Mandatory community service is truly oxymoronic

By Eli Kintisch

When I heard that Branford High School was instituting a policy of mandatory community service, I had to chuckle. It's not often that I find myself on the same side of an issue with Ayn Rand, who would view mandatory service as akin to slave labor. Yet we oppose the same program for a different set of reasons.

Remember Ayn Rand? If you're like me, you devoured The Fountainhead in high school over a period of a week. By now, most of her libertarian/trickle-down rhetoric has been properly flushed from my system. Yet I still recall an eerie photo of Ayn that was stuck in the middle of the paperback, beckoning me to join the Ayn Rand Institute. Though I never sent in the card, that picture always gave me the heebeegeebees.

I got the same feeling a few weeks ago when I heard about Performance Based Graduation, Branford High's flashy new curriculum scheme. These days, every school district has a program in the works to "improve" the quality of education. Over the last eight years, wasting time that should have been spent with students, committees of administrators, teachers, and parents devised a list of specific tasks every student must perform before graduation. The draft calls for a Branford graduate who "reads effectively" and "aesthetically aware of a wide variety of art forms." This is bunk—schools simply need better teachers instructing their students on how to think clearly, not more administrative headaches. An especially unfortunate requirement of this insidious laundry list is a stipulation of 40 hours of community service.

Mandatory community service—dubbed "service learning" in many districts—appears to be the next big fad in public education. It seems that across the country, the '60s-era activists have grown up. Now, as school administrators, they're calling themselves reformers and trying to impress their values on Generation Y. A 1993 Maryland law requires student service. Miami schools share the stipulation. Branford would join a growing list of school districts in Connecticut that require service, including New Britain, Granby, and Meriden. In the last 10 years, as this idea has gained momentum, students, parents, and civil rights groups have opposed the programs in court, but to little avail. On three occasions, the Supreme Court has refused to hear such cases.

This is a bad idea for our schools. Although teaching students in high school to volunteer in the community is a good idea, creating a systematic requirement to force teenagers to perform service is a mistake. Volunteerism is an important value to pass on to teenagers, but parents, not teachers, should be delivering the message. Giving to others shouldn't be a prerequisite for anything, much less a quantifiable requirement that students can fulfill by submitting forms. The message one sends when one tries to quantify altruism is unsettling. "Mandatory volunteerism" is a baldfaced oxymoron.

The principal of Branford High School, Dr. Edward Higgins, argues that the requirement isn't a big deal. "There's a tremendous amount of learning that goes into this," he said. "Forty hours over four years isn't going to damage anybody." Personally, I would hope that every student at Branford spends far more than 40 hours during their high school career helping others. The problem with setting such a requirement is that it creates a false sense that achieving the numerical goal is enough.

In addition, such programs open up a nightmarish can of worms. Will schools give credit for service with church or synagogue groups? By disallowing credit for religious groups, will students be discouraged from volunteering on their own time? It seems fair to allow students to volunteer for existing service organizations like the Boy Scouts or local soup kitchens. But conflicts have arisen around the country when administrators were put in the messy situation of deciding what community service was acceptable.

School officials are simply not equipped to decide whether the NRA, ACT-UP, or extremist anti-abortionists are appropriate community service organizations for students. Personally, I find the notion of high school students logging their hours with groups that employ antagonistic tactics very disturbing. Students should know the facts before joining such groups—but is it the school's place to tell their students which groups are suitable?

Districts should strongly encourage their students to volunteer, but community service in our schools should be part of optional extracurriculars, not mandatory requirements. There are a plethora of more efficient and effective ways to urge students to give to others. Schools should hire generous and enthusiastic teachers who will help supervise service projects. Administrators should allot money and school resources for after-school activities in the community. Making optional service easy and attractive can be a daunting task, especially for poorer districts, but this must be a priority.

Sorry, Ayn, I don't agree with your cronies down at the Ayn Rand Institute, who last year launched a massive crusade against volunteerism. Students should be learning to help others. But schools must encourage, not force, their students to act on values parents should already have instilled in their kids.

Eli Kintisch is a senior in Ezra Stiles.

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