Service Learning English Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Service Learning English - Essay Example Without ethics, society’s ill-tendency will not be tempered by restraint. Such, there is a need to teach ethics among students while their minds are still formative and is still in the preparation stage of life. When students become adults and professionals, it will become extremely difficult if not impossible to teach ethics. Teaching ethics among students will not only make them better in practicing their prospective careers in the future but will also prevent similar scandals which have badly damaged our economy. To ensure that ethics will be taught properly, it has to be incorporated in our curriculum. This value has to be reflected and practiced in the school level because this is the institution where our values as individuals and citizens are being formed. The best method to teach it is through service learning. â€Å"Service-learning is an instructional method that integrates theoretical learning with real life experimentation and community service† (Farazmand e t al., 2010). Teaching ethics is better learned when it becomes experiential. Unlike any theoretical concepts taught in a classroom setting, ethics is based in real world where its efficacy is measured not in understanding but more of practicing it. The most important element of service learning is that it is based on a â€Å"real world† where it will later be used (Judge, 2006). Service learning is not just a teaching methodology. It also meant practicing the sense of belongingness by actually serving the community that he or she is or part of. Only through it can a student can feel that he or she belongs to something bigger than him or herself. Only through this he or she will realize that by giving a part of himself or herself, he or she can make a difference. This idea of service learning is not about servile subservience. Doing service learning is not subjecting oneself to anybody’s whim or caprice but rather a voluntary initiative to make a difference; to be a pa rt of something bigger than oneself. It is a learning process that by practice, a student will realize that giving a part of himself or herself to the community produces a personal satisfaction that cannot be taught in a classroom. Service-learning is an instructional method that integrates theoretical learning with real life experimentation and community service (Farazmand et al., 2010). It has to be felt to be learned. Lectures and books can only do so much. â€Å"Texts, equations or graphs on the chalkboard and assigning students readings from a standard textbooks† (Mungaray et al., 2007) is not effective. This method only underlines a reality of a teaching method that promotes an environment where the students passively listen to the teacher without any direct involvement in the process or any feedback from or exchange with the professor or other students. This passiveness is reflected in the lack of experience to look for and use data, analyze real world situations with the support of the theories and instruments learned in class and discuss issues beyond the textbook (Mungaray et al., 2007). To really learn it, the lesson has to be experienced. .After all, knowledge can only be perfected by experience and there is no better way of learning ethics than by experiencing it. Service learning does not have to be forced to the students. When it is imposed to the students, it will be seen more as a chore that they can no