As karmic payback for giving you summer assignments, or just because it's a really a good idea, I too had a Summer Assignment. My assignment was to read two chapters from the book The New Public Service: serving not steering. (I'm pretty sure you're supposed to underline book titles but I haven't figured out how to do that on this editor.)
I'd like to point out that I finished the reading on Tuesday and my assignment isn't due until Sunday. Three cheers for not procrastinating!
Since I haven't read the whole book, I don't think it would be fair for me to summarize it. Instead I'll share a few key quotes from the sections we were assigned to read:
"More and more, we are forced to recognize that the only authentic communication in which we can fully engage is face-to-face interaction based on our recognition of the other as a self we share."
"The ideal of authentic discourse sees administrators and citizens as engaging fully with one another, not merely as rationally self-interested individuals being brought together to talk, but as participants in a relationship in which they engage with one another as human beings."
"The questions we face are at once both simple and enormously complex: How will we treat our neighbors? Will we take responsibility for our role in democratic governance? Are we willing to listen to and try to understand views that are different from our own? Are we willing to forgo our personal interests for the sake of others? Are we willing to change our minds?"
I wouldn't say anything I read shifted my paradigms, but I enjoyed the reminders to listen to and be considerate of others on a political and personal level. I also enjoyed the examples given in the book of how some city governments are doing just that.
Students, between you and me, I'd have preferred to make a collage. ;-)
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