But Is It Service? Problems of Participatory Democracy and Justice in a Service Learning Class

This paper will contrast the moral development paradigm's conception of the benefits of democratic participation with a political science critique of those benefits. In short, does the participation of citizens in U.S. political campaigns actually constitute service and enhance the common good and if so, to what extent?

Given the low and declining rates of political participation in the United States (Elshtain, 1997), we were particularly interested in the reflective responses of honors students to an immersion experience in American politics. Would they see their experience as service? Kohlberg acknowledged that democracy can be a messy process but he believed it represented significant opportunities for growth in justice reasoning. Yet anti-pluralist theory from political science (Lowi, 1969; Wolff, 1968) suggests that the experience may foster cynicism rather than growth. The two authors came to the study from differing theoretical perspectives and looked forward to exploring the making--or unmaking--of moral citizens as our sample of young adults engaged in the grass roots workings of American democracy. (author)