Can We Teach Civic Education and Service-Learning in a World of Privatization, Inequality, and Interdependence?

Abstract

This essay is an excerpt from a keynote speech delivered by Benjamin Barber at the 2nd Annual Summer Research Institute on the “Future of Community Engagement in Higher Education.” The speech focuses on six conditions that will impact community service-learning and voluntarism efforts in the years ahead: the ideology of neo-liberalism and privatization, multiculturalism, political polarization, widening inequality, and global interdependence.