ABSTRACT
Commitment to teaching well is a commitment to service. Teachers who do the best work are always willing to serve the needs of their students. In an imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchal culture, service is devalued. Dominator culture pointedly degrades service as a way of maintaining subordination. Those who serve tend to be regarded as unworthy and inferior. No wonder then that there is little positive discussion of the teacher’s commitment to serve. Working in public school systems, I meet more teachers who talk openly about service. In the academic world of colleges and universities the notion of service is linked to working on behalf of the institution, not on behalf of students and colleagues. When professors “serve” each other by mutual commitment to education as the practice of freedom, by daring to challenge and teach one another as well as our students, this service is not institutionally rewarded. The absence of reward for service in the interest of 84building community makes it harder for individual teachers to make a commitment to serve.
