What We Dont Talk About...

What We Don’t Talk About When We Don’t Talk About Service∗ Adam Davis There is this odd thing happening: a vogue for service. Look around and you can’t help but see it: more community service, more service learning, more compulsory volunteering. Elementary schools, high schools, and colleges across the country have adopted community service programs quickly, seamlessly, and with relatively little opposition or argument. Students are no longer simply concerned with their classes or even with their clubs—now they are collecting clothes, ladling out meals, wrapping gifts, building houses, tutoring younger kids, chatting with elders, and serving the community in numerous other ways as well. And the trend goes far beyond students: young people in record numbers are applying to City Year, Teach for America, and other AmeriCorps organizations; retirees are volunteering with various service organizations; and professionals, too, at and away from work, are engaging in community service. This trend toward service, unlike many trends, is generally praised, though often in imprecise terms. Service Is Good (SIG), we seem to assume—good for those of us doing the serving, good for those of us being served, good for everyone. It has become so clear that Service Is Good (SIG) that we can demand service activity— even “voluntary” service activity—as we require classes in math, science, and the humanities. We can demand it after school or work and on weekends. We can demand it from our brightest young people, our busiest professionals, and our most experienced elders. It seems to be so clear that Service Is Good (SIG) that we do not need to question service or to talk about it; we only need to do it. It even seems that talking about service might be a problem—first, because if you’re talking about service, you might not be doing service, and second, because if you’re talking about service, you might start to wonder about its goodness. But neither possibility, I believe, is something