Mandatory volunteering! Oxymoron! Indentured servitude!
Possibly I exaggerate – but maybe not. Discussions about whether high school students ought or ought not be compelled to volunteer in order to graduate are heated.
Roughly sketched, the two opposing viewpoints look like this:
- Extend “mandatory volunteering,” especially in schools so that young people can get into the habit of volunteering.
- Work toward eliminating “mandatory volunteering” because, if volunteering is to continue being vital to our society, it needs to be an activity that is freely given.
And each camp is passionate about their position.
“To call mandatory community service ‘volunteering’ is a problem because then we begin to confuse the distinction between an activity that is freely chosen and something that is obligatory and perhaps not always rewarding. Volunteering should be something you choose to do because you want to do it, not because somebody made you do it.” - Linda Graff, president of Linda Graff and Associates Inc., a consulting firm in volunteerism and non-profit management.
All education is mandatory. It’s the experience that students have through their scholastic lives that helps them find their interests, passions, and role in life. A great Science teacher inspires new scientists — even though taking that Science 8 class is mandatory. In the same vein, the benefit of requiring volunteer experience to graduate lies in the experience these young volunteers have. - Stacy Ashton, Executive Director, Community Volunteer Connections
Sometimes the internally paradoxical nature of the term itself is the problem. Is volunteering still volunteering if you’re compelled by school authorities to do it?
Sometimes it is the concept itself that is the issue:
Mirela Vukosa Giannidis, the volunteer co-ordinator at St. Christopher House in Toronto, is critical of these “mandatory volunteering” programs. “By making this mandatory, it unintentionally contributes to a negative view of volunteering,” she says. She is concerned that “a cynical view is developing that just sees volunteering as thinly disguised free labour.”
And sometimes it is both. But in the midst of these high-level and semantic debates an important fact gets lost or ignored:
High school students in BC are not required or compelled to volunteer.
“Aspect 4.1″ of the graduating portfolio requirements for British Columbia states that students must complete “thirty hours of work or volunteer experience” (emphasis mine).
So students have a choice: get a jay-oh-bee or volunteer.
And lots of them are choosing to volunteer.
(Side note: where’s the hue and outcry about “forcing” teens to work?)
The fact that they’re choosing to volunteer means that “mandatory volunteering” isn’t terribly mandatory at all. All that the government graduation requirements do is encourage - rather than compel - high school students to volunteer.
And that encouragement is helping BC youth find rewarding volunteer assignments – so rewarding that many, according to Stacy Ashton, complete more than their required 30 hours.
Because they choose to. Not because they have to.
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photo credit: “Mandatory” by Only Alice on Flickr
