My sense is that Levine’s fear is that these programs can give students the skills to recognize and evaluate critical issues - like the newspaper that involves “sustained, cooperative work, promotes deliberation, and depends upon perennial values such as freedom of the press” - but only if there’s an awareness on the part of the organizers that these are values that the organization is supposed to promote. I think the conscious awareness is key. But that doesn’t mean that every activity has to be about what we think of as standard political activity. The whole Deweyan idea of democracy as a way of life is that democracy should permeate everything we do, not just explicitly political action. I’d probably phrase it differently than Levine does, but I think I get his gist.

I do not fully disagree with Levine, but am weary of the conclusions some may reach when reading sections of his blog. I agree with Levine that many “service learning” programs, often loose sight of an original commitment to democracy. Clubs and student governments, for example, can easily become self-centered organisms, neglecting the greater objective of developing community dialogue and democracy. Herein, I empathize with Levine’s concerns. After all, on a far more consequential scale, the US government suffers from these same weaknesses.

I think Levine’s concerns are legitimate, but don’t know if he gives living and learning/service programs enough leg room—at least in the blog entry you cited. Political action is worthless and often stymies healthy growth if the public can not coherently flush out critical issues before they act. In this sense, I am worried Levine portrays service learning programs as runners, democracy as the finish line, and service events without clear political undertones as deviations from the race track. Respect and social awareness, label it “social hygiene” if you desire, are indeed fundamental in some form for constructive dialogue between groups of diverse peoples. I think the underlying challenge is to prevent living and learning organizations from become too absorbed with service itself; not necessarily to ensure such organizations are always consciously aware about how their activities might effect political participation. I’m unconvinced Levine articulated this in his blog.