Higher Education and Democracy

Saltmarsh (director, New England Resource Ctr. for Higher Education, Univ. of Massachusetts, Boston) and Zlotkowski (English, Bentley Coll.) have assembled a collection of essays written over the past ten years about service learning and civic engagement in higher education. Service learning, or putting what one is learning in the classroom to work helping others, is an increasingly popular way for universities and colleges to give students a truly valuable opportunity. The book is divided into general sections that progress logically for implementing service learning: general need, antecedents, pedagogy, service learning in the first-year curriculum, considering disciplines, and engaged departments and campus. Concluding essays examine the development of service learning over the last ten years. Saltmarsh and Zlotkowski's concept is similar to that of William Ayers and others in Teaching Toward Democracy but more in-depth, philosophical, and theoretical. Also, Ayers focuses on a variety of teaching techniques in K-12 contexts, while Saltmarsh and Zlotkowski treat higher education.