Related articles and links |  1 of 5

"Learning to Care: Elementary Kindness in an Age of Indifference," by Robert Wuthnow (Oxford University Press, 287 pp.; $25, hardcover).

Like many people, I am an inveterate volunteer. Since I was 16 I have helped in a Head Start classroom, coached Little League, taught writing in my children's elementary school, visited in nursing homes, taught Presbyterian Sunday school, acted as bouncer in a Catholic Worker dining room, mentored (or tried to) a fatherless boy, and served on numberless church committees. There have been few periods of my life when I was not actively volunteering, and most of the time I have been involved with several programs.

None of this seems in the least remarkable to me. I have no sense of great sacrifices, nor do I believe that I have accomplished great things. I hope my main motive for volunteering is concern for people with needs. But I also volunteer because I enjoy it, because I feel an obligation to share my good fortune, and because I think volunteering makes me a more rounded person. During the years when I worked in the Catholic Worker dining room, for example, I enjoyed knowing many of the homeless in my community by name, and I thought I was spiritually and intellectually better off for regular contact with poor people. I hoped I did some good for them, but I was sure I did good for myself.

Voluntarism is an old and well-worn path for Americans, but lately it has been attracting unfamiliar attention. The many books and articles calling on America to rekindle its civic spirit often mention the importance of volunteer efforts. President Clinton has staked a good deal of his political reputation on Americorps, a program to organize and fund full-time "volunteers." Some high schools require volunteering of students as part of "character education."

In "Learning to Care: Elementary Kindness in an Age of Indifference," Princeton sociologist Robert Wuthnow shines the careful light of scholarship on teenage volunteers. Through surveys and extensive interviews, Wuthnow has searched for the meaning of their efforts and has found just about what he might have found in me--nothing spectacular. Wuthnow emphasizes the mildness of charity. Kindness, he says, is nothing heroic. We have all received kindness from our families, and volunteering is a way to translate such elementary kindness into the world. Volunteering teaches us how to be kind in an institutionalized society where we must harness our caring impulses to somebody's program. It also teaches us to accept our limits--to be kind while not changing the world. "People who value caring," Wuthnow says, "learn that serving on committees and programs is a way of behaving in a caring manner."

Wuthnow reminds me of George Bush, who wanted to create a "kinder and gentler" version of Reagan's free-market society through a "thousand points of light." This assigns an important but subsidiary role to churches and charities--as points that soften, energize, and humanize a tough world. It assumes, however, that the big engines of society are government and business. Voluntarism fills in the cracks, helping and comforting those who lose out in the system. This view does not expect churches or charities to change the world. It does not expect volunteers to be heroes.

As Wuthnow sees it, such a view is inevitable in a complex, developed society. America, he says, is a very different place from the country that lauded heroes. Pioneers needed to be strong and virtuous characters because they lived in a lawless, unprotected environment. For them, "temperance and prudence took the place of factory schedules and insurance schemes." Today, however, "people can . . . be relatively weak because of the strength of their social institutions. . . . The need for strong persons has declined in the same way that the need for strong muscles has declined."

next page... |  1 of 5

share this page

April 29 1996, Vol. 40, No. 5