Educational community service has arrived in the Netherlands

This week educators, specialists, and policy entrepreneurs gathered in Maastricht to talk about education and community service.

The first Service Learning Forum, organised by the newly-founded United World College Maastricht (UWCM), sought to bring together everybody interested community service for young people for an exchange of thoughts and experiences. UWCM, which is part of the worldwide United World Colleges family providing progressive and socially inspired education, was a suitable organiser for what will likely become the next important step in Dutch education.

Why community service is a good idea

During the day, several speakers presentated their views. One such presentation, held jointly by the current headmaster of UWCM, Mr Simon Murray, and the former headmaster of UWC Wales, Colin Jenkins, asked the audience some simple but powerful questions:

"When is the last time we did a selfless act?"

"What is it about us that we can give to others?"
"How is our act of giving experienced by the receiver?"
"Is education a function of society or is society a function of education?" (as asked by the American philosopher John Dewey, in his book Democracy and Education)

Such questions go to the core of what educational community service is about: ingraining students with the idea that doing unpaid work for a broad communal goal is both useful (extrinsic) and fulfulling (intrinsic). Contributing towards a social end provides a sense of usefulness, satisfaction, and responsibility for one another.

In this light, the nineteenth-century sociologist Alexis de Tocqueville, in a study of the then-young American society, spoke of forms of close cooperation that he described as "schools for democracy", in which people learn how to collectively work towards a goal that is of benefit for all but which cannot be reached if everybody works for themselves.

Community service in Dutch high schools could serve as a practical learning ground for such insights: quite hands-on and concrete, students encounter both the obstacles and the satisfaction of bringing in their own hands and heads for the public good.

UWC and community service

Starting September 2011, community service internships (maatschappelijke stages) will become an integral part of all secondary school curricula in the Netherlands. United World Colleges, which have been around for fifty years, have ample experience with community service as part of a school curriculum. 

All UWCs teach the International Baccalaureat (IB), an internationally recognised A-levels/VWO/gymnasium equivalent, in which Community, Action and Service (CAS) form the centrepiece. This means that all students at the international boarding schools that are UWC work closely with the local community in order to provide service where it is needed, thereby building strong local ties. As as result of this, UWCs have built up such a strong reputation that certain communities have in fact invited UWC to found a college with them.

While the maatschappelijke stage will surely have to overcome some start-up problems, it has much potential for renewal and strengthening of a very practically oriented public-spiritedness among young people. Exactly that is why Forums such as the one held in Maastricht will prove to be important for the near future. We will follow the developments with some excitement.

Click here to read more about the forum that was held in Maastricht.