Blog Post #3 Chris Plattsmie....Power and Cause & Effect in Shakespeare and Service Learning

The prompt for this blog post makes me have to reach back to early experiences in my Service Learning placement.  After being at APEX youth center for nearly three months now, the connections between Shakespeare and modern social constructs have slowly revealed themselves.  I initially felt nervous about telling my fellow volunteers and managers of the center that I was volunteering there in part to help further my studies regarding Shakespeare. I’m already an outsider to the culture and location of the youth center, what are they going to think of me when I tell them I’m here to learn about Shakespeare? That is what I thought to myself.  I was also nervous that I was not going to have much luck being able to relate Shakespeare to a youth center for inner-city kids who are not normally to keen to volunteers in the first place. 

            The first time I met my fellow volunteers and supervisors, I was hoping I could get away without telling them I was there for a Shakespeare class.  All the other volunteers were either there on their own good grace or are starting graduate studies in social work.  When I answered their questions and told them I was there for a Shakespeare class, they seem intrigued.  I tried to explain to them how Shakespeare and Service Learning related, but I probably failed miserably.  However, in more recent weeks when I have talked to groups of students from all over the country who have volunteered at the center as part of a mission trips for their respective universities, I think I have improved my answer. I tell them that my observations have been geared to looking for social and cultural power struggles between the kids at the center, the kids and the supervisors and the kids and the volunteers.  This fits with my paper topic, which looks into the relationship between social, political and hierarchal power with violence in Titus Andronicus.  Some of the people saw the relevance and others thought it was a stretch, but I think I have finally been able to do a good job explaining the social concepts I am trying to relate to my service.

             The biggest thing I have gained from reading Shakespeare is insight to the cause and effect nature of social contexts.  None of Shakespeare’s plays have unnecessary scenes or lines, every action and line has a consequence.  Whether it is personal or social consequences, Shakespeare’s plays are in constant motion of cause and effect scenarios.  In my opinion, this is Shakespeare’s place in the real world.  At APEX I have seen how every actions and words of the kids effect their standing or perception in the eyes of their peers and the workers at the center.  Being a marginalized group (lower-income African Americans) it is easy to think that these kids have greater consequences for their actions, but at times they are the ones with power at the center.  They outnumber the volunteers and workers and sometimes (most of the times) we are the outsiders at the center who have to catch up to their actions and thoughts.  It has been really interesting to see how volunteers and workers at the center are often left powerless, by either not knowing how to interact with the kids or by social and cultural barriers.  I think that the kids observe everything I do there just as much as I observe their actions.  There is no action that does not have a social or cultural judgment made by the kids and volunteers alike.  This is how I’ve seen Shakespeare through my service learning, and it has taken form in both subtle and noticeable ways.