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Asking why I incorporate community service into my teaching is a little like asking why I incorporate breathing into living. Maybe the question should be reversed: why do I incorporate teaching into community service? For some of us, taking on issues of justice and decency simply seems like the thing we're here to do, regardless of profession, and it provides the underlying meaning of and way of evaluating everything else. You just take it for granted that that is part of the conversation--any conversation. Without getting too heavy about it, it is really hard for me to think of life having much meaning apart from the impossible quest for fairness and decency.
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| Joseph Campbell spoke of "The joyous participation in the sorrows of the world." I can't imagine much deep, lasting joy being based on an escape from such things. Teaching is just one of many professions that can be experienced through the lens of decency and justice; in fact, I think most professions can be practiced in this way. There are no particular "helping professions," in my book; they are all potential vehicles through which each person can do what he or she loves in a way that benefits others, as well. |
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"...it is really hard for
me to think of life
having much meaning
apart from the
impossible quest for
fairness and decency." |
Only the students can say what they get from this kind of learning experience. What I hope they get is as much of an identification as is possible between themselves and "others." We're all "other" in one way or another, at one time or another. Everyone knows something other people would benefit from knowing. I would hope that the students would eventually get to the point where, when they see a really horrible and daunting problem, they would run toward it, not away from it. I would hope they would get to the point where NOT striving for justice would just seem empty, incomplete, a denial of themselves and a frustration of their own need to be fully alive, fully human.
Bob Hansman
Associate Professor of Architecture
email: hansman@architecture.wustl.edu
online profile: http://www.arch.wustl.edu/fb_bob_hansman.lasso
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