Service learning should be mandatory
During my career as a high school teacher I advised a community service student group for three years. We organized food and clothing drives, visited residents of a nursing home, served dinner at a homeless shelter, and painted the inside of a house for Habitat for Humanity among the many activities we undertook. I’m very proud of the students who committed themselves to the group because there is so much that distracts teenagers. More importantly, I know our efforts really helped people in need.
Last week I heard a talk radio host discussing a newspaper article regarding how the district I taught in may adopt a policy making service hours a necessary requirement to graduate. So, I immediately called into the station to voice my support. As I continued to listen to the program, I heard many other callers reject the proposal outright. Oddly, some of them even sounded a bit upset. They kept saying that such work should be voluntary, not mandatory.
For as much as people talk about the importance of community here in the United States, it appears that self-interest pervades so much of our everyday lives – so much that “community” often (not always) becomes the distant afterthought. Now, the one major exception to this is when a major tragedy occurs, whether it be a natural disaster or a human act of violence. Then people feel compelled to come together. Otherwise, many spend much of their time solely focused on themselves and / or their family members.
This doesn’t have to be the case. We have the power to change social norms to ensure that helping others becomes a much higher priority than it currently is, and what better way than through our public school system. After all, teaching young people to consider the interests of the less fortunate among us through experiential learning can be an invaluable tool we can utilize to alter normative behavior.
With regards to those who reject this idea altogether, I wonder about their underlying motivations. Our communities are interconnected. Moreover, social problems are ever-present. As much as someone might like to only think about him or herself, it’s impossible to escape the collective.
As an educator, I taught my students the history of our nation as well as the function of our governing institutions (most of which occurred inside a classroom) to make them better citizens. To me, it’s just as socially redeemable and responsible to teach them the importance of community beyond the walls of the school itself, and service learning makes that possible. It would mold a number of them into better human beings.
So, when I hear people complain that a total of 40 hours of work spread-out across four years of high school would be an major inconvenience for kids, parents, and administrators, I think they’re further demonstrating the rampant self-interest I find so unsettling. From where I stand, that’s not something to be proud of.
Another local election has come and gone
When I came home last night and checked the local election results online, I felt a wave of shock, immediately followed by disappointment. First, I couldn’t believe that Lynn Fazekas came in third place out of the three mayoral candidates with 953 votes, or 20% of the total. Secondly, I noticed that very few people voted at all: only 4,717 for mayor in a city of 43,714 (the population as of July 2007 according to City Data) and a major state university with an enrollment well over 20,000 students. Just watch our democracy flat-line…well almost.
During this campaign I attended two candidate forums, one at the Holmes Student Center and the other at the Egyptian Theater. While the other independent challenger for mayor, Paul “The Dome” Kallembach, distinguished himself with humor and spoke with a commanding voice, he simply failed to provide substantive policy ideas. At times, he sounded like someone who hadn’t done his homework, yet tried to answer questions as if he had. That’s why I find it disheartening that 1,192 people voted for him.
As for the turnout, well, my expectations weren’t particularly high because local elections that don’t feature major referendums never seem to generate high levels of interest. That said, you’d think the nation’s economic conditions would have reverberated more through local issues such as the city buying-up property for development. Clearly, the extremely low turnout (even lower than the mayoral race four years ago) suggests otherwise. What bothers me here is that people had a real viable independent alternative (Lynn Fazekas), but instead of exploring and seizing the opportunity, many chose to stay home.
The encouraging part of all this is the grassroots effort made by Lynn Fazekas and the volunteers on her campaign over the past several months. These people truly care about the future of this community – they care in a way the current leadership can neither identify with nor understand. Why? Some of them were citizen watchdogs long before the campaign began, and they will continue their efforts in the years to come. After all, if you really desire greater accountability in government, then people must speak out on a regular basis – not only around election time.
