Friday, November 07, 2008

Seriously?

I was one of the "undecideds" in this year's election.  It didn't really matter who I voted for, since my state invariably goes blue.  I read all I could about both candidates and had such problems with both that I really wanted a third option. Nonetheless, I voted. I'm even cautiously optomistic about the result. I read this on Obama's transition website:

The Obama Administration will call on Americans to serve in order to meet the nation’s challenges. President-Elect Obama will expand national service programs like AmeriCorps and Peace Corps and will create a new Classroom Corps to help teachers in underserved schools, as well as a new Health Corps, Clean Energy Corps, and Veterans Corps. Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by setting a goal that all middle school and high school students do 50 hours of community service a year and by developing a plan so that all college students who conduct 100 hours of community service receive a universal and fully refundable tax credit ensuring that the first $4,000 of their college education is completely free. Obama will encourage retiring Americans to serve by improving programs available for individuals over age 55, while at the same time promoting youth programs such as Youth Build and Head Start.

*Note: the language changed from earlier today, when the quote said the volunteer service will be "required" of students.  Here is the original (and a link to the cached site).

The Obama Administration will call on Americans to serve in order to meet the nation’s challenges. President-Elect Obama will expand national service programs like AmeriCorps and Peace Corps and will create a new Classroom Corps to help teachers in underserved schools, as well as a new Health Corps, Clean Energy Corps, and Veterans Corps. Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by developing a plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year. Obama will encourage retiring Americans to serve by improving programs available for individuals over age 55, while at the same time promoting youth programs such as Youth Build and Head Start.

So, I find several things interesting about this.  First I was all set to rant about how required community service isn't volunteering at all (much like forced military service).  I think it's far more interesting that the language changed quite significantly from this morning to this evening.  I'm guessing there must have been a few alarms raised about the language.  Asking a people to give of their time and talent is one thing ... mandating it is quite another.  Do we really need the government to pay to create new avenues for people to volunteer?  This is what we need to spend money on? Thoughts?

4 comments:

Papa said...

One of the great failures in this election was the media not helping the public fully understand the important information about our candidates. Wait until the debate of union elections staying secret ballot, and the fairness doctrine. It should an interesting 4 years. Obama, Pelosi and Reid, OH MY!

Becky said...

Well, some middle and high schools already require community service as a requirement for graduation.

Certainly it will devalue community service if it's required, much as military service in Israel doesn't command the same respect as military service in the US. (Everybody in Israel has to join the army for two years.)

But I'm not too sure that it's such a bad requirement. This will probably come out the wrong way, especially in text, but we've come a long way from "ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."

The idea of sacrifice of anything for the common good is almost dead, especially for American teenagers and college students. (I know you and I actually did community service on our own, but I just remember all the kids that showed up to exactly one meeting of Key Club in high school so they could put "community service" on their college applications.)

In the grand scheme of things, I think putting money into a dozen new "Corps" is not as important as, say, the national deficit or fixing American schools. It's low on my priority list, but I'm not against it on principle.

Jube said...

I had a hard enough time getting students to show up classes they paid for. I can't imagine the reaction to forced volunteer service.

The idea of common good may, indeed, be dying, but forcing people to contribute is the worst way to encourage more participation. It'll just foster resentment.

I'm adamantly against creating "corps" to encourage more volunteering. How much extra money would the government spend on making sure college students were actually completing their 100 hours? What a nightmare and waste of money. Give the money to groups that are already doing something, if you must spend it. Guaranteed it will do more good than spending it checking on the box-checking of our nation's youth.

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