Every innovative idea or initiative implemented in our society is always geared towards achieving a specific purpose. One of the voluntary act done by human I have experienced over the years, is seeing people go out of their own way to perform community service. It usually occurs when there is an issue in the community and some set of individuals feel inclined to help or a natural disaster occured and people show up for those in need.
Community service can be done voluntarily but there are times when it serves as some sort of punishment for some offenders. Though I'm not quite sure how this is done in my own country because I haven't seen anyone doing community service as a result of disobeying or obstructing the law. But I have seen it in some Asia headlines, when the court orders people to perform some community service, mostly due to traffic related offense.
Seeing how community service can be done either voluntarily or mandatory, we can both agree it is a good initiative to that helps the community and also help others repent and feel encouraged in the process. Looking at the roles it plays, should highschool students or secondary school students be required to perform community service before graduation? It definitely sounds cool when you think of it, student sweeping the street, painting the walls, clearing sewage systems before graduation. As long as it is part of the requirement of graduation, I'm sure student wouldn't want to mess it up.
But thinking this would be a good step in teaching student how to be selfless, I don't think so. It might encourage some student or create some kind of spark in them but this only is not enough to make student understand what it means to be truly selfless. There are other initiative the government have inserted in students curriculum, just to make things a lot easier but it never really work out as planned.
Lets take the first one, research projects, which is a requirement for graduation for most higher education student, especially those in the faculty of social science. Here is the funny thing, this practice has been in practice for years, to the extent majority of students don't even understand the relevance of it. People just do copy and paste these days just to get it done and move on. Moreover, the outcome of this research is meant to help the country grow, since they will be placed in school archives for further study, but whatever we are doing now is not worthy of further research.
What about entrepreneurship programs, this scheme has been placed in almost every level of education but it has not achieved it's purpose and the reason is quite simple. Student might pay attention to it and be inspired to be entrepreneurs but wanting to be one does not make you one. Despite a lot of student having great ideas in mind worthy of investment, they lack the capital to make it work, this is were the government is meant to come in but the government of my country seems to focus on things of greater importance, if you know what I mean.
Mandatory community service might be great but it is not enough to achieve the purpose of teaching student how to be selfless, that is the job of the society and socialisation actors not the job of one initiative. Imagine the students wanting to be selfless only to find themselves in a cruel society where those that are meant to cater for their needs will gladly feel them to the wolves. It will be a matter of time before they dump whatever they have learnt just to survive. If the government want to creat selfless pupils, they should mend their ways, afterall we are creator of the monster that haunts our society.
This write-up was inspired by weekly featured content titled Community service in hive learners community.
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