<p>When I hear about volunteerism–which always seems to be phrased as the well-off helping those less fortunate–my extremely cynical mother’s voice always echoes in my ear, saying “noblesse oblige.” I would like to see “community service” become exactly that: an opportunity for everyone to work for the common good, including one’s own good, rather than an opportunity to ask kids to condescend to helping the poor or unfortunate.</p>
<p>One thing I hate about mandatory community service is the assumption that even ten hours or so is easy to come up with. That isn’t necessarily true for kids who (a) work to help their families pay bills, (b) help at home with younger siblings, (c) don’t have transportation to and from places, or (c) have parents who work multiple jobs or have multiple children and for whom adding the extra activity pushes the schedule over the breaking point. Younger daughter goes to a public school in an area with a lot of poverty and a large number of kids who are also parents. I can honestly see that there are quite a percentage of those kids who need to be on the receiving end, rather than the giving end, of community service and such a requirement would be a hardship for them. Older daughter’s private school is not in the same situation and community service could be mandatory without causing the same type of difficulty.</p>
<p>this is why I think that we should “require” community service in schools
I think communities benefit when it is a shared value-, many organizations are run by volunteers, and the community benefits even more when the organization looks like who they serve.</p>
<p>Service learning, which is even required in some of our urban middle schools, opens up kids eyes to careers and opportunities, at a time when their minds are hopefully still open.
Our area has a great many organizations and people who value “giving back”.
I don’t see this as condescending though-and I hope that those they serve dont either.
Although that many of the students that I help, at teh high school,are minority, and lower income than we are- I understand what you are saying about noblesse oblige, but I feel lucky that I can help-and the kids have always been really friendly.</p>
<p>I don’t see it as the well off helping “those in need”, I see it more as doing what needs to be done, without waiting for a govt agency or a for profit business to figure out how to do it.</p>
<p>At least from where I am sitting, the days of the junior league, doing good works in between getting their hair done and tennis lessons, are long gone.</p>
<p>This is from a local paper written for the community, by those who some would probably consider disenfranchised, I dont have the impression that they consider those " who give" back, to be condescending at all.
<a href=“http://www.realchangenews.org/archive3/2005_02_23/current/interview.html[/url]”>http://www.realchangenews.org/archive3/2005_02_23/current/interview.html</a></p>
<p>I like the idea of kids getting out of their boxes, of thinking of someone other than themselves. Conceptually, CS is really a good idea.</p>
<p>In practice, I haven’t seen it work so well, and I still don’t know how to remedy that situation.</p>
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<p>I have no problems with either field trips or speakers. Both can be excellent ways to supplement and/or foster learning. It’s difficult to argue with you concerning your point on how requirements are set up. However, the fact is that the requirements are what they are. That being the case a tremendous amount of the burden does in fact fall on the school and the teacher. I agree it shouldn’t be that way but in practice it is. The end result is even more of a load on classroom teachers as opposed to putting the onus for fulfillment on the students and their parents.</p>
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<p>In order to graduate from high school, I had to do 20 hours of community service as a part of my Participation in Government class. Luckily for us, we were allowed to choose from a list our community service activities. I chose to work at the downtown YMCA helping sign children up for swim classes during spring recess. It was great, I got my first taste of community service (I came from an impoverished background, so any work I did beforehand was paid work), and I developed a desire to work with children 
. No harm was done by this requirement, if anything it makes for a better student since it shows the community that H.S. students aren’t spoiled brats that have everything handed to them. Too bad the colleges I applied to never heard about my community service stint, since I took P.I.G. during my last semester of H.S.</p>
<p>This might sound cynical but most of the community service I have observed that happens thru the school system is done solely to get the extra points or the grade or to meet the club requirement or because it looks good on an app. Most of it here is done in large groups not individually. So the students are usually just socializing amongst themselves while performing the “service”. My S actaully quit NHS at his school for this very reason. There was a community service requirement that had to be met within the club (as a group project) and he thought it was all such a farce. They weren’t really interested in helping people, just had to do it for NHS. His after school job usually prevented him from doing these after school “service projects”. He preferred to do community service through our church’s youth group but his NHS would not accept that. So he quit.</p>
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<p>I agree one hundred percent. This is what I’ve been trying to say in my earlier posts. Then on top of it all in our system too much of the responsibility has been put on the teachers.</p>