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By their very nature, courses that contain a community-based component invite opportunities for the practice of empathy, whereby students come to identify with their community partners (such as the low-income children they tutor, the elders they interview). In fact, the building of empathy through the cross-dialogue often catalyzed by such classes has been touted as crucial in the practice of civic literacy. Having taught at least two kinds of community-based courses, Joyce Meier can testify to the empathy such courses encourage. However, she has also found that the quality of the empathetic experience and the consequent student writing, as well as corresponding ethical challenges, can differ significantly depending on whether the student is more involved in the "mission" (that is, in the field) or "monastery" side (at the computer or office) side of community work. To put it another way, whether the student-missionary is engaged in tutoring homeless children or is writing a grant proposal in the organization's office affects the degree of empathetic identification the student feels; and even, the quality of the writing she produces. Meier argues that the community-based course requires a balance of field and office, of mission and monastery. Teachers such as herself must strategize and intervene, to ensure that the "missionaries" get a sense of the overall systemic practices, policies, and interventions that can and will affect their community partners, while the "monks" need a hefty share of the work in the field: through learning they get from their peers, field trips, readings, and guest speakers, as well as in the community itself. Herein she compares the role of empathy in two of her community-based classes. In the first class, students do life-story work with Detroit elders and children in which their empathy for their partners seems to evolve almost naturally. In the second class, students work, and to some extent write, for non-profit organizations, they may end up researching and revising handouts on prisoner health care--without ever setting foot in a prison. In this course empathy is often the very thing most needed.

1Boy Crusoe

By Allan Eric

Also published as" A Yankee Crusoe" . A 15 year old hard working and studious farm boy finds the lure of adventure on the seas as a merchant seaman more than he can resist. This is his story. " I was born in a little town in the State of Maine, near the close of the Civil War. My boyhood life did not differ materially from that of the average farmer's son in the remote country districts of New England--except, perhaps, that I read more and thought more. Hard work on the rugged soil, two terms each year in the little yellow country schoolhouse, a day's fishing now and then filled the early years of my life full to over-flowing. " What he gets is enough excitement and adventure to overflow his wildest dreams. How he experiences disaster and uses his wits and knowledge to overcome every problem makes for a great read. - Summary by Phil Chenevert