I go back to the intake procedures for Pendleton Juvenile Correctional Facility, the bureaucratic song and dance one must engage in before charming the double entry, reinforced doors to the tune of an electric motor pulling current as it torques and grinds first one steel slab open, then shut, then the other door open, then shut. Each time I arrive, I am greeted by a pat down procedure, a clipboard awaiting my signature provided under penalty of perjury that I am not attempting to traffic controlled substances or contraband, and a uniformed guard who sits casually behind a frame of steel and thick plexiglass.
I am here to teach, to listen, and to do something—anything—in hopes of reversing the stubborn trend of recidivism for each of my 125 students. I am here to deliver a bucket of water to a forest fire that has burned for years and shows no signs of slowing down. I am here because I joined AmeriCorps and wanted to help. I am here because one of my most vivid memories of my first day at Pendleton was the staff orientation in which I learned not one single person in the front office who spoke to us actually believed rehabilitation was a goal worth hoping for, and I refuse to embrace that cynicism, to let my bucket run dry. Later that evening, at dinner with my wife, I implore her to please tell me if I begin to sound as defeated as those I met during my first day in the correctional facility. She agrees, and it is a promise she will honor nearly two years later.
And you may ask yourself, well how did I get here? – Talking Heads, “Once in a Lifetime”
I became interested in systemic oppression and organized violence long before I knew these terms or recognized their potential meaning in part by my experiences at Pendleton Juvenile Correctional Facility and in how these understandings played out in my personal life. Once at a party, I was catching up with a friend about working with the boys at Pendleton and he asked me, “isn’t it hard to relate to them?” Thinking he was referring to an age difference or the general challenge of working to instill hope in a generally hopeless environment, I began to rattle off a response. “No,” he interrupted, “isn’t it hard to relate to them because they are… you know… black?”
Up until this point, neither of us had mentioned race.
My path from Pendleton Juvenile into academia involved a position as a writing instructor at our local community college. During my interview with the program chair, I recall expressing a concern about my relative lack of experience. After all, I had only been teaching for two years and my experience was limited to the young men at Pendleton. “Actually, we feel your experience there makes you uniquely qualified for the community college system,” my interviewer replied.
“Oh, okay,” I answered.
I don’t remember any of my students from my first semester teaching at the community college. I couldn’t recognize any of them if I ran into them while walking around the city. Rather, here’s what I remember from my first day of my first college writing class: there were no guards in the classroom. While this difference threw me off during my first few weeks at our community college, I soon discovered a similarity that caused me to question my assumptions surrounding education and my role in perpetuating systemic inequalities.
In an average year, Indiana’s three-year juvenile recidivism rate will hover a hair above 35%. For incarcerated adults, the three-year recidivism rate is similar to that of juveniles: 36%. At five years, the adult recidivism rate skyrockets to 76%. Compared to the same amount of time, the graduation rate for students enrolled in Indiana’s largest community college system is 11%. Despite widespread acknowledgement of astronomically high recidivism rates in the United States, we’re still better at preventing re-arrest than we are at granting degrees through community colleges. There’s something horribly wrong with this.
I began to wonder about my own role in perpetuating what appeared to be an educational system rigged against the student. Increasingly, I questioned my own assumptions of education and began challenging myself to look deeper at systemic issues. This is what led me to critical theory and social change.
The question we’re asking, if the social change orientations aligned with critical service learning are actually possible to achieve, is one that I’ve been dwelling on for some time. Like a lot in education, this question is a bit more complicated than what it lets on. On one hand, I feel the answer is “no, generally speaking, the social change we might all like to see emerge from our service learning courses is likely not going to take place.” At least not in the semester or year or four years in which we have the opportunity to help coalesce an idea within the minds of students. But—ever?
When we ask this question (or at least when I ask myself this question), I tie it to a limited timeframe. Really, what I’m asking is if it’s possible to produce social change in fifteen weeks? Or thirty weeks? Or fifty-two? Framed like this, the question seems silly to ask. What do I have the right to expect of the world in the span of few weeks?
The future of critical service learning for me is one defined by paradox: I will remain frustrated by its seeming inability to produce the change desired in the frame of my short attention, and I will remain committed to it and the slow drip of change I hope it provides because I believe it is the best chance we’ve got.
In many ways, frustration is a sign of my own privilege. How dare I ask the world to change? Because I’ve grown accustomed to believing I can. But there are also moments in which that change seems possible and critical service learning and advocacy seem like they worked. These moments come in the form of a student email who just wanted to say thank you for the class and because of it he’s changed his major to social work with a minor in theology. They come in the form of a hard fought public referendum on funding for public transportation passing and becoming a settled matter of policy. They come from the relationships formed by sitting and talking with one another.
In this sense, when I think about my future with critical service learning, I think I want to focus more on the “authentic relationship” and less on the “social change orientation.” This is not to say that I want to ease up on social change. Rather, maybe it’s a recognition that social chance is perhaps more of a natural outcome of what can happen when people care about one another.