Is Service-Learning a Disservice to Philosophy?
The anti-theoretical tone of the service-learning movement, implicit even in the rhetoric of moderates, makes this worry reasonable.
Karl Marx once groused that âThe philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.â He might have been pleased to learn that some philosophers now teach, and advocate for, courses that contain significant activist elements. Pedagogy that includes service projects outside the classroom are often denominated âservice-learning.â One variation currently being piloted, âEngaged Philosophy,â gives students autonomy over planning, implementing, and writing about a service project of their choice.1 The Engaged Philosophy website showcases successful projects. For example:
- Vanessa made crafts and sold them to raise money for NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness. She also collected scarves for the homeless and tied them around trees in downtown Minneapolis.
- Two students worked with local Starbucks managers to get their coffee shops to compost and have clearer recycling signs.
- Two students brought dogs from a local shelter, Indigo Rescue, to campus during midterms to help students relieve stress. They also collected money for the shelter and raised awareness about dog adoption.
Although service-learning has yet to become mainstream within academic philosophy, it has, significant footholds in other disciplines. The conservative group National Association of Scholars alleges in a recent report that what they call the âNew Civicsââwhich emphasizes service-learning, but is effectively training for left-wing activistsâhas displaced traditional civics education in some universities. Some philosophers want to see the philosophy curriculum similarly overhauled in the direction of âservice.â Philosopher Eugene J. Valentine speculates (optimistically) about what his field, so transformed, might look like:
In a philosophy of sport course, our students might serve injured athletes or athletes with special needs. In a feminist philosophy course, our students might serve residents of a domestic violence shelter. In an environmental philosophy course, our students might serve a group of endangered animals or a polluted stream. In a philosophy of law course, our students might serve clients of a legal services program. In an existentialism course, our students might serve persons who are physically disabled or homeless, whereas in a course on Marxism, our students might serve both wealthy residents of nursing homes and poor residents of nursing homes.2
Should this be the future of philosophy? The answer depends on what we think âphilosophyâ is. Valentine claims that the job of philosophers is to help their students acquire âwisdom,â by which he means âthe intelligence to live well.â3 But many subjects other than philosophy help students live well (e.g., accounting). Not all who live well are good philosophers and not all who live poorly are poor philosophers; hence philosophy is not âthe intelligence to live well.â Philosophy, as I understand it, is theoreticalâroughly, the use of reason to investigate fundamental questions that cannot be settled empirically: Does God exist? What do we know? What is morally right?, and so on.
Service-learning enthusiasts in philosophy donât disclaim theoretical learning, nor do they typically call for activism to be injected into nearly every philosophy course. Still they use language that subtly disparages purely intellectual pursuits. They speak, for example, of the need to bring philosophy into âreal lifeâ and âthe real worldâ as if it currently takes place elsewhere.4 Consider again the term âEngaged Philosophy.â Presumably, what makes Engaged Philosophy engaged are the studentsâ service projects. If so, then the implication is that philosophy classes without service projects are disengaged, or at least less fully engaged than those that have them. Engagement with ideas seemingly doesnât count as genuine engagement.
In the introductory essay for their anthology, Experiential Learning in Philosophy, philosophers Julinna Oxley and Ramona Ilea (one of the main proponents of Engaged Philosophy) reject the ânarrow view of what philosophy is that developed in the twentieth centuryâ and align themselves with the view that âphilosophy ought not to be exclusively abstract and otherworldly.â5 But what analytic philosopher thinks philosophy must be âotherworldlyâ? Is it otherworldly to investigate abstract questions? Oxley and Ilea say that they approve of the example of âSocrates in the agora.â What Socrates did in the agora, however, was interrogate abstract concepts using what we now regard as traditional methods. Other philosophers have warned against merging theory and practice. C.S. Peirce writes:
It is notoriously true that into whatever you do not put your whole heart and soul, in that you will not have much success. Now the two masters, theory and practice, you cannot [both] serve. That perfect balance of attention which is required for observing the system of things is utterly lost if human desires intervene, and all the more so the higher and holier those desires may be.[6]
When asked to lecture on âTopics of Vital Importanceâ instead of those topics he thought were philosophically most important, Peirce was reluctant. Ultimately, though, the inquirer who devotes himself into the search for truth succeeds in serving both masters. Open-minded inquiry is vitally important. This situation is structurally similar to the so-called paradox of hedonism (really a paradox of egoism): if you want to be happy, donât try to make yourself happy; instead, serve other people. Likewise, I take Peirce to be saying that the best way for a scientist or philosopher to make the world better in that capacity isnât to aim to make the world better, but to understand it. Peirce writes:
The point of view of utility is a narrow point of view. How much more we should know about chemistry today if the most practically important bodies [I assume has gold in mind, an obsessive focus of alchemy] had not received excessive attention; and how much less we should know, if the rare elements and the compounds which only exist at low temperatures had received only the share of attention to which their utility entitled them.7
Physicist Mark P. Mills arrives at a similar conclusion. In his essay for The New Atlantis, âMaking Technological Miracles,â Mills observes that scientists compromise between the noble quest for truth and the practical quest for utility (so that the money men will fund them). However, âWhile it is usually obvious what questions are utility-driven or curiosity-driven, it is not obvious, as history shows, which may lead to foundational discoveries, producing not just utility but âmiraclesââ such as the discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA. In order to maximize long-run utility, scientists must be allowed to trust in âthe serendipity of curiosity-driven inquiry.â
Does this apply to disciplines outside of the sciences? Thereâs room for doubt. When investor Bill Miller donated 75 million dollars to the Johns Hopkins University philosophy departmentâthe largest ever donation to a single philosophy departmentâphilosopher Michael Huemer criticized him for not donating the money to a more effective cause (assuming that his goal, in giving to charity, was to do as much good as possible). According to the data at GiveWell.org, that sum of money, donated to a highly efficient charity, could have saved the lives of 25,000 extremely poor people. Hiring nine new philosophers wonât in all likelihood yield any comparable benefit.
Hereâs the rub: Huemerâs reasoning extends to every dollar invested into the humanities or pure mathematics, each and every one of which would, by the same logic, be (morally) better spent elsewhere. Imagine that it were possible to press a button that would reallocate all of this money to a GiveWell charity. In addition, all of the resources private individuals spend investigating these fields would be similarly redirected. Should a utilitarian like Peter Singer press this button? Doubtless, this would produce a short-term utility spike. But in the long term, I doubt that the bargain would be a good one even on utilitarian terms.
If the reallocation were constantâso weâd never reinvest money into these fieldsâthen pressing the button would amount to a cultural cashing-out. Whichever society did this would be intellectually diminished and its members might be less willing and able to come to the aid of others on a continuing basis. With no moral philosophers like Peter Singer around to persuade them of their duty to donate, people might forget why they are going through such trouble. Ultimately, then, some resources ought to be devoted to âcuriosity-driven inquiryâ in these fieldsâthough itâs hard to say precisely how much.
If we grant that philosophers have a legitimate role investigating purely theoretical questions, then they have reason to keep utility-based justifications for what they do, and especially politics, an armâs length from their research. Philosopher Bas van der Vossen has argued that philosophers, at least those interested in political questions, have a prima facie duty to abstain from political activity.8 Philosophersâ primary charge is finding the truth and members of professions have duties to avoid things that make them predictably worse at their jobs. Empirical evidence exists that political involvement introduces biases that make the truth more difficult to discern. Hence, it is at odds with political philosophersâ professional duties.
Galen Watts
The best response to van der Vossen, I thinkâand it is one he considersâis to say that if philosophers do have a duty of this kind, then it isnât a duty that matters very much. After all, it will frequently be in competition with stronger duties, such as the duty not to stand idly by as injustice occurs. Philosophers shouldnât eschew political engagement altogether. But the weaker claim that philosophers should generally avoid doing philosophy and political activism at the same time is reasonable. We should, out of epistemic modesty, avoid combining investigation with tasks likely to introduce biasâparadigmatically, political activism. The same goes for pedagogy.
If we had good evidence that service-learning is the best way to transmit philosophical ideas and methods, then the benefits would outweigh the risks. Four philosophers associated with the Engaged Philosophy website have published a pilot study that purports to show that philosophy courses with âcivic engagementâ components have salutary effects.9 Students in service-learning classes, interviewed at the beginning and end of the semester, report gains in a variety of skills relevant to good citizenship. Qualitative analyses of studentsâ written final reflections supported these results.
We should be skeptical about these findings, however. The sample size is small; the number of students who completed both the pre- and post-course surveys, producing analyzable results, is apparently only 38, and these are aggregated from different institutions. The researchers rely on student self-assessments, not on tests that objectively quantify improvement. Finally, most of the things measured have little to do with understanding philosophical ideas. For example, each student is asked to rate, on a 1-6 scale, how much he or she is able âto see myself as a person who can bring about change.â Other evidence adduced to show that service-learning is effective philosophical pedagogy is susceptible to similar criticisms.10
I anticipate the objection that my demand for rigor is selective, since we also lack empirical evidence that traditional methods work.11 But we already have good reason to think that traditional methods have something going for them. Those of us who have doctorates in philosophy acquired our expertise through years of reading, writing, and listening to lectures (which service-learning enthusiasts deride as âsage on the stageâ teaching). If all of this were bankrupt, then our expertise, and the expertise of those with PhDs in other disciplines taught in the same way, would be hard to explain. Since it evidently isnât bankrupt, the onus is on those who claim to have something better.
Even if service-learning classes have all the advantages enthusiasts claim, such classes should remain novelties. Integrating service-learning throughout the philosophy curriculum, as Valentine suggests, would likely accelerate the instrumentalization of higher education. Philosophers already face pressureâfrom administrators, politicians, and laypeopleâto justify their discipline in terms of its economic. They shouldnât want to find themselves facing similar pressure from within their own ranks.
The anti-theoretical tone of the service-learning movement, implicit even in the rhetoric of moderates, makes this worry reasonable. The slope here really is slippery. If we accept that even 20 percent of a studentâs grades should be service-basedâon, say, the grounds that philosophy belongs in the âreal worldââthen the open question will be âWhy not more?â Most university classes can be repurposed as âservice-learningâ courses; only philosophy concerns the fundamental questions at its core. Diverting attention away from theoretical concerns in an effort to make philosophy ârelevantâ will instead make it redundant and irrelevant. Pressing philosophy into public service would be a disservice to philosophy.
Notes and References:
1 The advocates of Engaged Philosophy bill it as an alternative to service-learning because it is student directed. However, if service-learning (sometimes spelled with a hyphen, sometimes without) is simply pedagogy that involves service projects, then Engaged Philosophy is a form of service-learning. That is how I will be understanding the term here.
2 Valentine, Eugene J. âService-Learning as Vehicle for Teaching Philosophyâ in Beyond the Tower: Concepts and Models for Service-Learning in Philosophy. Ed. David C. Lisman. (Washington, DC: American Association for Higher Education, 2000), pp. 130.
3 Ibid.
4 For a typical example, see Peter Singerâs forward in Experiential Learning in Philosophy. Ed. J. Oxley and R. Ilea. (New York: Routledge UP, 2016), pp. xii-xiv.
5 Oxley, Julinna and Ramona Ilea, âExperiential Learning in Philosophy: Theory and Practiceâ in Experiential Learning in Philosophy, ed. by J. Oxley and R. Ilea. (New York: Routledge UP, 2016), p. 7.
6 Peirce, Charles Sanders. âPhilosophy and the Conduct of Lifeâ in The Essential Peirce Volume 2, ed. by The Peirce Edition Project (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1998), p. 34.
7 Ibid.
8 Van der Vossen, Bas, âIn Defense of the Ivory Tower: Why Philosophers Should Stay Out of Politics,â Philosophical Psychology 28 (2015): 1045-1063
9 Hawthorne, Susan, Monica Janzen, Ramona Ilea, and Chad Wiener âAssessing Student-Initiated Civic Engagement Projects in Philosophy Classesâ in Experiential Learning in Philosophy, ed. by J. Oxley and R. Ilea. (New York: Routledge UP, 2016).
10 Another study cited on the Engaged Philosophy website is Lies, James M, Tonia Bock, and Jay Brandenberger. âThe Effects Of Off-Campus Service Learning On The Moral Reasoning Of College Students.â Journal Of Moral Education 41.2 (2012): 189-199. This reports that service-learning students increased their average scores on tests psychologists say track development in moral thinking (a control-group of randomly-selected students from the same university did not). Perhaps these findings reflect well on service-learning in general, but they arenât, and donât purport to be, evidence that civic engagement enhances philosophical instruction. Thinking about ethics like an adult, though desirable in an ethics student, doesnât imply any knowledge of ethical theory. By analogy, service-related learning in a mathematics class might increase critical thinking generally without conferring knowledge of the specific mathematical concepts and procedures central to the class.
11 Philosopher Neven SesardiÄ has argued in an essay for Quillette that although philosophy departments claim to increase their studentâs critical thinking abilities, all they know is that philosophy majors tend to have good test scores. So nothing rules out the possibility that philosophy simply attracts smart students. Economist Bryan Caplan has also, in his book The Case Against Education: Why the Education System is a Waste of Time and Money (Princeton University Press, 2018), produced a lot of very dispiriting evidence about education generally.
