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  • KERRY DISQUALIFIED

    Filed at 10:30 am under by dcobranchi

    I’m seriously considering sitting this election out. John Kerry’s 100 Days to Change America calls for compulsory volunteerism for all high school students.

    MANDATORY SERVICE FOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS

    Service Should Be a Graduation Requirement: John Kerry believes that knowledge of the rights and responsibilities of citizenship – including the duty to serve your community – are as important to American adults as knowing how to read and do math. Combined with a curriculum that teaches students about democracy, citizenship and civic participation, this high school service requirement will be a rite of passage for every young person in the country. As President, John Kerry will ensure that every high school student in America does community service as a requirement for graduation.

    States and Communities Will Have Flexibility to Design Programs That Meet Their Needs: States and local communities will design their own service requirements to make the requirement significant and meaningful without becoming onerous. For instance, the State of Maryland requires seventy-five hours of service over the course of high school and local educators have discretion to implement the requirement in ways that meet student needs. John Kerry understands that young people have many obligations and recognizes that a service requirement should not be onerous or unrealistic for students to meet. Maryland, as well as numerous school districts around the country, including some in New Hampshire, already have such a requirement and have had great results.

    This has to be one of the dumbest ideas in history. It sends absolutely the wrong message. Put yourself in the place of a kid who is forced to “volunteer.” How likely would you be to really volunteer after you were paroled? “I did my time; let some other poor slob volunteer.”

    The policy does teach the kids an important life lesson, though. Namely, that their lives are not their own. They owe it to the community and to the government to do whatever the government says. A little slavery is a good thing. (Hat tip to Skip Oliva)

    13 Responses to “KERRY DISQUALIFIED”


    Comment by
    Chris O'Donnell
    March 29th, 2004
    at 11:55 am

    So Kerry is borrowing from Newt’s Contract With America playbook eh? I’ve voted Libertarian in the last 3 elections – but I’m not sure I can even do that this time. dehnba...4.html


    Comment by
    meep
    March 29th, 2004
    at 12:43 pm

    I had a service requirement for my high scohol graduation — a public boarding school (NC School of Science & Math). In addition to the 70 or so hours of community service (which could not be done during the school year, and one had 2 years to get it done), we had 3 hours of work service at the school, and a half hour every day for dorm cleanup. We were told that the state had spent a lot of money on our education, and we were expected to give back to the community that gave us so much, as well as cut down on the costs of operating the school.

    I did secretarial-type stuff at a mental hospital, working 3 weeks of about 30 hours per week, in the summer before I went to NCSSM. The work service I did was grounds crew (raking leaves, picking up cigarette butts) and helping a math teacher run a statewide math competition.

    The difference was that I did feel I was getting a superior education for free (room, board, tuition was all free) and these service requirements weren’t much to ask. I can see the difference where the students feel like they’re not getting much of anything out of their education – and this would be just another meaningless requirement.

    To call it slavery is silly. From that point of view, homework is slavery — after all, it’s unpaid work and a requirement of graduation. (And yes, homework is real work — my current job consists of doing lots of stuff that look like math homework problems I used to do. and I have to write reports on what I’ve done.)


    Comment by
    Daryl Cobranchi
    March 29th, 2004
    at 2:52 pm

    Meep,
    Your analogy falls flat. Who benefits from doing homework? Presumably, the inmate, er, student. OTOH, the student may gain absolutely no benefit (and may even rightly feel put upon) by being forced to work at a government mandated “job” for no pay. Look at your job picking up cigarette butts. If you hadn’t been forced into doing it, would the school possibly have had to hire another janitor? So, your coerced labor saved them the expense. That’s slavery in my book.


    Comment by
    Daryl Cobranchi
    March 29th, 2004
    at 2:55 pm

    One other thing.

    Your school was just a bit different from a traditional g-school. You had to apply, and I’m sure there were all sorts of agreements, etc. You weren’t compelled to go there. The kids at the high schools in John Kerry’s America would be. Other than completely opting out of the system (i.e., private or homeschools), the kids would have no choice.


    Comment by
    Skip Oliva
    March 29th, 2004
    at 4:15 pm

    Meep should also realize that Kerry’s vision of “service” is deliberately vague, meaning local schools can define it to mean just about anything. For example, Maryland has a public service requirement already, and recently it was fulfilled by a number of students who attended a *political rally* to lobby for more school funds.

    Compulsory service sends the message that the government can force people to say and do things against their own judgment. That is the opposite of education.


    Comment by
    meep
    March 29th, 2004
    at 4:30 pm

    It’s true we had to deliberately apply for admission (and it’s quite competitive) — however, the compulsory attendance age in NC is only up to 16. Once you turn 16, you can decide to drop out of school, with no penalty other than not having a degree. I have several high-school dropouts as relatives. Most dropped out when 16, and some, now older, have gotten their GEDs.

    In other states, perhaps you’re forced to graduate high school — that would be a new one to me.

    I actually did get something out of my community service job — I learned about office work, and learned how to use Aldus Pagemaker. Much more useful to me than much of the makework of my old schools. My youngest sister, who went to the same school, was a candy striper — she’s now at UNC Medical School studying to be a GP. Oh, and I picked the grounds job over working in the cafeteria — automatic manual labor in the outdoors was mentally and emotionally useful to me. We got to choose our work service our senior year — most people did stuff that was real work experience — setting up experiments, managing our computer system (some people got computer jobs in college due to that experience), typing up problem sets (I learned LaTeX then), organizing stuff, cleaning up the art studio, etc.

    It was a boarding school — these were simply more interesting chores than we had to do at home. And, again, it was a tradeoff for getting a free education that compared very well with top prep programs. I’m tired of people calling some very light work “slavery”. No one is forced to do it — it’s a requirement of graduation. No one is forced to graduate.


    Comment by
    Zach
    March 29th, 2004
    at 5:16 pm

    Meep has a point. Requiring community service as a graduation requirement is not slavery… It’s also not volunteerism… It’s simply a bad idea…

    Regardless, if Kerry thinks that community service is the answer to terrorism, I would love to hear more…


    Comment by
    Jeanne
    March 29th, 2004
    at 6:08 pm

    I’m not sure that Kerry could call this volunteer work. It seems more like homework. Slavery? Maybe a bit harsh.

    But I like the idea.

    You sned the message that children required to volunteer will grow up to not to participate in any volunteer work. Physical education is required in school. Does this mean that children will grow up to hate physical education and never participate in a physical endeavor for the rest of their lives? Probably not.

    This sounds like an opportunity for children to learn and experience people in different walks of life. It is not slavery. No one is forcing the children to volunteer anymore than someone is forcing the children to do their homework. It just happens to be a requirement to graduate. No one forces me to register my vehicle and pay the tax, but it’s a requirement if I want to drive my vehicle legally.


    Comment by
    Daryl Cobranchi
    March 29th, 2004
    at 6:32 pm

    OK- y’all don’t like the word “slavery.” We agree that it is not voluntary service, right? So, it is involuntary service.

    And, Meep, you wrote “No one is forced to do it — it’s a requirement of graduation. No one is forced to graduate.” So, is everything fair game if the goverment says it’s a graduation requirement? How ’bout washing the principal’s car every Saturday? Or servicing him sexually? Why not? You only have to do it if you want to graduate.

    Sorry to be so blunt, but this compelled voluntarism is anathema to liberty. It teaches the kids that they are slaves to the government. Madison and Jefferson are spinning in their graves with Kerry’s proposal.


    Comment by
    Anonymous
    March 29th, 2004
    at 7:02 pm

    Well folks this isn’t much different then what the congress is considering right now
    Universal National Service Act of 2003

    US House – H.R 163
    and US Senate – S. 89

    thomas...C?c108:./temp/~c108dMIIWd

    suggested originally by Charles Rangel of NY..it originally asked for mandatory military service. The military wasn’t real happy about that because they don’t want anyone in the service who doesn’t want to be there (as my congressman said to me)so they modified the bill to add community or civil service..

    I won’t sit out this election though..


    Comment by
    Judy Aron
    March 29th, 2004
    at 7:02 pm

    Well folks this isn’t much different then what the congress is considering right now
    Universal National Service Act of 2003

    US House – H.R 163
    and US Senate – S. 89

    thomas...C?c108:./temp/~c108dMIIWd

    suggested originally by Charles Rangel of NY..it originally asked for mandatory military service. The military wasn’t real happy about that because they don’t want anyone in the service who doesn’t want to be there (as my congressman said to me)so they modified the bill to add community or civil service..

    I won’t sit out this election though..


    Comment by
    meep
    March 30th, 2004
    at 10:53 am

    If there really were school choice, we wouldn’t be having this argument. The schools could compete on the basis of their requirements, curricula, what have you. Many very expensive private schools have a community service requirement, and people do choose to go to these places and spend quite a bit of money on them.

    I went to a public school that I chose to go to (and they chose to let me in) that had several service requirements. I also had an involuntary requirement to do quite a bit of homework at that school. In some classes, this homework really was service as we were helping the teachers develop textbooks (which were later published).

    The work is not comparable to actual slavery, especially as it exists today anywhere in the world, involving physical coercion, torture, starvation, rape, etc. I’m really finding this argument offensive (kind of like the chicken farming = the Holocaust argument PETA likes to make) — one is not in fear for one’s life or health if one does not fulfill public high school graduation requirements.

    It is more to the point that these programs would likely be ineffective, given who would be running them. I agree that service programs could make the kids more cynical, if not administered or supervised well…say, washing the principal’s car counting as service, or addressing envelopes to lobby legislature for more money for education bureaucrats. If I were a student not getting an adequate education in the basics, I’d be just as peeved at these things as the feel-good dumbed-down assignments one is forced to do in place of real academic work.


    Comment by
    Daryl Cobranchi
    March 30th, 2004
    at 11:34 am

    If there really were school choice, we wouldn’t be having this argument.

    Agreed! The problem lies in the g-school monopoly. Choice would solve the “slavery” issue instantly. Then, we wouldn’t have to re-fight the Civil War. 🙂