How does community based learning apply to Problem Solvers?
Community based learning is almost necessary
in preparing for a debate on issues that influence the economy.
An economics professor at Smith
College, provided her students an
opportunity to volunteer for six to eight weeks at a local nonprofit of their
choice. She had the idea, before it was popular, that going into the community
benefited her students. She maintained that early volunteer experience would
remind her students later on in life that they have the ability to influence
broader social change. She argued also, that the experience gave abstract
economic issues a base in reality. She wanted students to see how economic
issues affect the lives of real people and how the tools of economics help us
understand these issues. She had her students paint the living room and bedrooms
of a homeless shelter. They harvested vegetables for the food bank and weeded
gardens for elderly and disabled residents.
Community based learning can be used to prepare for a debate on tax issues.
There was a citizens group in Illinois that divided the 1988 tax reform proposal into manageable portions which it parceled out to its members. After studying their respective portions, those ordinary citizens reported back to the group. In some strange way it mattered to a lot of folks that at least a small group of Americans had read every word in that massive bill. The legislators and their staff admitted that they hadn't.