The Importance Of Community Service

Why should high school students have to complete community service hours to graduate? When students start their high school career, they are thinking about their diploma and their future. People should not have to rake leaves for elderly people or serve food for their local retirement home to go to college. Getting good grades these days is hard enough, but trying to earn a certain number of community service hours makes high school even more demanding. Helping the community is great; however, during school hours, community service can cause students to miss class work, tests, etc.
In recent years, youth participation in volunteering for community service has varied, resulting in a growing number of high schools establishing this requirement to have set hours in order to graduate. This increase is most notably seen in the early 80s and late 90s because the rates among youths from 16 years-19 years old soared from 13.4% to 24.5% in the year of 1989. There has been a variety of reactions regarding the movement of mandatory participation in community service, from lawsuits in retaliation, to eagerness to give back, which indicates the question, how has this requirement changed since the 90s and how has it affected the long-term outcomes of citizens? Since the 90s, there has been an even greater push for community service because of federal encouragements, thus engaging more students into the community, and creating civic-minded individuals. In most states and school districts’, they have requirements in place for community services in their schools. However, what do the parents of the students’ think of this? When creating these requirements, are the schools asking the parents on their views? Although these protocols are in place, m...

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... it would give students more time to worry about schoolwork, and more time to focus on getting a diploma and going to college. Another solution would be to ask each high school student in every state to vote for having this requirement, or not having this requirement. After the students vote, each state’s legislature, and Senate count the votes, and whichever vote wins, that choice will be put into act. Both of these solutions are exceptional, and I think this country should use them.
Everyone in this world, including myself, can agree that community service is probably one of the best things that you can do today. On the other hand, everyone knows the feeling of being forced to do something is a horrible feeling, especially trying to tell older teenagers what to do. Just remember, community service comes from the heart of someone, not the forcing of someone else.