Issue One: Commuity Service Hours
“Fifty-nine percent of teenagers ages 12 to 17 in 1996 volunteered in the past year. These 13.3 million teen volunteers gave an estimated 3.5 hours per week, totaling 2.4 billion hours of volunteer time.”
Facts like these and others show that teens are indeed volunteering across the country, but how is it that teens in our area are so against these hours? Community service is something that all seniors in this area hear about quite often. Though, more often in the form of complaints. When I interviewed several teens at my school, asking them what they thought about the ten hours of community service required for graduation, most of them told me that they disagreed with the mandatory hours, stating that:
“I don’t think that community service should be mandatory to graduate, maybe for teachers to give you extra credit … but I don’t think graduation should be based on whether or not you do community service” (Abir, age 18)
“Honestly I don’t think it’s needed, a lot of kids do community service anyway, like Boy Scouts, or, my friends had Eagle Scout projects, and they needed a lot of help with it, and even though it didn’t technically count, it was still just a lot of community service done.” (Jacob, age 17)
Responses like these, as well as others similar to these are not uncommon at all. Teens don’t like being forced to do something, especially something that, as Genny DiLeonardo stated, “just needs to be done”. By making something like community service mandatory, the school district has taken most of the goodwill out of the equation. Now it’s not to be said that the required hours are all bad, but that they, perhaps, were a bit misguided, as Mountain View High School Civics teacher, Dave Blasquez explains,
“Community service is a good idea, if the student is committed to a program. I don’t think that forced community service though, is the best way of going about doing it … It’s a district policy. I think the district had a good idea, in encouraging students to commit themselves to the community. Because when you commit yourself to the community, you get a better understanding of the people that live in your community and the needs of your community”