"required to perform a specific number of hours of community service,"

according to one recent report.³⁶Maryland has a statewide service-learning

requirement for high schools. In the spirit of responsibility and community

solidarity -- rooted in Aristotelian ethics, supported by the U.S Founders,

affirmed by Alexis de Tocqueville, reignited by President Kennedy, and most

recently bolstered by President Clinton's Goals 2000 program -- secondary

schools are seeking to prepare the next generation for democratic citizenship.

Before his death, Ernest Boyer, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the

Advancement of Teaching, also challenged institutions of higher education to

see the scholarly interaction between teaching, research and community

service. Quoting Woodrow Wilson, in part, he said, "It is not learning but the

spirit of service that will give a college a place in the annals of the nation ....

Scholarship has to prove its worth, not on its own terms, but by service to the

nation and the world."³⁷

Most service-learning programs, whether at the college or high school

level, are community-based, not international. They also tend to be activist-

oriented, in some important respects, usually on the liberal-to-left end of the

political spectrum. Some critics fear that mandatory voluntarism "runs the

risk of degrading the virtue of service itself, while politicizing the school

36_{Cited in Chester E. Finn, Jr., and Gregg Vanourek, "Charity Begins at School,"}
Commentary(October 1995):46.

37_{Ernest Boyer, "Creating the New American College," The Chronicle of Higher}
Education(9 March 1994):A48. The article has been cited by many service-
learning proponents, including John W. Eby in "Linking Service and
Scholarship," in Sigmon et. al., Journey to Service Learning, 87-97; and Robert
G. Bringle and Julie A. Hatcher, "Implementing Service Learning in Higher
Education," The Journal of Higher Education (March/April 1996):221-239. A
1994 survey of GC alumni indicated that of seven factors influencing them
toward volunteer/service work, next to the church, Goshen College and its SST
program had provided the most impetus.

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