Data Bases • Custom Term Papers • Free Term Papers • Free Research Papers • Free Essays • Free Book Reports • Plagiarism? Links • Top 100 Term Paper Sites • Top 25 Essay Sites • Top 50 Essay Sites • Search 97,000 Papers @ DirectEssays.com • Search 101,000 Papers @ ExampleEssays.com • Search 90,000 Papers @ MegaEssays.com Free Essays • Term Paper Sites • Chuck III's Free Essays • Free College Essays • TermPaperSites.com • Free Essays • My Term Papers • Essay World • Planet Papers	Search Lots of Essays Back to Subjects - Education Mandatory Community Service Mandatory Community Service Community service: What a wonderful opportunity for students! A chance for our younger citizens to learn responsibility, experience the satisfaction that comes with helping others and to acquire new skills. Right? Well, that depends who you're talking to. Slip the word "mandatory" behind community service, as school districts in Maryland, Washington, D.C., and hundreds of others have done, and "opportunity" takes a new twist. Opportunity for who? For the students, or for the communities that can now capitalize on students' free labor? (Martin, pg. 13) More than two decades ago, President Nixon ended the military draft. Now a new and more menacing form of enlistment is threatening our school systems. This enlistment I am speaking of is that we are forcing "community service" to be a requirement for high school graduation. Compulsory service programs, already functioning in many communities, typically giving students four years to complete, say, 60 hours of labor. The students must not receive any payment. They can choose whether to serve the elderly, or the poor, or the disabled, so long as they serve others rather than themselves. The penalty for dodging this new draft is simple: no diploma. In Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, angry parents and students took the local school board to court, arguing that such a mandatory service program for high school students imposed the kind of "involuntary servitude" forbidden by the United States Constitution. (Bowden 1998) But a U.S. Court of Appeals approved the Bethlehem program, holding that so long as school boards stop short of putting students in chains for disobeying and so long as the students have some alternative, even an "exceedingly bad" one — there is no involuntary servitude. (Bowden 1998) As far back as 1943, the Supreme Court made it clear that boards of education may not dictate such fundamental moral choices. In a decision that prohibited a school board from forcing young Jehovah's Witnesses to salute the flag, the Court said: "If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein." (Bowden 1998) School boards who hold diplomas for ransom, pending compliance with the prevailing belief of self-sacrifice, are engaging in nothing less than unconstitutional moral teaching. Supporters of mandatory community service insist that it is really for the students' own good. For example, the Bethlehem program claimed that compulsory service helps students "develop pride in assisting others." (Bowden 1998) But does anyone really believe that students will develop pride by surrendering to orders, abandoning their own personal projects, and serving the needs of strangers? The true source of pride is the achievement of one's own values. Pride in oneself cannot result from wiping one's own values out of existence. In closing lets suppose, for example, we want to justify a program that involves breaking students' legs. First, we motivate the students by withholding their diplomas unless they take part. Then we encourage the students to engage in meaningful participation by choosing which of their legs is to be crushed. Finally, we list the "educational purposes." Not only will students' wheelchair experiences teach them to empathize with the permanently disabled, but students will also "develop pride in their ability to overcome adversity," through the valuable "coping skills" learned while enduring intense physical pain. Why is it so easy to see the horror in a program that breaks students' bones, yet so hard to see the same horror in a program that breaks students' spirits? Bibliography: Bibliography Bowden, Thomas A. (1998). Compulsory Service for High School Students:Whose Life Is It, Anyway? Ayn Rand Institute's MediaLink(http://www.aynrand.org/medialink/compulsory.html) Martin, Andrea. (1996) Citizenship or Slavery? Utne Reader: LENS Publishing CO pg. 13-24. Word Count: 599
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