Mandatory Volunteerism In Schools

With the concept of “mandatory volunteerism” burgeoning within the education system, both public and private schools alike are beginning to debate as to whether or not they should all mandate community service. What is this “mandatory volunteerism”? It’s exactly as ridiculous as it sounds like. Mandatory volunteerism is the enforcement of community service within a school This concept should be negated, since it would create involuntary volunteers, devaluing the sole purpose of having community service, excluding the students’ circumstances, and replaced with a slow assimilation of civic education into schools. When volunteering is discussed, alongside civic values and moral duty, there needs to be a sense of willingness within the task …show more content…
Mullins states that “she doesn’t think community service should be a prerequisite”, but instead that it’s forced and “people don’t get as much out of that”. Instead of generalizing the education system, there should be a need to consider and regard the individual lives of students, since each student’s circumstances allows them a different approach to their own situation. A lot of students don’t have time, preparing for the SAT and taking jobs in order to make money for their own families. It would be incredibly inconsiderate to exclude each and every one of the student’s lives outside of school by choosing to force every student into a mandatory service program. Source 1 discusses the numerous possibilities of future issues with monetary gains and the necessary funds to implement the program in order to aid all schools into building stable community-service programs. This is only but one situation in which mandatory volunteering would come short. For some, the idea of “mandatory volunteerism” is even more radical. Barrie Ciliberti says, “It reminds me of something they used to do in the Soviet Union: ‘Every Saturday, you will volunteer to help the greater glory of the state’”. It would seem as though the mandatory volunteering would act as subjugation for the students, because it’s precisely what education is enforcing on …show more content…
In source 4, Council for Excellence in Government Youth Survey in 2002 (a government agency division), recorded that between the ethnicity/race/gender of students, there is no clear consensus as to whether or not community service for a high school diploma should require community service. Hypothetically, if a mandated community service were to be implemented, then there wouldn’t be a majority to support the decision, only indecision. The unclear majority means that the law simply cannot enforce mandatory community service upon schools, because that would be a costly generalization of circumstance. However, in source 2, a survey from 1996 showed that only 19% of students participated at schools where community was required but not arranged. This shows how having a mandatory call for volunteering cannot be simply made expecting results, but it also shows that if students are simply left to do what they choose to do, then there will be little results as well. And so, the only solution to the problem is one that is in the middle of these two radical options placed before the education system. If the civic education course were to be assimilated into the education system as it is, the community service could allow for students to “not only complete community service, but also study the organization that they work for or the