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Community Service: The Moon and Sixpence

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In “The Moon and Sixpence” by William Maugham, the author portrayed a man who gave up his “sixpence” (having a realistic, wealthy life) and chased his “moon” (the unrealistic dream of being a painter). Building off of Maugham’s metaphor, I like to use the moon and the sixpence to help differentiate between the types of community service. For me, the sixpence-style community service refers to the activity that provides physical or material support, such as donation and building infrastructures. By contrast, the moon-style community service refers to activities that usually involves greater spiritual engagement and relationship building, such as mentorship and companionship for people in need. Being educated in an elite high school that practices global citizenship education, I participated in different community services that fulfilled our school’s curricular requirement and, simultaneously, benefitted my college application. When I read the interviews with students and alumni from an elite high school in Ghana, I noticed that community service also took a significant position in students’ life.

Because the school practices the IB system, community service is mandatory to fulfill its CAS (creativity, activity, service) requirements to get a diploma. Students engage in both types of community service. The sixpence-style community service includes:

  1. Mapping out the surrounding areas of their school on Google Map
  2. Building a school
  3. Providing computers for a school
  4. Book donation and building a book database for a specialized school
  5. Fundraising for clean water supply and sustainable growth

Students also participate in many moon-style community services:

  1. Playing with kids in a specialized school for the blind and deaf
  2. Teaching in a local primary school for two hours every week
  3. Helping nursing mother and kids
  4. NGO that facilitates disabled people

The interviews revealed that CAS allows these students to choose community service based on their interests, and the services usually target local areas and local communities. This automatically reminds me of Pierre Bourdieu’s ideas about habitus. Habitus refers to the habits, skills, and dispositions that are so deeply ingrained in us due to our life experiences, and we use them to perceive, navigate, react to the world. For example, due to the difference in class, students in this elite school might possess a distinct type of habitus that is different from that of students in another local public school. According to Bourdieu, habitus facilitates our navigation of similar social environments but undermines our navigation of social environments that are too different. In this case, Ghanaian students in our study might be more comfortable and successful when traveling to another elite high school than visiting a underdeveloped school. 

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Based on the idea of habitus, the process of community service can’t be smooth because of the inevitable conflict of habitus between students from an elite background and the people being helped. I believe that this conflict is less severe in sixpence-style community service than in moon-style community service, and sixpence-style community service makes the service more efficient and contributes more actual help. Because the needs are usually obvious and physical in sixpence-style community service, elite students take the main role in the service, and there are fewer requirements about the interaction between habitus. For instance, a local school facing a shortage of books has an obvious need. Without frequent visits to the school or interaction with its students, elite students can simply solve the problem by collecting and donating books. The return of their service will be efficient because students can easily understand and provide the exact support wanted by people in need. By contrast, the needs in moon-style service are usually less obvious and more spiritual, which requires deep involvement and frequent interaction between habitus. Consider teaching in a primary school located in an underdeveloped area that has students from a different SES status. Being raised in distinct educational backgrounds, elite students might struggle with teaching unfamiliar materials. They might also have trouble communicating and interacting with their students because there is a huge mismatch between their beliefs, perceptions, manners… These will result in a less efficient return of the service than elite students originally wished because people’s needs can’t be properly investigated and facilitated. 

The conflict of habitus urges us to question community service in elite education. In its essence, is community service a performance to show one’s eliteness and a bonus for the college application? Do targeted communities actually receive help from community service? How can we measure the outcome of community service to improve the quality of service? Should students participate in sixpence-style service more because the outcome is more “real” and efficient? Is there any training that fully prepares elite students before entering a service? More questions should be asked to examine elite community service in the future. 

Elite Schooling and Mental Health: Eliteness at What Cost?

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As our class continues to study elite schools across the globe, I have noticed a theme of intense pressure, competition, and anxiety surrounding the culture of attending an elite school. I couldn’t help but think about how this culture is affecting the mental health of the students. This pressure showed up consistently throughout the interviews with students at the elite school, Sankofa International College, in Ghana. It also has shown up in my personal experience attending Colby College. In both my personal experience, as well as in students at an elite school in Ghana, stress and anxiety are extremely prevalent among students at these types of institutions across the globe. 

How does this culture affect the mental health of students at these institutions? Research has shown some startling findings. A recent consensus study by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine added youths in “high achieving schools” to their list of “at-risk” groups. This shows that adolescents attending elite schools such as Sankofa International College and Colby College are prone to higher rates of mental illness, along with other problem behaviors. This is shown in a study by psychologist Suniya Luther that found that “adolescents in high-achieving schools can suffer significantly higher rates of anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and delinquent behaviors, at least two to three times the national average.” (https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2019/09/26/students-high-achieving-schools-are-now-named-an-at-risk-group/)

 So, where does this pressure come from? In an interview with a student Kwabena Dankwah from  Sankofa International College, they stated “it’s kind of a good school, a prestigious school, so the pressure is there.” This implies that the status of the school itself as prestigious creates a culture of pressure within the student body that they can feel. Another student, Akwasi Owusu was discussing the college application process and he was applying to extremely competitive colleges (MIT, Colombia, Princeton) and stated that it was “extremely stressful.” When asked how he dealt with all of the pressure and stress, Akwasi Owusu said, “one thing is that you complain a lot! Like a lot! It is the collectiveness of it all that helps one deal with the stress.” This collectiveness is a sad reality that all of these students are struggling together with extreme amounts of stress and anxiety due to the intensity of the school and culture of pressure. These interviews showed that these students were extremely stressed. They were applying to very competitive colleges and taking 7 courses at the same time, while also trying to fit in as many extracurriculars as they could to build their resumes. This, as they state, is extremely stressful! Where is the time for self-care and time to relax?

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One of the reasons for this culture of stress in elite schools is the emphasis on attending an elite college, which is extremely competitive. This goal is one of the biggest selling points of the elite high schools we have been studying; if you attend this school you will get into a good college. An educational researcher, Denise Pope, states that “Many students have been fed the myth that there is only one, narrow path to success — acceptance to a prestigious college — and they have internalized that message.” This internalized pressure is not only from parents, but from the culture of the school itself when attending an elite school like Sankofa International College. 

This school purposefully teaches the IB curriculum in order to prepare its students to get into the most prestigious colleges in the United States. On the front page of the guidance counselor tab on the Sankofa International college website, it states “Over the years, our students have been accepted into some of the most prestigious universities around the world” and then goes on to list colleges such as Harvard, Brown, Yale, Princeton, etc. This clearly shows the emphasis placed on their students to get into prestigious colleges and this pressure affects the students greatly. 

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This pressure to get into a good college that contributes to the culture of stress and pressure in elite colleges has lasting effects on students according to multiple studies. It is clear that elite schools create environments that perpetuate mental health issues such as anxiety, depression, and substance abuse which can affect an adolescent for the rest of their life. Elite schools help students get into prestigious colleges and build competitive resumes, but at what cost to the mental health of these students? 

How Much Can a School Website Tell You About the School Itself?

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This is a question I have been asking myself as I have been exploring the website of the school I am researching this semester, Sankofa International College (a pseudonym). Over the past few weeks, I have been working on getting a bigger picture of the school’s mission, the extracurriculars, the campus, and the students that attend through looking at the website and listening to student and alumni interviews. Because I have never visited the school itself, a lot of the information I am gathering about the school is merely based on images and text from the website, showing how they are marketing themselves. I feel it is important to ask myself how accurate this portrayal is of the school in reality. Having never gone to this school in person presents its own set of challenges that I want to be aware of as I analyze student experiences in my research project.

The website is pleasing to look at with blue and white color scheme and a school crest beside the large written name of the school. It shows the continent of Africa accompanied by a stack of books on one side and doors that are opened on the other side. On the upper part of the continent there are two black stick figures running towards a flower and the words “Knowledge in the Service of Africa” are written below. Something I noticed immediately on this school website was the consistent message of a focus on Pan-Africanism on their school crest as well as the alternating images on the website reflect this.

When a website visitor clicks on the tab “Mission and Philosophy”, a large image appears of four women standing in a grass field, one holding a pick ax, in traditional clothing with very serious faces looking straight into the camera. On top of the image brightly colored text reads “Service: DNA of the school.” This image and text emphasize the school’s mission of uplifting African culture through serving women like these in the picture who are African farmers. Also, in order to get a sense of the school culture, I looked closely at the section on the homepage titled “College Moments.” These images show students participating in robotics, playing basketball, playing the violin, smiling with young African kids, and acting in plays. This shows an emphasis on portraying the school as a place with lots of extracurricular opportunities and community involvement.

After viewing these messages from the website, it was interesting to listen to the student interviews which gave me a chance to see if what the students were saying aligned with the official message of the school. One of the students discussed his experience at school saying that he takes seven very intensive courses at a time, making it difficult to fit in other things besides work and how overwhelming this is for him

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When asked what colleges he plans on applying to he listed all schools on the East Coast of the United States showing how he plans to leave Africa after he graduates. Another important aspect not visible from the website that I learned from listening to student interviews is the distinction between disadvantaged students and wealthier students that is very present for students and not present on the website.

One student discussed how because the wealthier students are upper class, they stay in separate social groups than the disadvantaged students. In the pictures of the smiling students all hanging out together on the website, you do not see the divide between social class groups which is a big part of the student experience. You also do not see the intensive work of taking seven courses at a time and barely having time to participate in other activities. Lastly, you do not see the pattern of students graduating and moving to the United States because the school emphasizes on the website the mission of focusing on African culture and service to Africa when in reality so many of their students are leaving Africa immediately after graduation

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A website can only tell you so much about the school itself. What they put on the website is how they want to be seen by the community and by students and parents considering the school. But what are they not including on their website? Without listening to the student interviews about Sankofa International College, I would be missing a lot of information about how this elite school actually functions. Advertisements and promotional content about elite schools show a very limited perspective of what that school may actually be like, and this is important to realize in these research projects where we cannot actually go visit the school in person. A question I believe everyone should ask themselves when looking through information on these schools is, what are these websites not showing about the school?