Assigned Community Service at Schools

Community service is a wonderful concept. People volunteer in order to make their community a better place because they care. Now, schools are using community service as an assignment so students can learn about citizenship.

They are forcing students to do a certain amount of community service hours in a certain time. By assigning community service hours, students may be learning the value of citizenship, but they are not doing these hours because they care about their community. Instead they are selfishly doing it in order to get a good grade for their benefit. I think schools should quit making students do service hours because students need to learn to do actions, like community service, because they care. As a student, you have many responsibilities, everything from completing homework each night to studying for tests to chores your parents tell you to do.

There is so much to do that students frequently get stressed out. Now that students also have service hours to complete, they have even less time to themselves to relax and be with friends and family. Students may decide to procrastinate completing the community service hours because they have so much work to do, not because they are lazy. They should be able to enjoy their childhood without having to stress about the community service they are being forced to do. As students get older, many decisions they make are based on their childhood. These students may not have enjoyed being forced to do community service by their school, which could cause them to do little to none when they are adults.

This could happen because they couldn’t find opportunities that they would enjoy doing due to the time constraints. As adults, they might think there aren’t any exciting or significant community service opportunities. They also might think community service is stressful due to the sea of work on top of the community service hours that were assigned as a student. Lastly, they might not know where the opportunities are because they did all of their community service through their school. This could lead to a generation of doing almost no community service.

From my experiences and observations, students seem less motivated to do things if someone is forcing them to do it in a certain time. If an English teacher told their students they had to read a book in two weeks, the students wouldn’t be able to enjoy the book. As the students read the book, they just think about finishing it. This is the same for service hours. When the teacher assigns them, students think they are just another assignment, so they don’t have fun while doing them. All the students can think about is how many more hours they have to do and how they could be doing other things that are more important to them.

When they are adults, all they will be able to look back to are all those hours of stress. Instead of making it mandatory for students to do community service, schools should use community service as extra credit. Students would be less stressed and community service wouldn’t be just another assignment to students. Students would then be able to enjoy doing community service and helping others for the rest of their life. Most importantly, students would be learning both about caring for your community and citizenship. This way, more people would do community service and our world will become a better place.