Mandatory community service: If it is required to get in the good schools and then to have the oportunity to be a part of the creme of society it is far from "optional" community service work as things stand now.
I have always regarded mandatory community service as an alternative to mandatory military service. Never as something to exists on its own. If public schooling is failing, the chances of making something like mandatory community service work is nil.
But I have gotten quesier about all the non-academic factors that go into college admissions. Service to one's communitity should be a moral value, and not one that is attached to a reward or says x, y, and z about a person. What is the moral difference between someone that feels driven to community service at fifteen and the person that feels driven at fifty? More and more I think we provide less wiggle room at a younger and younger ages for growing personalities when people need the greatest amount of leeway to find themselves. People are so incredibly different and find such unique ways to contribute.
I'm a little bitter because I think that both the educational system and my family failed me at a fairly early age because of their strong expectations of what I should be and a much lesser interest in what I was. They kept pushing a round peg into a square hole and wondering why there were problems.
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Date: 2003-05-25 06:36 pm (UTC)I have always regarded mandatory community service as an alternative to mandatory military service. Never as something to exists on its own. If public schooling is failing, the chances of making something like mandatory community service work is nil.
But I have gotten quesier about all the non-academic factors that go into college admissions. Service to one's communitity should be a moral value, and not one that is attached to a reward or says x, y, and z about a person. What is the moral difference between someone that feels driven to community service at fifteen and the person that feels driven at fifty? More and more I think we provide less wiggle room at a younger and younger ages for growing personalities when people need the greatest amount of leeway to find themselves. People are so incredibly different and find such unique ways to contribute.
I'm a little bitter because I think that both the educational system and my family failed me at a fairly early age because of their strong expectations of what I should be and a much lesser interest in what I was. They kept pushing a round peg into a square hole and wondering why there were problems.