When we were given our service sites two weeks ago, I was placed at Immanuel Congregational United Church of Christ with Carla and Ed. We tried to contact Pastor Sue Strickler, the woman who is the church’s part time pastor. She did return our emails, but we found out that we would be unable to meet with her this week. We plan on meeting her next week so that we can learn about the church in general and also its position in the community. I was sad that we were unable to meet with her this week, but have high hopes for next week.
Because we were unable to meet at the church, Carla and I decided to walk to the church and the surrounding area. We were able to see quite a great deal. The church seemed to be a normal brick building. I couldn’t take much away from just starring at it, but it’s a different style from the architecture of most Catholic churches I’ve seen. My friend from France was visiting, and when I showed him the building, he was very upset about it. He said it wasn’t very pretty and that he thought churches should be pretty. He also said that they should be stone and not brick. Of course, he lives in the city that houses Notre Dame, so he’s not really allowed to judge other churches. While having pretty stone buildings is always a bonus, I’m not overly concerned that the outside of the church isn’t built in the Gothic style. I’m far more concerned about what happens inside the building.
My knowledge of Dubuque doesn’t expand much past Loras College and downtown Dubuque, so I had only the observations of the neighborhood from other people. The neighborhood itself was not exactly what I’d been expecting. I’d been informed that the families that live there are typically lower-income families. I’d also heard several people mention that it wasn’t the safest place in Dubuque, especially during the nighttime hours. I’d even heard several people refer to it (sometimes jokingly, sometimes completely serious) as “the ghetto of Dubuque.” My high school in Chicago was in the middle of the Projects (a term for low-income public housing units in Chicago that have mostly been taken down due to the high gang activity and violence they influenced), so I was expecting something more along the lines of that. Based on my high school experiences, I was expecting to see buildings that were crumbling, complete with boarded up windows that provoked a sense of hopelessness by merely looking at them. I’m not going to lie; I was worried when I was told I would have to actually walk through the neighborhood- something that would be unheard of in the Projects. I wasn’t even allowed to walk past the bus station by my school- it would have been too dangerous, even in broad daylight.
(One of the buildings my school was surrounded by… This one is actually in better shape than most of them. All the public housing by my school have been demolished since I graduated in 2006 and replaced with mixed income housing.)Thankfully, this was not what I saw. Some buildings were not in the very best shape, but I was happy to see that many were in good condition. I was also glad to see that they were painted bright colors and gave the neighborhood a cheery vibe and that people were outside on their lawns enjoying the beautiful day just as Carla and I were. We even got a few waves. It was a bit dirtier in terms of trash than in some areas of Dubuque, but nothing that would render the area uninhabitable. The neighborhood also didn’t have the eerie, abandoned feeling so common in the Chicago public housing. It actually seemed quite full of life. I think it should prove to be a very interesting experience working with the neighborhood. I’m excited to learn more about it. I also think several people need to redefine the term “ghetto” based on what I have seen thus far.
For the course, we were also asked to read the first chapter of Marth C. Nussbaum’s Cultivating Humanity. It was an interesting piece on Socratic teachings in the collegiate system. It definitely brings a question to the true meaning of “liberal arts.” For me, liberal arts have always meant studying more than one subject. I think merely studying one subject can make people single-minded and unaware of the world around them. I think the purpose of this education is to make them aware of more issues and more ways to think about them. Real life doesn’t have just one subject in it. Just learning one subject is never going to prepare you for the real world.
Nussbaum has a similar view. She seems to agree very much with a Socratic way of thinking. She thinks that people should be taught how to think for themselves. Her definition seems to be that schools should design their programs to teach their students to think for themselves, and that questioning things is not a bad thing. She points out that some people critique that this kind of teaching will make students go completely against the traditions and morals of society. She refutes this idea by pointing out that if the society has the morals and traditions, then the students will come to this conclusion and there will be no reason to worry. If it doesn’t, the students can find an even better way to think of things.
This way of thinking, looking at a subject from different angles to get a clearer picture, prepares people for service. First, it provides them with a way to think about the situation from multiple perspectives. Looking at a situation from a purely scientific or purely social way can be a problem. Sometimes the best solution is a mix of the two. Also, it allows people to think for themselves. Service is rarely just something you can do mindlessly. Sometimes, the person works with other people in situations that don’t always have a clear moral ground. Bringing back my blog entry from last week, an example of this is when I worked with children who would say things I didn’t always know how to respond to. Even though they tried, no one could give me a script of what to say to them. I had to think on my feet. A liberal arts education better prepares the student for reacting to these situations. The student, because they’re better able to think for themselves, could also think of a better way to do something, thereby helping even more than they originally could have.
I think a liberal education really prepares people for the real world. Although some students aren’t initially aware of the benefits, the people I have talked to who have entered the working world are always very pleased with their liberal arts education. I’m proud to currently be receiving this type of education.
My experience walking the neighborhood was slightly different from yours, even though we walked it together. I grew up in a small town in Iowa, and spent plenty of time on friends' and cousins' farms. There's pretty much zero bad housing in Preston, and the worst I've ever seen is the run-of-the-mill "old farmhouse," and that was just to be expected for me. Still, my impression of the neighborhood was not that it was a place to be afraid of, but a place full of families and neighbors enjoying the great weather. I might not want to be there at night, especially alone, but that's true of pretty much anywhere, including Loras campus. I think terming it "the ghetto" is pretty well unfounded and judgmental.
ReplyDeleteHow do you think growing up around the projects will affect your service experience in a place which is called a "ghetto" but is really tame compared to your past experiences?
It's funny that I always thought of Loras as wanting to teach people more than one discipline, but I never associated that with it being a liberal arts college. I never gave much thought to what liberal arts meant at all.
I hadn't thought of the idea of looking at a situation from several angles as a product of the liberal arts education, at least not in the way you describe. I thought of it as putting yourself in another person's position, rather than looking at it from the point of view of different disciplines. And this is an example of how liberal arts education works - I was thinking of the topic one way while you thought of it a different way. Neither one is wrong; they're complementary. I hope I can get a little more of that in our service work.
great entry!