ABSTRACT
Service-learning can play a useful role in a community college political science course, but the course has to be very carefully structured so that it genuinely ties into the academic goals of the class. Under Learn and Serve America guidelines, students doing any form of service-learning for any academic course or for personal growth are subject to severe restrictions on their activities. As any political scientist can see, there must have been quite a lot of lobbying and debate leading to these rigorous restrictions. Between federal restrictions and the students’ limitations, there are some enormous constraints on community college political science service-learning options. Service-learning is a critical component of learning about the real world, whether in political science or any other field. Helping applicants for citizenship to fill out their paperwork will increase appreciation of the rights and responsibilities of citizenship as no text or lecture can.
