by Lynn Barendsen
I recently had the opportunity to participate in a conference dedicated to Service Learning. The 23rd International Service Learning Conference was hosted by CLAYSS, the Latin American Center for Service Learning. My fellow panelists and I addressed “The Importance of Educating in and for Solidarity.”
Prior to this plenary, I had not given much thought to the idea of solidarity. In my North American mind, the word has vague political connotations, usually associated with unions, demonstrations and the movement in Poland started by Lech Walesa. In preparation for our conversation, I unpacked the definition, which (according to Webster) is in fact about unity -- based on shared interests or objectives. Not necessarily political at all (acknowledging of course that these days everything can be political), the notion of “solidarity” is in fact connected to three concepts that are central to good work and the Good Project: alignment (or misalignment); responsibility; and meaning in work. In this blog, I revisit the concept of solidarity as it’s been informed by conversation and reflection.
During the course of our time together, my fellow panelists and I touched on a number of ideas.
Joseph Puig, who studies Moral Education at Barcelona University, stressed that educating for solidarity is urgent. As he describes it, we are confronting a series of crises: climate crisis, the excess of inequalities, attacks on democracies, COVID 19. We have to find a way to collaborate because none of these crises will be solved with individual solutions.
On the Good Project, we often talk about alignment and misalignment. Alignment happens when all of the various groups or relevant parties involved want the same things, or work towards a common goal. Take just one of the crises outlined above: it seems plausible to imagine that we all hope to end COVID 19. However, how we make that happen, especially in the US, is not something we can agree upon. We are horribly misaligned, and efforts to collaborate seem increasingly stalled. Some states have had much more success than others, and yet the solutions that work in one state are not necessarily applied to others. Of course for COVID (and climate change, and numerous other crises), we are not just concerned with agreement within a state or a country—unless there is global consensus, all efforts are destined to fail.
Puig went on to emphasize that solidarity can bring with it a sense of belonging, a feeling of companionship, as people who are members of the group understand the same reality. The group could be a nation, a team, a religion. We have solidarity with those who are part of that reality. Puig emphasized that of course, this can be negative or can turn negative when turned into an “us vs. them” scenario.
Feelings of “companionship” or “belonging” can happen with individuals who are very different from ourselves. I’ve observed high school students from 15 different countries and varied socioeconomic backgrounds working together on service learning projects. As part of the Global Citizens Initiative, rather than be separated by their differences, they gained a sense of shared community and purpose. They felt they “belonged” and as a result, felt a responsibility to one another. We’ve learned from our Good Project research that sense of responsibility to something greater than oneself is unusual in US high school students (see, for example Fischman et al, Making Good). Clearly service learning is not the only way to create positive belonging as opposed to confrontation and distrust;, but at its best, and at least in one powerful case, it may be that service learning can produce a sense of community, or solidarity, and help to inform one’s own identity as a result.
Alberto Croce, Director of VOX in Argentina, argued that there is an inherent activism in service learning, often teachers who embrace the “cause” go beyond a formal commitment. As a result, Croce suggested that the service learning experience often becomes a collective, shared experience.
In our Good Work research, we spoke with many educators who were deeply committed to their students. Their work often went “above and beyond” - beyond regular hours and beyond “formal” commitments. The shared experiences between teachers and students can be positive experiences for both; teachers often describe learning from students, feeling a deep sense of meaning in their work; students identify teachers as role models for a lifetime. And yet teachers who give too much of themselves (especially in these days of remote learning), may well suffer from burnout and exhaustion. Having a religious basis for work, or having colleagues that share the same mission, whether frankly religious or religious in spirit, can sometimes spell the difference between continuing and dropping out. In any case, finding balance has perhaps never been more important—and rarely been more challenging.
These kinds of understandings about solidarity are in many ways foreign to citizens of the United States, who are sometimes all about independence, and to whom any reference of a “collective” starts to raise eyebrows. (Of course, this is much less true about Latin America, and even less true about Canada) In fact, a heightened awareness about collective solutions and shared responsibility might well benefit our increasingly divided country.
Perhaps we might also be able to consider the simultaneous weight and rewards of meaningful work as we think about issues of balance in today’s COVID working world. If those involved in service learning express a strong sense of community, it may well teach us something about the third “E,” engagement, and how these service workers they find meaning in what they do. They are engaged, at least in part, because they feel a part of something bigger than themselves. They express a sense of belonging. With that heightened sense of community comes an additional sense of responsibility, specifically, a responsibility to the community or communities of which they feel a part. As we adjust to our new work realities, we can learn much from the concept of solidarity if we embrace rather than shy away from collective solutions.