Peter Levine offers a cautionary tale on his blog about service learning programs in education. Levine sees such programs as a valuable tool for building the skills that people would need to be deliberative citizens – he sees a direct connection between a method of educating and a particular kind of political environment. He sees parallels to many of the reforms Dewey advocated. He then argues that many of those reforms lost their direct connection to a desired political outcome, and became more compartmentalized and separated from a larger social view. Levine sees the same thing possibly happening with service programs, as other priorities take hold. Not to say that any of the other priorities are bad, but that if we’re really going to build a better democracy, we have to pay attention to how we prepare ourselves to live in it.
Levine also participates in the blog at deliberative-democracy.net, which worth a look-see.