When the "Best Hope" Is Not So Hopeful, What Then?: Democratic Thinking, Democratic Pedagogies, and Higher Education

When the "Best Hope" Is Not So Hopeful, What Then?Democratic Thinking, Democratic Pedagogies, and Higher Education Stephen Bloch-Schulman In 2008, Peter Felten, the founding director of Elon's Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning, asked me to coordinate an inaugural two-year teaching and learning seminar for faculty, to focus on some element of engaged learning (Elon University's pedagogical focus). We titled the project the Elon Research Seminar on Engaged Undergraduate Learning. As a philosopher who works at the intersections of political philosophy and the scholarship of teaching and learning and as one interested in the relationships among democracy, responsibility, and progressive social justice activism, I decided to ask Elizabeth Minnich, senior scholar for the Association of American Colleges and Universities Office of Diversity, Equity, and Global Initiatives, to play a central role as the intellectual guide for the seminar. The seminar, which is co-sponsored by Elon's Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning and the Association of American Colleges and Universities, focuses on the possibilities and challenges of teaching democratic thinking.1 It brings together faculty, staff, and students from across the country (and one from Canada) to discuss, research, and disseminate information on how to better teach [End Page 399] for democratic thinking. We have met twice and will be meeting again in summer 2011. In preparing for the first gathering of the seminar, I wrote a short essay, "Teaching Democratic Thinking: An Elon Research Seminar on Engaged Undergraduate Learning," as the initial framing for the seminar and which I include below. A bit of context to the essay: As articulated in its mission statement, Elon University is committed both to educating intelligent and well-informed adults and to helping students "put knowledge into practice" and thereby to "preparing students to be global citizens and informed leaders motivated by concern for the common good." Furthermore, it is committed to education that "foster[s] respect for human differences, passion for a life of learning, personal integrity, and an ethic of work and service." Elon in this way is like many colleges and universities in the United States today. In addition, like many other institutions of higher learning, the civic part of this mission is often implicitly or explicitly linked—in a more or less direct manner—with civic/community engagement and service-learning. Finally, Elon is like many schools in being committed as well to fostering "a faculty dedicated to excellent teaching and scholarly accomplishment."2 There are, however, serious questions about whether the civic and normative missions can coexist peacefully with the scholarly mission, traditionally conceived. If civic/community engagement and service-learning are seen as the "best hope" of arriving at the "democratic ideals" often described in the civic missions of institutions of higher learning, as a Wingspread 2004 statement suggests, then the extent to which these pedagogies actually foster democratic values will tell us a great deal about to what extent and in what ways these institutions are meeting their civic and normative goals.3 With this in mind, I began my framing essay as an assessment of the state of civic/community engagement and service-learning, based on the assumption that as these go, so goes the civic mission of the university as it is currently conceived. This will also reveal, as I argue, the challenges to more fully integrating the civic mission in the university. Finally, in an afterword, I reflect briefly on the work of the seminar, its current direction, and central questions and themes that have emerged from our work together. [End Page 400] Teaching Democratic Thinking: An Elon Research Seminar on Engaged Undergraduate Learning We must learn to be free. —Benjamin Barber [Thinking] is a faculty we need if we are to be able to live with others, with ourselves in our real world. —Elizabeth Minnich If one listens to many of the leading voices in the movement to teach for democratic and citizen engagement, one will hear about a crisis or a potential crisis: at the same time that the amount of engagement work is rising, it remains largely apolitical, and its apolitical nature—according to these scholars—is actually harmful to...

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