Concern about the deterioration of local community is central to John Dewey's philosophy of education, democracy, and social reform. That deterioration, already serious at the end of the 19th century, obviously has continued apace in our own time. Powered by diverse and widely ramifying forces, including the on-going growth of individualism (Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler, & Tipton, 1985), modern communications technology and generational effects (Putnam, 2000), and the structural economic shift away from manufacturing to an information-based economy (Fukuyama, 1999), challenges to community life at many levels, and concomitant strains in our democratic institutions, have become increasingly evident. From this perspective, John Dewey's relevance has never been greater. Dewey's vision for education also underlies the contemporary service-learning movement. Although Dewey focused on primary and secondary schools, his ideals have been adapted and extended to colleges and universities. The convictions that education must center on society's most pressing problems, particularly the reconstruction of democratic community, that it engage students in community service and prepare them for lifelong commitment to civic involvement and social reconstruction, and that it embody the same principles of democratic participation, reflection, and experimentalism that are to be encouraged in the wider community, informs the ideals and practice of service-learning (Barber, 1984, Benson & Harkavy, 1991, 1997, 1999; Hatcher, 1997; Keith, 1998; Rhoads, 1997; Saltmarsh, 1996).
