Posted on 11/27/2008 7:01:36 AM PST by reaganaut1
Through the holidays and beyond, high school students will be working feverishly to serve the needy — packing food baskets, ladling meals at soup kitchens, collecting toys for children in hospitals — all in the name of amassing the community service credits they need for graduation.
Cynics call these programs a form of forced altruism. Proponents say that they widen students’ horizons while getting service work done. Either way, the backlash has begun: not only do college admissions officers roll their eyes at bogus-sounding claims, but high schools are scaling back the requirements, acknowledging that a lot of the so-called service is meaningless.
When Lauren Swierczek took over last year as director of community service at Riverdale Country School, a private school in the Bronx whose students hail mainly from Manhattan (tuition: about $35,000 a year), she was troubled by the program she inherited. “What I was finding was that the fixation was more on hours than acts of service,” she said. Worse still, some students “weren’t actually doing it,” she said. “Documents were forged.”
Students from wealthy families were “knocking out their service hours with one total trip,” like a three-week summer jaunt to Costa Rica or the Galápagos Islands, Ms. Swierczek said. These teen tours, which cost $4,000 or more, use as a selling point the ability to rack up as many as 80 hours of community service. When they are not cleaning debris from beaches or teaching English to local schoolchildren, the travelers enjoy heavy doses of kayaking and scuba lessons.
...
Mrs. Stern recalled being dismayed watching her eldest son, a ninth grader, do the kind of community service that helped no one, like stacking books in a synagogue library or checking its pens for ink.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
let alone babysitting a sibling so a parent can work, or helping an infirm Grandma.
Arbeit macht frei!
Rand said it best through the great Howard Roark.
“It has to be said....the world is perishing in an orgy of self-sacrifice.”
My Church has all kinds of ways that high schoolers can volunteer to help the needy. Not only do they help people, they spread the Gospel to those who need to hear it. The kids love doing it, too. Will they have the same attitude when the “community service” is mandatory?
What’s this? The NY Times presenting an article detailing the fraud that is socialism? Or is it rather an expose by a times “reporter” annoyed at the lack of true interest shown by the privileged classes! You make the call.
What we had in WW II was a military obligation. There is a difference, but when it comes to "community work," the difference is huge. You get what you pay for, i.e., nothing.
So, lets see if I understand this correctly. , , If I work hard and graduate from H.S. with straight ‘A’s, my college will penalize me if I don’t spend “extra” time involved in some pre-authorized form of ‘approved’ altruistic “community Service”???
Something my Father told me when I was young comes to mind. “Altruism is at best self defeating, and at worst a slow form of suicide”
Mandatory community service is a crazy idea — only the most fascistic mentality would entertain the concept.
Socialists believe that all private charity is evil and selfish. They believe that the state should be the only entity allowed to give largess, be it time or money.
The Hitler Youth also engaged in community service projects.
Do you think that any Times reporters volunteer to help
anyone?
The Hitler Youth also engaged in community service projects.
Mandatory volunteerism was standard in the USSR. “Free saturdays” they were called, with workers mustered to sweep streets or harvest vegetables without pay.
Expect much more of this in Obama’s USSA.
If a student is diligent to make their grades, involved in extra-curricular things like sports, it is very hard to find time for community service unless it fits into their circle of activities. That should always be encouraged because there are to many people that won’t volunteer. But mandating is totalitarian and cheapens the meaning.
“but high schools are scaling back the requirements, “
Wait till the Civilian National Security Force conscription hit these morons right between the eyes, direct from fearless leader.
Why not just rent a hotel for the teenagers and let them spend the night there and have sex all evening, because that's what they do at this so called 'fundraiser'. My daughter went for a half an hour and came home and said it was practically an orgy with kids runnng in and out of tents half maked. There was maybe three adults supervising and they were probably downing the martinis.
anyway my complaints feel on deaf ears because the principal said they made a lot of money and the kids were earning their community 'service' and he had't heard any other complaints.
I live in the twilight zone...Los Angeles.
I don’t believe in community service . . . I’d rather not have a criminal working around charitable agencies or with children. Put them in jail . . . that’s what courts are supposed to do.
Well, my call is that your second observation is on the mark.
The “reporter” was as you said “annoyed at the lack of true interest shown by the privileged classes”.
That is who meaningless so-called community service can be.
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