Service Learning

What is Service-learning?

Wikipedia defines service-learning as “a method of teaching, learning and reflecting , frequently youth service, throughout the community. As a teaching method, it falls under the philosophy of experiential education. More specifically, it integrates meaningful community service with instruction and reflection to enrich the learning experience, teach civic responsibility, encourage lifelong civic engagement, and strengthen communities for the common good.”

Thus with this definition in mind, effective service-learning should be community-based (hopefully along with local churches, mosques, temples, etc.), situated in academic institutions, and supported by government. We must keep that essential triad in mind—Community (and its religious institutions), Education, State or Government.

Read more in our new Service-Learning topic Overview. 

What is the relationship between service, democracy and education?

         Service

EducationDemocracy

  Service – Democracy: What is the relationship between 

  service and social change?

Democracy – Education: What is the purpose of education 
          in a democracy?

Service – Education: How does education serve society?

Read more on this here.

Does Swedish Culture Hinder Swedish Children?

"Sweden is a country with a strongly rooted culture. Lots of traditions, varying from the singing of “Helan går” to the celebrating of the name day, all serve to preserve and protect a common sense of identity." 

This common cultural identity, coupled with Sweden's climate and geography, serve to keep the country relatively isolated from its European and global neighbors. This isolation, according to this article, has been a detriment to the development of communication skills and had led to a myriad of issues when dealing with those of other nationalities. 

Read more on this, including a proposal to help Swedish children interact with an with global culture, by clicking here. 

2010 End of the Year Report

As we begin 2011, we wanted to share with you all a short report on our immense accomplishments in 2010. This report is by no means an exhaustive list of what additions and/or improvements have been made to the Encyclopedia of Youth Studies, but it should give you a good indication of how far we have come in the last year.

As always we thank you for your continued support and look forward to an even more fruitful 2011.

The report can be found by clicking here.  (will download as a PDF File).

Celebrity: The New Religion?

Pete Ward’s God’s Behaving Badly: Celebrity as a “Kind of” Religion captures the importance, vastness and vacuity, and the “spirituality” of contemporary celebrity.

In this book he argues that celebrities and celebrity culture have become in many ways a kind of religion, in which they are “seen as in some way performing a number of functions that were previously fulfilled by religion.” Much like religion, celebrities offer those in the culture who follow them a source of identity. Thus for youth in particular who are in the process of forming their own identities, it is no wonder that celebrities and pop culture have such an influence on their generation.

Ward argues that celebrities and popular culture portray a kind of theology:

In this sense, celebrities are akin to the Greek gods or the saints. They exist in a mythic world of stories and tales. They’re godlike, not in the Christian Trinitarian way, but in a mythic sense. Celebrity stories are kind of like tales from Mount Olympus. When we read about celebrities, they are like us and yet not like us. They live in a sort of parallel world, which is real and yet unreal. Like Greek mythology and the stories of the saints, celebrity stories are peopled with the incredibly beautiful and the hopelessly flawed, with angels and demons, saints and sinners, the venerable and the venal. Celebrity stories are in many ways like morality tales. They portray possible ways of being good or bad, faithful or unfaithful, ideal or not ideal.

Celebrity stories therefore offer a source of identity and belonging through presenting the culture with different ways of living. It “offers various takes on what it means to be human or superhuman, what it means to be gay or straight, what it means to be male or female and so on.”

Read more on this here

Father Greg and the Homeboys

What happens when we show gang members we care?

Most don’t know the real story of life in an inner-city neighborhood where two ethnicities with gangs abut and overlap. Tensions and violence spiral to a point where those caught up in gang activity for defense as well as revenge reach a “don’t care” attitude and way of life. 

The neighborhood described by this LA Times journalist, who was captivated by Fr. Gregory Boyle’s story, is Pico-Aliso Neighborhood of East LA, and the nationally acclaimed hero is a Jesuit priest who becomes a father-figure to all Latino youths willing to accept his help.

Read more about Father Greg and the book on him by Celeste Fremon here. 

Gay Teens: New Topic and Helpful Resources

'Coming Out' Isn't Easy.

A national study of homosexual teens done over Myspace and Facebook in 2009 by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network of some 7,261 self-reported homosexual students between the ages of 13 and 21 found that:

• 88.9% of students heard “gay” used in a negative way (e.g., “that’s so gay”) frequently or often at school, and 86.5% reported that they felt distressed to some degree by this.

• 72.4% heard other homophobic remarks (e.g., “dyke” or “faggot”) frequently or often at school. 62.6% heard negative remarks about gender expression (not acting “masculine enough” or “feminine enough”) frequently or often at school.

• 61.1% felt unsafe at school because of their sexual orientation and 39.9% because of how they expressed their gender.

• 84.6% were verbally harassed (e.g., called names or threatened) at school because of their sexual orientation and 63.7% because of their gender expression.

• 40.1% were physically harassed (e.g., pushed or shoved) at school in the past year because of their sexual orientation and 27.2% because of their gender expression.

• 18.8% were physically assaulted (e.g., punched, kicked, injured with a weapon) because of their sexual orientation and 12.5% because of their gender expression.

• 52.9% of LGBT students were harassed or threatened by their peers via electronic mediums (e.g., text messages, emails, instant messages or postings on Internet sites such as Facebook), often known as cyberbullying.  
  Read more in our new Gay Teens topic and overview page. 
  
  
  In addition, we've posted some helpful resources for both parents and teens here.
  
  
  
  

Anti-bullying Policy: A Hidden Agenda?

In a response to evidence that an increasing number of homosexual students have been victims of bullying, many school districts across the country are working to enhance current stringent anti-harassment rules with lessons in tolerance, teaching students early on that having “two moms” is acceptable and that some children will grow up to love members of the same gender. 

Yet there is ongoing debate as to whether or not these efforts to promote tolerance merely promote and endorse the lifestyle. A Montana pastor, for example, stated during a sermon that “we do not want the minds of our children to be polluted with the things of a carnal-minded society.” Still other parents argue that children at a very young age are not ready to hear explicit language regarding sexual activities and thus it should be left out of any discussion of tolerance in the classroom. 

Our Overview of the Recent New York Times Article on this can be found here. 

Also, what can popular musicians do to impact tolerance in public schools?

Is life getting better for gay teens? The answer, it seems, is yes and no. According to Joseph Kahn of the Boston Globe: “While physical assaults on gay teens may be declining overall — thanks to many factors, including tougher antibullying laws and more support systems for high schoolers who choose to “come out’’ — there’s ample evidence, too, that bullying and intolerance remain part of their daily lives.”

One of the many efforts to reach out to at-risk gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (known as GLBT) youth is a project known as the It Gets Better Initiative (found on the web at http://www.itgetsbetter.org/) in which concerned adults, including President Obama, have been posting messages telling GLBT youth that they are not alone in their struggles.