When I first read Lee Shulman’s essay “Professing the Liberal Arts,” I scribbled the phrase “professional student” in the margin of the second page and again about three-quarters of the way through the essay. This phrase has me thinking. My friends and I at the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire joked about becoming professional students in the 1980s. We were humanities students from rural Wisconsin and the Milwaukee suburbs. Studying at a regional campus, we had only a vague notion of graduate study and the professional academic world. For us, “professional student” named a mythical opportunity to continue to study literature or art or music or history. A few of us went on to grad school and stuck to the liberal arts trajectory of our bachelor’s degrees. I lived as a happy but poor semi-pro for a decade.
My ideals about being a student have evolved since the mid ‘80s. College is more expensive and seems to be a more instrumental venture; higher education seems to have become concurrently more accessible and less available. Because being a student is both more dear and less valued, students and teachers seem to be a bit confused by one another’s expectations. Shulman, I think, offers a way forward.
He asks us to reflect on what it means to be in a profession. His six criteria are useful, but what seems most important to me is the focus on service and the generation of new knowledge. Professionals pursue “important social ends” (14), and they test and expand knowledge developed in the academy (15). They do this work in and on behalf of communities whatever their own interests are. While thinking of the professions in these terms makes me mutter about investment bankers (are they professionals?), this argument helps me rethink how we might understand the role of a learner in the first two years of college. First, we have to stipulate to the social ends general education students pursue. I might argue for the development of citizens with critical literacy and what Richard Hugo called a “crap detector.” I think that we (members of the U.S. democracy) need such development, would be enriched by it. I might also suggest that pro students are pursuing the interpretation and celebration of cultures (another social good). Perhaps most importantly, they are contributing to the refinement of the process by which members of our society get an education. Clearly, other arguments could be made. Bring them on.
Second, we need to clarify how students are applying theoretical knowledge in a field of practice and using their own judgment to revise theory and report back to the theoreticians. The question here for me is, What is the field of practice in which a pro student labors? Shulman hints at an answer to this question: “service learning” (26). Many of my general education students see classes as communities, but passing communities that exist of a brief period and exist to serve the learners. Shulman, by suggesting “a clinical component or the equivalent of an internship experience,” outlines quite a different perception of the classroom. If GE courses are service to the broader community, then the learning community is not about the learners but about producing learning that is of use to someone. In such a setting, it makes little sense to ask, How many points is this worth? Instead, the question is, Have you done enough reading and writing or drawing to contribute to the cause?
Shulman wonders aloud, “How might this sort of thing go on?” He offers a methodology, the case study, that works brilliantly in professional schools and in the third and fourth year of the college curriculum. What cases might the professional students that I am imagining work on? To even begin to work on that question, teachers like me (Shulman admits he knows little about teaching in the GE curriculum) have to reimagine our classrooms and identify more clearly what service our students are involved in. I have only vague ideas about what that service might look like, but I know at least the part of the problem I need to work on.
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This line of reasoning seems...perfectly reasonable, almost all of the way through. The fourth paragraph is where it starts to break down for me.
I'm unconvinced that "service learning" is itself a field of practice. Education is, certainly. But I would argue that service learning is a pedagogy/method. A method used by pro students to apply knowledge to a field of practice, such as education (though generally, in education, students are likely to enrich the field passively).
It seems to me that students and educators can also technically contribute to the enrichment of more than one field of practice at a time. Similar to the infinitive verb in Spanish, students and teachers are able to play a duel role (though these contributions are often squandered).
For instance, a student studying Biology, and a Biology professor might be involved in research which brings to light new ideas within Biology’s field of practice. Cool, right? But in addition, a case study of how the research project was conducted, and how participation refined the participants (both student and faculty) understanding of biological processes, contributes not only to current understanding in the field, but to the best practices for teaching and learning those biological processes, as well. So the student/professor have enriched both the fields of biology and of education, of which they both are a part.
Back to those involved in GE coursework.
Perhaps then, in addition to the questions like “How many points is this worth [or] Have you done enough reading and writing or drawing to contribute to the cause?,” we might even ask, Why am I getting/giving points for this?, or How does reading and writing or drawing contribute to the cause of the humanities and the professions of teaching and of learning them?
Service learning programs are of great importance to our communities. Not only does it provide students with an opportunity to apply the knowledge we have amasses in our readings and are numerous hours of researching issues such as the immense gap in comprehensive and accessible education in Seattle school districts alone, it is a fantastic opportunity to apply theoretical knowledge to “real world” applications.
Furthermore, it moves us away from being egoists, solely concerned with how will this benefit my grade or how will this degree allow me to make money, to a social being who understands that we create and shape our communities by our actions within them. By helping others in schools, working with habit for humanity, or helping in homeless shelters we are helping to reenergize the community with hope. This allows others to see what is possible if we, citizens, get involved (bleeding-heart, HIPPY ideal, I know) rather than taking the view that, “Someone more qualified than I ought to do this or I just don’t have the time.”
Sadly, service learning seems to be discounted among the student body. This begs the question as to how ought it be implemented.
It ought not be done as a mandatory stipulation on the road to achieving a degree. My rational is this, if we force people to participate in service learning some may be resentful that it is mandatory. This may close them off to the possibility of seeing the symbiotic relationship one finds in this amazing program.
Perhaps the way to implant it is through more accessible scholarship programs. Say if one engages a service-learning program for all of fall quarter they will receive a scholarship that completely covers the students tuition for that quarter.
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