as when we demanded our rights, let us demand responsibility over our duties. Perhaps the world could turn a little better.”
-- José Saramago's speech at the Nobel Banquet,
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1The Vedas, the Bible, the Qur'an, Analects of Confucius, Magna Carta (1215), Milton’s Areopagetica (1643), Locke's Letter Concerning Tolerance and Second Treatise of Civil Government (1690), Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Social Contract (1761), Thomas Paine's The Rights of Man (1791-92), the Declaration of Independence (1976), Abigail Adams, “Remember the Ladies,” (1776), U.S. Bill of Rights (1791), French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789), Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792), Kant’s Perpetual Peace (1797), Britain Outlaws Slave Trade (1807), Robert Owen’s New View of Society (1817), Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, “Declaration of Sentiments at Seneca Falls,” (1848) Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau (1849), John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859), Amsterdam Resolution Against Colonialism (1904), Mahatma Gandhi’s Passive Resistance (1909), Declaration of the Rights of Toiling and Exploited Peoples (1918), International Labor Organization Charter, (1919), International Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women and Children (1921), Declaration of the Rights of Children (1924), League of Nations Convention to Suppress the Slave Trade and Slavery (1926), Franklin Delano Roosevelt, “Four Freedoms” (1941), the Universal Declaration of Human rights (1948), Declaration of Rights of the Child (1959), Declaration of Rights of Disabled Persons (1975), Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention (1989), U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National, or Ethnic, Religious an Linguistic Minorities (1992), Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and Ocher Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (2006).
Human Rights as a Framework for Reflection in Service Learning:
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References
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On Sun.August 5, 2007 Gretchen Whitney [JESSE moderator] wrote:
This is off topic - it has to do with librarians, and not LIS education. Jesse is focused on LIS Education, and not on librarians or libraries. As important as this topic is, there are other sources from which to receive such announcements for those who are interested in them. If the general topic of "librarians" were included in the scope of
Jesse, I'd have to forward the entire contents of AUTOCAT, the ALA Council list, and who knows what else. And that would be a mess. Jesse is not a general "library" or "Librarian" list, it is tightly focused on the education of librarians and information scientists, and their research, teaching, and service concerns. HTH -- gw.. Gretchen Whitney.
On
Did not see this post; could you re-send, please?
Thanks.
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The Vancouver Library Workers have been on strike for a week. I have
a lot of entries and today posted a very moving video-clip about the 'Read-
In.' Some of the striking librarians are wearing signs that say "Sam's
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