Community service
Nic White is angry about Labor’s plan to make community service a high-school graduation requirement. Not afraid of hyperbole, he says the policy “borders on insanity.”
Puh-lease.
At my high-school, we had to do 40 hours of community service in Year 11. It appears that the program worked so well that the school now requires 15 hours in Year 8, 20 hours in Year 10, a week in Year 11 and another 40 hours in Year 11/12. I did mine at a respite home for the elderly, and got a lot out of it — without compromising my academic results.
Even the Liberals accept “that most students through their school activities right from primary school through to secondary school have some activities of this type at the moment”.
What about the kids that also work in part time jobs?
I worry about them being overloaded beyond their years, and with full time schooling, extra curricular activities, part time jobs AND community service, something has to give.
I see it as a keep-kids-busy-then-they-won’t-get-in-our-way approach to policy. Of course, I have assumed that this is outside of school hours rather than during.
Encouraging kids to volunteer in a non-denominational way for the betterment of community is a great idea. But compelling them?
I did commserv at school in England. Thanks to me hundreds of kiddies that I taught know the crucial requirements for delivering a decent homebrew.
The idea is good, it is being delivered in a way to please the arseholes who think young people are twats. It does not impact on study. Unlike the young whippersnapper Corr, I am an old cantankerous fucker who wants to build a bit of spirit in the community. Rob knows nothing more than his slender years, but I sure as bollocks do.
I played sport (which was compulsory at school — two training sessions and a match, outside school hours), had a part-time job, as well as concert band, chorale, and debating, yet the compulsory 40 hours of Christian service was no big deal.
The 20 hours proposed would be a doddle.
No doubt it will operate something like 1 afternoon per week during school hours and may inclde stuff like working with computers at an Educational Support Centre, or even sending the school band out to perform for Senior Citizens etc.
As long as what Robert says it’s done properly, it souldn’t be any hassle.
Also Nic White points out that people with Disabilities will be disadvantaged.
Well BULLSHIT – I have a disability and even though I’m WAY beyond school age at 40, I can see no problems as there will be tasks that people with disabilities are able to do like Time-keeping at sports events, doing data-entry and other keyboard skills, folding and stuffing envelopes, and a million and one other tasks.
So to imply otherwise is offensive and proves we haven’t progressed much since the International Year of The Disabled.
Yes, I love hyperbole :P
I probably exagerated how bad it is, but I was livid and it was late at night – so sue me.
The major point, besides the impracticalities, is that this is a state interference in the choices of individual citizens. As you can see if you read the post, Ive highlighted a number of areas in this policy where this is the case. It also runs on a flawed argument that could easily be applied to a whole lot of ridiculous similar plans.
Robert I was the same, and my school had a similar policy. As I said, few people get anything out of it at all. I was able to do it all because my family is reasonably well off, as is yours. However I knew other people who had to work many hours a week just to make ends meet, others had to do most of the work around the house because their parents were never home, or sick. They simply did not have the time for anything other than looking after number one. Fortunately for them ours was in-school and took up half of Wednesday, but that’s half a day less to learn stuff that is actually useful.
Im not saying that volunteering isnt a great thing and can help some people, but it has always been a voluntary thing by definition. I would be in favour of the government encouraging students to do community service, but compelling them to do it with the threat of not being allowed to graduate is going way too far, and spending $1.9 million of taxpayer’s money to do it is unacceptable.
Although performing community service may be of benefit to some people, the stigma that is currently attached to community service in that it is used as a punishment for minor criminal offenders. Some elements may believe that this is a default decision that all young people are criminals.
Is this a good thing to be applying to our youth?
Honestly, are we actually arguing that community service is a bad thing? Especially as we acknowledge most schools have some sort of community service program already? And I know the point of argument may be the dependency on community service for graduating but I really don’t see that as a bad thing.
I forget how many weeks are actually in a school year, I think it’s about 40?? If so, that’s a whole half an hour a week. BIG DEAL. And I even think they can do it over two years, so that’s 15 minutes a week.
We had to do Community Service at school. The first time I did it was in Year 9 and it was cumpolsory. I worked at a (pretty bad) frail aged home for a few hours a week. It definitely taught me a lot, not least of which was empathy and respect. And if I hadn’t done it, I wouldn’t have passed Year 9. And that means I wouldn’t have graduated (well, at least not for another year). Now, I’m sure they wouldn’t have been too militant about it but that was technically the rule and our community service was out of school time.
With Labor’s new policy, volunteering at the canteen or coaching a junior sports team contributes towards your hours. Now, volunteering at the canteen may not save the world but it does give some sort of feeling of civic duty, some sort of feeling that you’re helping someone. And that’s no bad thing.
And with the argument that it eats into “learning” time, shouldn’t we also be trying to teach our kids some sort of social responsibility? I think it’s a very valuable lesson. One that I’d be more than happy for my (future) kids to learn.
To your final point Hannah, schools should be teaching social responsibility to students, but this is not the way to do it, and it should not come out of class time, rather it should be a compenent of every class as part of the subject learning.
Rhetoric: Community service helps students
Fact: It rarely does.
It’s not worth the money or the undermining of choice.
Nasho by any other name.
Another example of overburdening the school system to fix imagined problems in society. The compulsion bit worries me too – there are scouts and various cadets for those who wish to do it voluntarily. What’s wrong with letting kids be kids?
If it was done, it would have to be within school hours and within walking distance of school, or it would not work for:
1. country kids who may travel 60km+ by school bus
2. kids whose parents don’t have a car or can’t pick them up
In other words it could just create more hassles for families.
Yep, those are some of my points Peter.
From the ALP Media Release, here are some IN school activities which qualify for the 20 hours.
http://www.betterfuture.com.au/downloads/media/communityservice.pdf
Activities arranged by the school, such as:
Thanks, Frank. I loved voluntary musical performances, because you got to skip class for a while and muck around with your mates. If the Government is now giving you credit towards your graduation for doing that, then who would honestly complain?
We have to do 20 hours community service to graduate from Law, by the way.
As to the argument that it “criminalises” children — bollocks. (The curfew did that.) If anything, it reclaims the idea of “community service” as something that should be fostered by our education system, not something that is inflicted as a punishment.
Messing around doing nothing instead of going to class isnt really going to help students in their education is it?
Frank, yeah it could be worse, but I reject it in principle as well as in practicallity.
Robert, you could still foster that attitude without something as excessive as making it compulsory. Like I said, I would support it being strongly encouraged.
Cadets and sport were just institutionalised bullying when I was at school. Come to think of it so was most teaching.
Damn… I’m with Yobbo on this one. This is just another form of conscription, which would have pissed me off if I’d had to do it when I was in school. That it’s probably a good idea doesn’t change the fact that it has nothing to do with education.
Point two: if I was in a nursing home I wouldn’t like the idea of a younger version of me working for my benefit. It’d be enough to make me push my Zimmer frame screaming from the place.
Of course it’d be better than my actaul experience. I spent my 20 hours a week, after I turned 15, being exploited by a multinational chain fast food restaurant, which taught me the values of:
1. Never volunteering for anything
2. Pilfering
3. Not imagining that $5.04 an hour is a fair wage
4. Trade unionism.
I reckon I would have done upwards of a hundred hours that would qualify as community service as far as they’re concerned — I was a house captain, I read to the littler kids at the primary school up the street, I umpired a couple of things. I was a bus monitor, for Chrissakes, and that was a half hour trip just about every school day for 30-odd weeks.
Aw, you turned off trackbacks! I posted about this.
(And if you were up to 1.5, whichever spamfilter you use right now would work on trackbacks too. Just sayin’.)
Yeah, the trackback thing is just temporary until I have time to deal with it. I’m moving to 1.5 ASAP, having already mucked around with it pre-release elsewhere.
I have re-read the post, shamefacedly and found that it’s 20 hours in total, not 20 hours a week.
I’m no longer against it but feel real dumb.
Gallop Youth. Will the wearing of lederhosen be prescribed for those big exercise sessions in the morning?
What’s your feeling on extending it to uni degrees Rob?
As I mentioned, Observa, it’s compulsory in our law degree. Actually, we have to do general community service — I worked in a soup kitchen — as well as a stint with Legal Aid.