Mandating Volunteering
In today’s society, a society in which multiple things are stacked up and expected of you under tight constraints and diminishing time, an argument brought up considering adding what more than another burden is one which, in most cases, would be quickly disposed. However, such a proposal encompassing moral obligations to one’s community is one not to be overlooked. Community service, unpaid, volunteer work aimed at aiding and helping a select group of people from a particular area, originally intended to be called forth by good of the heart, is requested to undergo some regulations, specifically mandating a service requirement among students. Should community service be mandated? Of course not: community service was intended to be a deed done out of kindness, loyalty, and morale, rather than a requirement set forth by a school or the government and fulfilled predominantly by (young) students who are opposed to the idea (Source 7).
The motives for community service are complex: they can range from learning a new job, connecting people with similar interests, and simply making a mark in a community, however, they also look like gold on a college transcript. In Source 4, Tara Bahrampour’s article in the Washington Post, she writes that members part of a community service club “look good on college applications” and that to college people “have been fairly impressed.” Bolstering one’s college application is a huge motivation for community service, and should remain one: it is a whole-hearted motivating reason to help the community. It is not required, but it is optional and gives you an appealing edge among those unacquainted with community service. Mandating community service would eliminate this edge, moreover leveling the competitive field of college acceptance, and decreasing the extrinsic reward for helping the community.
The social acceptance of one in abundance of hours of service is a view of ambiguity. During the adolescent period, the adolescents are burdened with everyday increasing responsibilities and expectations, and balancing these requisites with adolescent social interaction, educational curriculum, etc. creates a hard-to-maintain homeostasis. In extreme cases, the homeostasis is broken after adding an overabundance of community service, such as in the case of John Prueter. “Prueter, a seventh-grader at Cramer Junior High School, spends much of his after-school time at the Alterra Sterling House, an assisted-living home” instead of spending his after-school time interacting and socializing with friends and experiencing the real-world. He has been helping and “volunteering with the elderly [for] almost two years,” two years of which social skills and social developing are lost, especially at such an impressionable age during seventh-grade (Source 3). It is cases like this, disturbances in homeostasis, balancing the different aspects of one’s life, that bring forth the question of the benefits and drawbacks of community service, and the concept of “mandatory” community service. Source 6, a cartoon titled “Volunteer” answers these concerns: at a first glace the poster looks promising, a soda can labeled “VOLUNTEE[R]” captioned “VOLUNTEER – Now available in your community! Try Some!,” but after further inspecting the cartoon, one can identify propaganda techniques such as “Best if used instantly” and misleading details such as “Now with Bee Pollen & Ginseng” that may imply some potential problems with volunteering or the concept of mandating volunteering. The detail regarding the inclusion of bee pollen and ginseng into the analogical soda can may indicate once again an unbalance of homeostasis: as bee pollen is known to cause an instability in histamines in the body and ginseng is known to cause an unbalance of sleep hormones resulting in insomnia (as its relation to caffeine), mandating volunteering may cause an unbalance of an aspect of an individual’s life, negating the intention of volunteering originally.
Morality should be the primary motivator for volunteering, not a requirement set forth by an arbitrary system which assesses everyone objectively. Forcing service negates the moral intrinsic reward for volunteering and makes the experience more a chore than a gift to the community. Subjects like to think of their contributions as their free will and their own good-doings; “Researchers were able to persuade [people] to volunteer while making sure that they still felt that it was their free choice.” And in response, people “were more likely to want to volunteer in the future than “not ready” students who had been required.” Mandating service therefore has “negative effects” on “students’ motivation,” and should not be instated in order to keep the essence of volunteering intact (Source 5).
Community Service is a great way for anyone to help their community, boost their morale, appeal to colleges, pay off criminal debt – it helps not only the one performing the service but also benefits everyone else around them. However, it is not a great thing to make mandatory; community service always has been and must remain an act of volunteer. Requiring community service negates both the intrinsic and extrinsic motives it has as well increases the burden of requirements on adolescents in particular. Community service must remain an optional, but encouraged, act in which helpful and caring people go out of their own way to better the world.
