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The “Freshmentality” of Higher Education: Refocusing our Civic Pursuits in American Colleges and Universities by Jerry Parker For many seniors in American high schools, their final year represents a vacation from academic achievement, focusing more on filling out college applications and enjoying their final days before graduation by planning senior skip-days. Study halls become their course of study, unfortunately though, with little to study. Higher education aficionados have been at the forefront of discussions with high school administrators and state education departments to ensure a student’s senior year is anything but a breeze due to the increasing criticism from academics on the lack of freshmen students’ preparedness. However, unpreparedness for college academics should not be the only focal point of insistent pursuits to align high school curriculum to college standards. When it comes to college preparedness, we must also keep citizenship and its correlation to social capital in the realm of our academic conversations. It is without a doubt that our country’s sense of community has diminished over recent decades. Just pick up any book at your local bookstore pertaining to community engagement and the data speaks for itself. Yes, it is true that high school students and first-year college students have increasingly become more involved in service, but service alone doesn’t create social capital, just like adding flour doesn’t solely create a cake—there are other ingredients. Up until our most recent presidential election in 2008, there had been a steady decline in voter turnout beginning in the 1960s. The Higher Education Research Institute, located at UCLA, had portions of their annual assessment component (CIRP) published in the January 21, 2009 “USA Today” which reported that “a record 35.6% of first-year students said they frequently discussed politics in the past year; the previous high was 33.6% in 1968.” At most American universities and colleges, schools require that all incoming freshmen register for a general seminar course that discusses the college environment, assign readings and essays, and allow different departments to make presentations. In the fall of 2007, while working as the Assistant Director for Service Learning at a great Catholic institution, St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, Texas, staff members, including myself, went to every freshmen seminar course and asked the following question: “Give us three reasons why you are here at St. Mary’s?” The responses were always the same: 1.) to get a great job; 2.) make a lot of money; and 3.) to one day be independent from their parents. Not once did we hear, “to become a better citizen and a leader in my community,” or something along those lines. As educators, our role is to teach differing ideals, beliefs and theories, allowing students to reflect more intensely on what their reasoning should or could be about attaining a college education and becoming an engaged citizens proactively addressing our world’s problems. If this question were posed throughout other colleges and universities in the United States, how many of us would hear similar responses?
2 It would be ill-advised for academe and student affairs divisions to assume that students have been taught the importance of making community engagement and service to others a priority within their lives before they ever stepped on campus. That would be like assuming that since Jerry Parker is Catholic and goes to a Catholic college, that the school believes he already knows the Catholic theological teachings. Well, we know that a majority of private-religious institutions require religious courses to be taken by their students, so that assumption about Jerry Parker is seldom made. Yet, with community activism and civic engagement, our assumption that students know and are involved with these forms of social capital could be the very essence that has caused higher education to retreat from its earliest foundations of being civically minded and maintaining the call to serve others. Faulting students for not knowing higher education’s mission would be disconcerting because the responsibility lies with practitioners in bringing to the forefront higher education’s purpose through continual dialogues and forums. Yet, do we as higher education leaders even know what our mission is anymore? We must look at the transformations that have taken place in American culture over the decades that have portrayed U.S. citizens as retreating from an altruistic belief system to a more individualistic mindset. In no sense is this commentary trying to defray from the benefits of individualism, but only to reaffirm that a community is more than just one mind, body, and spirit. In 2000, Robert Putnam published Bowling Alone, highlighting U.S. trends showcasing statistics and charts that observe Americans throughout the past few decades becoming less engaged with church groups, bowling leagues, parent-teacher associations, or even knowing who our neighbors are anymore. The erosion of community connectedness and the belief of helping our brethren are the very concerns that threaten the historical roots of higher education’s mission of serving the greater good. This dismantling of community has crept onto college campuses and jeopardizes the foundation of higher education’s purpose of service to one another through educational attainment. Ideally, many would believe altruistic qualities of serving and assisting others in need should be modeled by parents and mentors during a child’s earliest years. Documented in a 2007 publication titled, Educating for Democracy: Preparing Undergraduates for Responsible Political Engagement, several researchers from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching assessed students’ preparation in participating politically in a democracy. Their research, documented in Anne Colby’s commentary in the December 2007 Hispanic Outlook, found that “students are offered a great wealth of opportunities to do community service, but they perceive very few opportunities and little encouragement to become politically involved.” The research concluded that students were unfamiliar with the political arena and knew more in regards to general community service because it is promoted more in high schools and college campuses. I perceive the teaching of political participation and becoming move involved in the democratic processes continues to be overlooked quite possibly due to the lack of infrastructure in place throughout colleges and universities in relation to civic engagement for youth. Perhaps many of us faculty members expect freshmen orientations to be the primary forum to introduce new students to the college atmosphere. However, orientations predominantly focus on the areas of academic advising, university policies, parent panels, residential life, financial aid, and how to get involved in student organizations. The phrase most commonly heard when attending university orientations is that, “you (the student) are here to achieve your academic
3 goals and to be successful in the career of your choosing.” College is about more than just learning the hard skills for a career. Earning an undergraduate degree is not solely about receiving a bachelor’s degree – it must also hold the teachings and experiences of becoming engaged citizens. As the late Benjamin Barber pointed out in his 1991 article, “The Civic Mission of the University,” “learning communities, like all free communities function only when their members conceive of themselves as empowered to participate fully in the common activities that define the community—in this case, learning the pursuit of knowledge in the name of common living.” This very issue should not be found only in the job descriptions of orientation leaders, admissions counselors, political science professors, administrators, or even service-learning coordinators. Instead, this responsibility should be in the contracts of all higher education personnel to foster citizenship in the minds that we are educating through a diverse learning community. Colleges and universities are proud to publicize that they have three out of four students participating in at least one service project or volunteer opportunity per year. However, institutions across America should not be satisfied with this fact. We should be striving for more than the one-time “feel-good” service projects or volunteer opportunities; we should be teaching students the importance of continual service that creates systemic change in society. By refocusing our efforts to higher education’s historical mission and creating academic courses in civic engagement utilizing the tools of service-learning, communities will be lifted up through the spreading of wisdom attained by the “liberty” of education. Barber emphasized the need for balance between the purists and vocationalists among the higher education community. With this balance and rededication to teaching on college campuses, students “will discover community.” If we can rediscover community, we just might find our institutions with higher retention rates. We must directly involve ourselves into these conversations in and out of the classroom and see its expansion through academic disciplines and college departments. As professional leaders in higher education, we must be cognizant of our students’ beliefs on how they define college. If we fail to teach and ask students to reflect on what their definition of higher education is beginning their freshmen year, and most importantly what community is, institutions of higher learning will stray further from our intended mission of serving the greater good. In Dr. Christopher Lucas’ book, American Higher Education, published in 1994, he immediately focused on higher education’s earliest origins with the discovery of the Babylonian document Examination Text A, believed to have been written around 1700 B.C., citing the well known conversation between a teacher and a student. “If you study night and day and work modestly and without arrogance, if you attend to your colleagues and teachers, you still can become a scribe! Then you can share the scribal craft which is good fortune for its owner, a good spirit leading you, a bright eye, possessed by you, and that is what the palace requires.” The world is higher education’s “palace” and we must awake to this reality and once again educate our students to “share the scribal craft” with the greater society. Jerry Parker is an Assistant Professor and Director of The Center for Service-Learning & Civic Engagement at Iowa Wesleyan College located in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa. He holds both B.A. and M.A. degrees in Political Science and History from Texas State University and has pursued doctoral work in Higher Education Administration at Texas A&M University.