Volunteers or Victims?

(credit:  The Onion, September 30, 2013)

When was the last time you volunteered for something?  I have to say:  it’s been a while.  Many of the people by whom I am surrounded, however, spend a great number of hours volunteering.  They mentor children; they organize used eyeglass drives; they repair homes of the disadvantaged; they sing at nursing homes; they collect umbrellas for the homeless; they organize fun runs to benefit, well, to benefit anyone who needs benefiting.  I am talking about volunteerism among teenagers.  Around our school and others like it, volunteering is not a sign of altruism among the privileged or concerned young people of our nation.  I want to be able to tell you that the young generation that I work with on a daily basis is actively concerned with inequities and despair around them.  I cannot.  However, I can tell you that they are very concerned with their college applications and how they appear. 

The majority of the teens with whom I have interacted over the years have simply been interested in benefiting themselves through volunteering or creating various do-good endeavors.  When I ask a high-schooler about such an activity that appears on their activities list for college, I am often met with a blank stare.  I go on to say, “You know, the three charity drives you sponsored to raise money for homeless children’s school supplies?”  “Oh, right. Yeah, well, my mom kind of made me do that.” 

Say what?  While I might have thought that this is a local issue, a few years ago the College Board actually had a synthesis essay question that asked high school juniors in Advanced Placement Language and Composition to read six documents and formulate a coherent argument for or against required volunteering.  Required volunteering?  Like jumbo shrimp or efficient bureaucracy?  A paradox, surely. 

There is a question on more than one college application that asks, in all seriousness, “Does your school require service hours for graduation?”  Required volunteering.  Have we devolved so far that service and volunteering must be foisted upon young people, upon old people…upon anyone?  There seems to always be a contingent of people in the community for whom service is a calling.  They volunteer because they are so moved.  I suspect the argument is that young people won’t learn the value of such service without some kind of requirement.  Perhaps.

But, like any people, young people get so much more out of activities they enjoy.  Maybe their time is taken with three varsity sports a year.  Maybe they are on the main stage throughout the school year.  And, perhaps, they are the kind of student that really needs every minute to keep up in school.  But, there are those whose true calling service, and I believe that should be honored, not forced.  We don’t force students to perform on the stage; neither are students forced to go out for varsity sports, so why are we taking something that is intrinsically rewarding and assigning extrinsic value to it? 

Teachers and parents and motivational speakers tell our young people to follow their passions, and many of us strive to that same thing in our own lives.  I have an acquaintance for whom the local food bank is a focus of his free time.  It is not for me, but I’m happy to bring in some donations when our school does the food barrels.  I have a friend who sponsors a Girls on the Run group; I could not begin to run with a group of middle school girls, but I am happy to buy a treat or ticket to support the group.  Just as we adults find our own ways to contribute to our communities, perhaps we should encourage our students and children to do the same.

I am happy to report that by and large the cartoon from “The Onion” is hyperbole.  We see more of such swindling from our adult population, as in the Farmingdale man who solicited funds door-to-door for a fake MS charity this past summer, and last year when a couple plead not guilty to falsely claiming their daughter had cancer and raising funds for her fake medical care. Let our students be who they are:  the athlete, the artist, the mathematician, the fundraiser, the writer, and the performer.  Let’s not try to make everyone a little bit of everything.  We all have our strengths and interests; if we quit insisting that our young people be and do everything, we encourage authenticity for al,l and we might just feel a little better about ourselves along the way.