Kahne and Westheimer

Connections:

Community service has become a requirement for many teens to graduate high school. This has be come a problem because many teens see this as something that they are forced to do and not something that they want to do. The projects can also be anything from cleaning a local historical cemitary, to collecting food for the food pantry. Many teens will choose a project that will have little or no effort on their part to complete. I believe that the service learning project and the hours that go along with it are a great requirement for the school of ed. This way we have a way of working with students on a small scale and "get our feet wet" when it comes to teaching. Some see volunteering as a way to help the less fortunate. The less fortunate are portrayed as the social minorities in the area, this might be African-Americans and Hispanics and the more well off people are commonly portrayed as white. In 2010 there were 27.4% African American and 26.6% Hispanics in poverty; then 12.1% Asian and 9.9% White. I am sure that the have changed slightly but not enough to change the stereo type.

If you are a minority and you are poor, you are not smart, you do not service others, you are on drugs and have no morals. McIntosh states that there is white privilege in the world. This is one of the ways that privilege is being pushed to the for front. The white people are being shown volunteerism at the soup kitchens and the person eating the meal is a poor Hispanic. The media does a good job of propelling this idea forward. Like what Christenson says, children are learning that you service others. There have been so many times that I have been told, "Eat the rest of your food. The are starving people in Africa that would gladly eat it." It is weird looking back on this because the tone that underlines the white privilege that I have as a white American citizen. This propels the notion that Africans are poor there for African- Americans that I meet are all poor.