Community Service Graduation Requirement (highway, speech, how much, high school)

[goldengrain]

My local high school is making 40 hours of community service a prerequisite to graduation.

Is this pushing a political agenda on the students?

Will this make people a bit less greedy and more compassionate?

Is a school's duty to turn out well rounded citizens or merely educated ones?

What are your thoughts?

[NYTom]

Volunteering will not only look good on your resume but may also lead to a job.
The school is doing you a favor actually.

[tippinturtle]

40 hours is not much. While I'm sure the students will moan about it, I think it'll be good for them in the long run. More people need to get out there & volunteer, myself included. I'm not sure where the political angle comes from though, I don't consider volunteering political in nature.

[goldengrain]

I agree with the above two posts, but my husband objects. He says it's just the town trying to get cheap labor that our taxes are paying for.

I think, since our taxes pay for education, that a bit of reciprocity is not too much to expect. It is easy to go through life with a self-centered attitude.

I sometimes become aware that in my voting I am being entirely self-serving and not necessarily voting for the benefit of the entire country. Spending some time helping others might mitigate that feeling a bit.

[Memphis1979]

Let me answer the OP by asking this question.

If someone goes to school, takes advanced courses, then goes to college and invents a sustainable, clean energy source, have they not contributed to the community?

[North Beach Person]

Originally Posted by NYTom

Volunteering will not only look good on your resume but may also lead to a job.
The school is doing you a favor actually.

But if you're forced to do it it's not volunteering, it's just another mandatory graduation requirement.

MD has had this for 12 or so years. Even after all these years there are always seniors who have to scramble to get their hours the last couple months before graduation. Not to mention that it's become just one more thing that some staff member has to keep track of.

[texdav]

Like what I saw in summer jobs the restrictions on what they can do is so limited because of liabilty its really useless to a large degree.

[NYTom]

Originally Posted by North Beach Person

But if you're forced to do it it's not volunteering, it's just another mandatory graduation requirement.

MD has had this for 12 or so years. Even after all these years there are always seniors who have to scramble to get their hours the last couple months before graduation. Not to mention that it's become just one more thing that some staff member has to keep track of.

And when you get a job based on your work experience from volunteering are you going to look back and say " Damn School! forced us to volunteer! Waaaaa!

Or when you apply for and receive scholarships in college because the committees looked for candidates with community service are you going to mad still that you were forced into it?

You kids need to look at the big picture.

As my mom used to say, " You can't put an old head on young shoulders"!

[SCGranny]

It was my understanding that recently it was made a part of the Federal requirement for all schools to have mandatory community service as part of their curriculae.

Most of our local kids groused but did it; our HS students spent one day on the state highway picking up trash, and another day cleaning the park and public buildings. Since "cleaning the park" meant the use of chainsaws and cutting up deadwood, some kids were very enthusiastic. The school made a party of it; hamburgers and hot dogs, ice cream, and cookies in the midafternoon. Like everything else, the kids just shrugged and said, "I'll put it on my college resume". Since most of them have extracurricular activities and go to art shows, drama and speech competitions, Trips to Washington, the state Capitol, and national Honor Society as well as FFA meetings, besides most sport competitions, one more day 'out of class' was not that big a deal to them.

That said, yes, "volunteer" should be volunteer, not forced labor. But truthfully, how many kids even bother to pick up some blowing trash and put it in a trash can, much less organize themselves or offer themselves to any entity to help unless told to by their parents? How many more destroy things or scrawl graffiti or tear down basketball hoops, swings, volleyball nets, in public places "just for fun"? If they learn how much effort it takes to clean something up or keep it attractive, they might actually learn to take pride in themselves and their accomplishments, maybe even their town or community. And that's not a bad thing.

[North Beach Person]

Originally Posted by NYTom

And when you get a job based on your work experience from volunteering are you going to look back and say " Damn School! forced us to volunteer! Waaaaa!

Or when you apply for and receive scholarships in college because the committees looked for candidates with community service are you going to mad still that you were forced into it?

You kids need to look at the big picture.

As my mom used to say, " You can't put an old head on young shoulders"!

I'm 57.


You make a good point, maybe. You have bought into the propaganda, though.

No one, no one, is going to get any kind of scholarship for a 40 hour or so mandatory volunteering gig. That's like saying a kid will get a scholarship for having fulfilled the mandatory 1/2 credit of PE for graduation.

Now, if a kid has 1000 hours of true volunteer work you'd be correct.