“Today, service learning has come to mean something equivalent to an extended and sustained field trip (a kind of localized study away) for privileged learners who often imagine their roles in communities as agents of salvation as opposed to agents of service.” (Kirkland, 2014, pg. 583)

How has the university, the ‘academy’, separated us (educators) from learners? How does it uphold colonial values? Was there ever a time where it didn’t?

Does the academy play a role in the capitalistic merry-go-round — spending money to make money, and only those with money to begin with can play? How can the humanities, especially service oriented fields, not lose touch with reality? With different, intersecting realities? Does the notion of “agents of salvation” (Kirkland, 2018) ever disappear? Would the positions of educators, social workers, health care providers ever be filled without individual desire to save? How do we find access to models of master and apprentice that work as a symbiotic relationship, what Kirkland (2014) refers to as “learning to serve”? As an educator I am hyper aware of my own savior complex, however, I don’t always know how to subdue it. The more I see myself as facilitator, and students/participants as co-facilitators, as peers, I lessen my desire to lecture from a moralistic standpoint. On the other hand, if I didn’t have a desire to ‘save’ would I be interested in education? Or would it be a lot easier to get a corporate job, and find value in monetary reward?