The importance of service learning in schools

 Larry Cuban -  Like most school innovations, service learning has had multiple meanings since it was introduced into public schools in the 1970s. Thus, distinguishing between students individually finding an internship that will meet the district requirement for graduation and a school-based service learning program where teachers find places for students to volunteer in the community and monitors the work students do--has made definitions hard to pin down for decades. Definitions aside, community service (e.g. students visiting the elderly, cleaning up parks, feeding the homeless, volunteering in hospitals and early childhood day care centers) has been an feature of schooling for over a century. And it remains so. In a 2008 survey of principals (the most recent that I could find), 60 percent of elementary schools had students engaged in both voluntary or required community service activities while 74 percent of middle schools and 86 percent of high schools did also...  Over the past few decades there has been a drop in actual school-based service learning programs. The most recent statistics I could find showed a drop in the percentage of schools offering service learning from 32 percent in 1999 to 24 percent in 2008.