Pro:
Requiring high schoolers to complete community service is an essential part of their development and is very important for their future. When students volunteer their time to commit any act of community service, they expose themselves to environments they might have never been in before.
“Giving back and assisting others is the basis of community service or volunteering,” Habitat for Humanity of Broward said. “Thus, it teaches us how significant it is to help the ones in need, the ones who are less fortunate than us.”
In the instance of Habitat for Humanity of Broward, students are able to connect to multiple different types of people in their community through service and learn so much about others. If it was not required to do the service, the majority of those students would never be able to experience that bond within their community.
Additionally, requiring community service increases career prospects. Some students never hold a job while in high school. Requiring them to complete community service gives them an opportunity to get a feel of what a job feels like. They must show up on time, typically communicate with other individuals, and complete a reflection on how their experience completing their community service positively impacts their employability skills.
In a world where jobs are becoming more and more competitive, gaining these employability skills at a young age is very important. If students are not required to complete any community service, there is not much that incentivizes all students to get out in the world and experience the beauty of community service.
Con:
Community service, also known as volunteer work, is at its core meant to be something that individuals do out of the kindness of their hearts. However, many high schools require a set number of volunteer hours in order for students to graduate. These required service hours are unfair to students, and completely inconsiderate of student’s time, interests, and stress levels.
“Other people say many of the benefits of community service come from actually volunteering—that is, participating by choice,” Junior Scholastic said. “If your school or your parents require you to do something, it’s not really voluntary.”
By requiring community service hours, schools are taking away student’s opportunities to voluntarily give their time to their community, thus ruining the “kindness” aspect of community service. People are supposed to do community service out of the good of their hearts, not as a kind of forced labor. When teens are required to complete community service hours, they are robbed of the opportunity to assist their community and will most likely not contribute in the future, as they will feel that they have already contributed enough to the community.
“However, there is growing awareness that many subgroups of youth experience high levels of chronic stress, to the extent that it impedes their abilities to succeed academically, compromises their mental health functioning, and fosters risk behavior,” an NYU study said.
These rules disregard the stress that students are already under. With honors students being enrolled in hard classes, extracurriculars, and having to maintain a solid GPA, these students are already under mass amounts of stress. Furthermore, many highschool students are already working part-time jobs, meaning they do not have the time to easily complete required service hours.
