Posted on 05/04/2013 9:54:14 PM PDT by MacMattico
So it seems daughters school is stressing "service hours" (volunteer hours) as the only way to get into a decent college. Daughter has high grades in every class, has a full course load, band, two varsity sports and a couple of clubs. More then I ever did and I went to a respectable institution of higher learning! And... Gasp... May even have to get a job in a year or so when she wants that car she keeps talking about!
But no! Not enough! Now the school demands, and backs it up with college admissions material, that kids must have at least 300 hours of community services by graduation. My daughter has helped in the community but is not interested in the liberal nonsense being demanded. For instance, a group of kids sat out in make shift cardboard box "houses" overnight sneaking in pizza and fooling around and got 8 hours of community service for "learning what it's like to be homeless". Seriously! Daughters Guidance Counselor even said "In this world where colleges are taking an holistic approach at admissions, as a non-minority middle class kid you can't just expect to coast by on your excellent grades and a few sports and clubs." Shouldn't you be helping others because you want to, not because the school system demands we create more liberal community organizers? I feel like they're pushing kids to lie and make up fake service hours!
Oops.. Guess I forgot the “vanity” in the title.
With out saddling them with a pile of debt.
This is far from new, and the problem’s even deeper. Even high school academic and athletic awards depend on “service,” and that service is variously and arbitrarily defined. If you can’t fight it with the local schools and school boards, there’s no way you can fight it with admissions offices. I’d bet the ranch that it’s code for discriminating against home-schoolers and Conservatives. The only good news is that there are some colleges out there that don’t insist on these banalities.
My son’s school requires 40 hours over his 4 years of high school. He helps out with technology at various events, like updating computer displays, running a video camera, etc. He’s already earned over half his required hours and gets to have fun to boot.
I agree that it is ridiculous, but luckily we were able to find him something productive to do, no liberal spin stuff, and it gives him IT experience.
This is a mandate in California high schools. I had my daughter do hers at our church. It is the governments effort to turn everyone into a community organizer or sympathetic to them. I found offensive ten years ago and still do
Totally get it.
My youngest was volunteering at church....
swim team
going to the junior college for her junior and senior year
(that does save on college)
7:30- 5 and then 5-6 hours of home work......
It is horrible but for just a season.
What she did was petition the principle and stated her pint that church work WERE volunteer hours.
She sited laws and regulations........
He accepted her petition, which included mission trips.
Mother/father never give up encourage her to push forward.....and if all fails jounior college solves many problems.
(psst out daughter graduated from a private Christian college at 20, because she pushed.......saved us a bunch of mine)
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I haven’t tried to get any kids into college lately, but I’m told, and I’ve read in the Wall St. Journal, that what elite schools REALLY love is if the kid comes up with their OWN service project, plans it, coordinates it, makes it happen, sees it through, writes it up in a nice neat way that can then be submitted to the school (or better yet, post it in a blog, to show other kids how to replicate the same service project, if it really is useful in some way). So instead of kowtowing to their liberal BS ideas of what a service project should be, why can’t she come up with a good conservative project? (Though perhaps she shouldn’t *label* it as Conservative if she doesn’t want their heads to explode! LOL!) Maybe something to help armed services families, or to promote adoption instead of abortion, or ... um, can’t think of any others right now but it’s late and I’m tired. I bet you and your daughter could come up with several more good ideas. Don’t let them stuff your daughter into a pigeonhole! Have her make her own pigeonhole! LOL! :)
I'm just glad I didn't have to mess with that BS back in the 1980s.
Same thing happened at my HS, and it was a prerequisite. But don’t fret as your daughter will be fine. No sane, normal 18 year old takes this liberal crap seriously unless you are a frothing at the mouth Obamaturd. My “community outreach” (that was it was called) was volunteering at the local cop office.
And I didn’t volunteer because it was a cop’s office. It was because there were a lot of hot girls there from the university who also volunteered. ;)
We will go the GED route if any more silly requirements come up, although church work would be OK. No longer looking at higher education even though we have prestigious PhDs in the family and such — we want to be out of the mainstream as much as possible. No need or desire for high income or status. Daughters can continue living frugally as we do now.
can a student get a ged at age 16 and quit school? That would work.
Actually I was really screwed up as a kid. These ‘volunteer’ projects seem to require parental involvement-the reason I was so screwed up. This ‘volunteering’ requirement really stacks the deck. You want to be left alone to succeed on your own terms and they just won’t leave you alone.
There are plenty of good colleges out there that will provide your daughters with additional opportunities in life.
Unless you are Amish( and your computer usage suggests you are not) then depriving them of additional education or training is not a good thing
This happened to my granddaughter when she was about 16. She wanted to quit school. Her mom had a fit and went to talk to the school’s guidance counselor who told her that said daughter was bored. She was told to let my gd take the GED which she did. She made the highest score ever made. She has had some college classes and will go back after her little girl gets older. Do not understand why the schools do not teach at the good students’ level instead of taking everyone down.
Yes, lately she’s been trying to come up with her own plan and create her own way of getting in these service hours. We have an adopted daughter in the family, so that suggestion might be good. Also a relative is a gun collector, teaches the hunters safety course and gun safety. Maybe she can assist him and offer self protection classes! The school administrators would faint!
The issue is “decent school.” Basically either your kid has straight As and is going to get into Harvard or you should not waste your money and time or worry about her getting into a lower level “decent school.” The second tier private schools like Duke for example get you nothing that you won’t get from the best public university in your state.
Good schools are getting tired of receiving applications where it’s clear that the student is playing a numbers game to get so much of this, so much of that, etc, etc.
Now they’re looking for students who really care about something and demonstrate it. They want to know that you have a passion, that you’ve committed the time and energy to pursue it, and that you have some record of achievement.
They’re looking for leaders, not for people who follow a recipe.
High grades and high test scores are the most important thing. Volunteer hours are easy to creatively manufacture from stuff most teenagers already do. School clubs have their ow projects that work to meet these requirements. If our oldest son can manage to accrue volunteer hours, then anyone can. He is NOT college material. He does like to work hard at manual labor though. Girls are less likely to do that. Our daughter’s counselor came up with plenty of volunteer hours for our daughter via tutoring, promoting school language programs, and even working/running the snack bar for another school’s baseball team. Daughter used her skills (languages) to meet her volunteer quota. The snack bar stuff was extra. This worked out well with baseball leagues. Parents hate to work the snack bar.
While I think this volunteerism requirement is stupid, it is easy to do and usually something most teenagers do anyway through church activities and school activities. All the homeschoolers we know have no problem documenting volunteer activities that they do.
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