ABSTRACT
The service-learning course discussed grew out of a three-day racial awareness workshop held for faculty and staff at Connecticut College. The structure of the course drew on three learning modes that theater and psychology have in common — an empirical exploration of the motivations, attributions, and actions of humans in social interactions; an empathic understanding of an “other” through identification with someone different from oneself; and the use of experiential techniques. Before addressing some of the benefits involved in using service-learning to teach about issues of racial/ethnic identity and prejudice, the authors need to express a note of caution. Despite the short-term nature of their involvement, students expressed great enthusiasm about their service-learning experiences and saw them as a platform on which to build more extensive efforts in antiprejudice and teaching-tolerance activities. In the long run, engagement of both political and private consciousness is necessary to close the many schisms that prejudice creates in society.
