For: Volunteering should be a graduation requirement

By Owen Adenomon

Roughly 20 years from today, volunteering had been made a graduation requirement to educate students on how they can impact the world around them. This serves as a reminder that although we’re students in the academic sphere, it should not be forgotten that we’re members of an ever-blossoming community, and as such, it’s important for us to properly contribute to the society that we will eventually become major players in. For this reason, it’s imperative that volunteering hours should be mandatory for high students to graduate because volunteering benefits the community, encourages responsibility, and teaches new skills.

First, volunteering helps the community. As put by Dannon Eubanks in his article “Why High School Students Should Volunteer”, “When they volunteer, students are able to give back to their communities in a way that enriches their lives and the lives of those in the community”. An important thing to note, however, is that volunteering can be an inconvenience for some. To elaborate, sometimes it’s not enough for a student to simply want to do the right thing, because there are outside factors deterring them from doing so. In an article addressing the cons of mandated community service, Claire Koenig writes “High school is a busy time - many students juggle jobs or multiple afterschool activities in addition to their schoolwork. It’s unfair to those students who have obligations outside of school...” Although this is a valid point, I don’t think mandatory volunteering hours is inherently the problem, but rather, its implementation is. Proper implementation of mandated volunteering hours would likely mean the restructuring of the education system. If schools are able to properly implement required volunteering hours, they’ll have no choice but to accommodate the students for this additional work. They can do this in numerous ways, but the most reasonable one would be to reduce school work to reduce stress on the students.

Additionally, volunteering gives high school students a level of responsibility that they would otherwise have developed much later. In an article about the issue, Simrin Gupta, in favor of mandatory hours, writes “Regardless of the type of activity they decide to pursue, students are held responsible for completing a job to the best of their ability....”, though a valid point, I think there’s a bit more to it than that. It's safe to say that most high school students on the verge of graduation would already have jobs at that point in their lives, a huge responsibility in its own right, but the types of responsibilities pushed onto the student while volunteering is unparalleled. I think the difference between jobs and volunteering gigs lies within the motivation of being successful within both. While working a job, your motivation for success comes from not wanting to be fired and the desire to get a paycheck at the end of the day. On the other hand, when you're volunteering, your motivation to succeed comes from your desire to want to help people and make a substantial difference. Case in point, the desire is much less selfish, trying to accomplish a task for the sake of others as opposed to the sake of yourself is a more daunting task, and as such will help the student grow much more as a person.

Lastly, students can learn a wide variety of different skills to apply later in life. In this regard, another comparison to working a job can very easily be made, as similar to jobs, students would be expected to interact with complete strangers and make said interactions feel natural. Unlike jobs, however, there's a higher level of care put into these interactions, once again, you need to look towards the motivation. The only reason you're being nice to a customer while working is to save face and make sure that you're not at odds with your manager, but while volunteering, You're presenting your best to make sure that you’re making those you’re interacting with feel comfortable, A very practical skill to have in the real world. In a column on the topic, Emma Caldwell writes “People who volunteer at an age where social interaction is essential, high school, will carry this message with them through life.”, a sentiment I couldn’t agree more with.

Sometimes, simply wanting to do the right thing isn’t enough, numerous factors can be in play that make it difficult for students to bring about positive change in the world. By mandating volunteering hours, numerous other changes would be made along with it, helping students in putting their best foot forward on their way to make a difference in the world around them and hopefully in themselves too.