The Community’s Effect on Education

Of all the problems that society faces today, perhaps the worst is the declining quality of the education of our children. Education plays a major part in the life of a child: a quality education allows for a child to be exposed to more opportunities that can lead to a quality of living that, in a lot of cases, is much better than that of their parents. There are many ways to increase the quality of a child’s education; however, the best way is for the community, and society at large, to take an interest and become involved.

According to Robert Putnam, a major issue facing society is the difficulty of creating “bridging social capital.” This is created when people of different groups and backgrounds come together to improve their community and is important for maintaining a healthy public life in a world that is becoming increasing more diverse. The difficulty arises from the problems that come out of trying to bridge the many groups that have little to no commonalities. I believe that the service learning that we are doing through the Burnett Honors College is addressing this issue by making bridging social capital. We, the college students, come from different backgrounds than the children we are sent to work with. We are bridging the gap by showing them through face-to-face interactions that they too can go to college. I think that the work we are doing is important because we are helping to improve the quality of these children’s educations by giving them something to work towards. We serve as role models for them, presenting them with a life that is better than the majority of them currently have, giving them hope for the future and encouraging them to pursue a better life of their own.

I think that there is a moral imperative to be civically engaged. In her presentation, Dr. Stanlick talked about how many