By Leo Corman ’15

Just to be clear, I do not want to discourage or argue against students serving their communities.  Volunteering to help others is a noble and admirable pursuit.  However, the mandatory nature of the service that MCPS students must perform detracts from the value of the activity and all the benefits that come with it—responsibility, perspective, empathy and more.

When students are forced to earn service hours, they are less likely to find the experience gratifying and worthwhile and more likely to see the hours as a chore, something to complete grudgingly and get out of the way.  The current MCPS policy does not reward thoughtfulness or creativity in relation to the service, leaving students with little to no incentive for seeking out the most helpful or important activity.  Instead, MCPS places quantity over quality, giving less recognition to a student who toils for 50 hours at a soup kitchen to feed the homeless than to a student who racks up 300 hours helping out at parent nights and school functions.

Furthermore, the service requirements fail to consider the needs of less privileged students.  Plenty of students come home from school and have to hold jobs or care for younger siblings, and their parents are too busy working to transport them to various service activities.  The requirements create an unfair burden for these students, putting them at a serious disadvantage when it comes to finding hours.  At a minimum, MCPS should make a greater effort to accommodate students whose circumstances make it difficult for them to earn service hours.

However, the crux of the problem does not lie with the amount of hours (admittedly, 75 is not that much to ask); rather, it lies with the general principles involved.  MCPS oversteps its boundaries when it attempts to dictate how students spend their time outside of school.  Just as students cannot be compelled to play a team sport or join a particular club, so too should they not be mandated to complete community service.  No matter how beneficial or advantageous the activity, schools should not have the power to force students to do anything not related to academics.

While MCPS and individual schools should do everything in their power to promote volunteerism and emphasize the importance of community service, in the same way they do with extracurricular activities overall, they should leave the decision of whether or not to actually participate in those activities up to each student and his/her family.  Schools can begin to instill the values of volunteerism and helping others in children at a young age, and they can offer school-sponsored volunteer opportunities to encourage the application of these values.

Ultimately, students should feel engaged and enthusiastic about the service they provide and the good they do for their communities, and this will only occur when MCPS prioritizes the type of activity over the length of time the activity takes.  If MCPS removes the label of “mandatory” and allows students to see how helping others can be rewarding and fulfilling, then students will still perform community service, only they might actually enjoy it.