Final Exam Part 3

      Many junior high and high schools around the country now require students to spend a certain number of hours each term doing volunteer work or community service. Some believe this is an excellent idea that promotes good citizenship and cultivates compassion. Others feel that forced volunteerism is not volunteerism at all. How do you feel about this issue? Use specific reasons and examples to support your position.

Forced Volunteerism Isn't Volunteerism

Volunteerism is devoting your time to help others without pay and with choice. If you force children to "volunteer" and do community services, what is the message about good morals here? It changes kids' opinions on good deeds as something you're made to do, not something you want to do because it's kind. 

Forcing our kids to spend time doing volunteer work is wrong. Yes, it benefits the hungry or the poor, but they're not the reason the kids are there helping. They're there because they have to.

Kids will not learn good citizenship and compassion because they're not choosing to be kind and help the needy. These kids complain about homework, and eating vegetables. Imagine how they would act being forced to do community service. They will only react with anger and frustration. To be brutally honest, children would much rather play with their friends and do sports instead of picking up trash or sorting cans. 

If kids are forced to do these things, they won't do it in the future because they have the mindset that volunteer work was something their teachers made them do in school. They'll remember the "wasted" hours of time where they could've been playing soccer or basketball, but instead they had to do community service for school.

These mindset will pull them away from doing good deeds in the future. Let kids decide whether to volunteer or not.

The whole point of volunteerism is that the person chooses to dedicate time to help others. Once volunteering no longer becomes a choice, it's turning to be more along the lines of labor.

Schools think they have a much larger influence on children than they actually do. They believe that making kids do community service or volunteer service will magically turn kids into these wonderful, selfless, kids. As much as we wish that could be true, it's not.

Children can easily be molded, with their young minds and ambitions, but once they reach junior high and high school, they become more independent. They're no longer little kids who do whatever their parents or teachers tell them to do.

Maybe if there is a way to make volunteer work or community fun or interesting, kids might be intrigued. But as long as you're forcing them to do it, they won't enjoy it.

There are many kids and teens who do do volunteer work outside of school. But these kids make these choices themselves, or are encouraged by their parents. Parents know their kids much better than school administrators.

Schools could encourage parents to have kids volunteer, but as mentioned above many, many times, forced volunteerism is not volunteerism and doesn't work to make kids compassionate and selfless.



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