These days colleges and universities have come under
increased scrutiny and criticism for (1) not adequately preparing students for employment
upon graduation, and (2) for being too expensive for the average person to
afford. So the question has been raised and debated, “Is a college education
worth it?” As a faculty member at small, faith-based liberal arts university, I
cannot stand aside from this debate since I am both a product and purveyor of
higher education. However, it often seems to me that underlying these
criticisms and the ensuing debate is another more fundamental issue, which is
the relationship between colleges and universities and the communities in which
they are located, and say they seek to serve.
The so-called “Town and Gown”
tension has been widely advertised and been the subject or backdrop for any
number of books, movies and even television shows like the current hit “How to
Get Away with Murder.” At issue is the perception, rightly or wrongly, that
institutions of higher education may employ members of the local community, but
somehow see themselves aloof, and perhaps separate, from the communities in
which they are located. To make matters worse, these non-profit institutions
pay no property taxes while occupying large swaths of lands from which town and city councils could make revenue from
if those lands were not so occupied.
In response to this criticism and dilemma, the Carnegie
Foundation has developed an award that recognizes colleges and universities
that seek to engage and serve their local communities. Students increasingly
are encouraged to participate in service learning, internships and volunteer
activities designed to serve the local community. There are now academic journals
and organizations whose purpose is specifically to highlight university-community
engagement. While these are all good things, all too often these efforts seem
to use the community as a place of learning, service and research without
really connecting in a meaningful way with the people who live in that
community.
With these things in mind, I want to share some thoughts
from the Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire, whose book Pedagogy of the Oppressed is a standard, though often exoticized,
text in many teacher education programs. In a series of letters to his niece,
published as Letters to Cristina,
Freire comments on the role he believes the university should have with the wider community beyond
its campus. Given the current concerns about the value of higher education, I
find his insights to be helpful and even profound. In the 12th letter of Letters
to Cristina, he writes:
[T]he distance between
the university (or what is done in it) and the popular classes should be
shortened without losing rigor and seriousness, without neglecting the duty of
teaching and researching… In order for that to happen the university must, if it
hasn’t yet, increasingly become a creation of the city and expand its influence
over the whole city. A university foreign to its city, superimposed on it, is a
mind-narrowing fiction… [T]he university must start to be identified with its
environment in order to move it and not just reproduce it…. These universities should cooperate with the
state, towns, popular movements, production cooperatives, social clubs, neighborhood
associations, and churches. Through such cooperation, the university could
intensify its education action (Letters
to Cristina, 1996, p. 133, 134)
What Freire is saying is that a college or university that
only sees its mission as educating the students who enter its halls, has too
narrow a vision. Learning is not an enterprise of the select few, but is part
of what it means to be human. Thus, a university’s mission must extend beyond
its walls to the wider community. In an age when local school districts
particularly in urban and rural areas struggle financially to offer even the
most basic level of education, when arts, music and sports programs are being
cut because of lack of funding, and when politicians remain polarized over the
role government plays in promoting quality education, institutions of higher
education must step in.
In particular Freire sees universities in his native Brazil stepping in and
providing teacher enrichment services for overworked and under-prepared
teachers. In our U.S. context programs could be created to help community residents address local
issues and challenges, as well as providing support and succor for movements
for social change. For the past several years I have sought to bring my skills
and experience to serve local neighborhoods and to be a support for efforts to
enrich the quality of life in those places. I have offered my writing and
analytical abilities to efforts of activist groups to address social
inequities. Yet I have done these things largely without the knowledge or the
support of my institution; i.e. it has been on “my own time.” I have often wondered
what it would be like to have part of my responsibilities to share my research
and teaching opportunities with these communities. What if my courses could involve
students with local residents where both students and community folks could be
educated by each other. I have done these things by taking my students to these
places, but again it has often felt like I have done it in spite of rather than
because of my responsibilities as a professor.
Many colleges would contend that they serve the community by
the graduates they send into the workforce and the community at large, but
Friere would say, and I would agree, that such a vision is far too narrow. In
the midst of the current economic disparity, institutions of higher education have
both the opportunity and the duty to seek to find ways to concretely and
continuously engage with the communities around them and even beyond in the
global community in ways that are enriching and life-giving for both. I, for
one, would welcome that paradigm shift
