What Are the Benefits of Volunteering Essay Example
“Work for a cause, not for applause. Live life to express, not to impress.” Recently many high schools have made it a requirement for students to do service learning in order to graduate. Which is an educational approach that combines learning objectives with community service in order to provide a pragmatic, progressive learning experience while meeting societal needs. Even though this have many advantages such as discipline and responsibility, it comes with far more disadvantages. Such as: contradicting the purpose of volunteering, adding to students’ stress, and insulting people who do volunteer work without wanting (or getting) anything in return.
Volunteering is supposed to be a selfless act that people do without receiving any type of reward. If service learning is a requirement to graduate, then it loses its value and purpose. According to Miriam Dodge, “If a student gives only to get in return, that does not teach him or her the true value of donating time.” Most students will only do the volunteer work because they must not because they want to. Also, since the students do not have a choice to do the volunteer work or not, they might consider it as boring or annoying.
Nowadays lots of students are getting jobs or doing other activities while in high school. Mandatory service learning will just add to their stress and busy schedules. As Alexander Stan stated in “Mandatory Volunteering essay,” “many students have busy afterschool schedules helping their families or working.” Giving students more things to do in their already limited time is unfair. In addition, this may cause students to worry more because of all the things they have to balance.
Several people already do service learning and/or volunteer work for good will. Giving students a reward (graduating) can be considered an insult to them. According to Claire Koenig, “These students should be proud that they can help selflessly out of intrinsic motivation...they performed community service for good, not for graduation.” People who volunteer may think if people do mandatory service learning then they are taking advantage of or misusing something that’s supposed to be a benevolence.
Previously stated in my first paragraph, mandatory service learning comes with benefits, such as responsibility and discipline. As stated by Simrin Gupta. “students have been giving back to the community through the SSL hour requirement...students have taken on a new sense of responsibility.” Even if this is true for some students, majority of them don’t learn the true value of responsibility or discipline through SSL. This is because the students get aggravated while doing it, and only do it so they can graduate high school.
Service learning or volunteer work has been made mandatory for students to graduate high school, and the purpose is to give students a better sense of responsibility and discipline. However; doing this goes against the purpose of volunteering, adds to students’ stress, and insults people who do volunteer work for good will. In addition, numerous of students only do this to get their diploma. All in all, the downfalls of mandatory service learning are too high to be a requirement for high school graduation.
