Service Hours - Savage

Forcing community service time on students can be helpful. "One of the most common ways of involving young adults in community activities is through volunteerism" (Emma Caldwell, mlive.com, 2011). Not only does it help involve students in their community, but it also prepares them for their future. Managing the amount of time needed to put into different activities is a helpful skill to learn for when you have a job. It can also teach students to be more respectful and encourage them to put more time into community service in the future.

All of this extra time that schools are forcing students to use can also end in a negative way. Many students and parents complain about how schools force too much homework on their students and this steals too much of the student's free time. Being forced to do all of these hours of community service can put a student in the position of having to choose to do their community service hours or do homework / study their academics (Diane Loupe, aasa.org, 2019). There are many students who use most of their time studying for very difficult classes in hopes to get in a college they want. These hours of community service are highly unnecessary and a burden to any who might take school seriously, so they should be abolished.

I believe that schools should not be forcing hours of community service onto their students. When these students are being forced to "volunteer" for these community service hours, they're not volunteering at all. When their school forces them to do community work, the act of volunteering is turned into homework that needs to be done. Some people may say that forcing high school students to do community service will encourage them to volunteer in their own time, but there are also students that feel fed up with community service after having it forced on them for all of high school. These students will likely feel discouraged from community service and will take all measures necessary to avoid it. In conclusion, since forcing high school students into community service will likely worsen their academics and discourage them from attempting it in the future, we should not enforce community service in Bettendorf High School.