Quote:
Originally Posted by AGDee
I've been supportive of something like this since I first learned of Israel's program. In that type of system, everybody does 2 years of something, whether military or community service. If someone is not eligible for the military due to health reasons, they can do community service. The biggest problem is funding it, as is the case with everything that sounds like a good idea. I think our society is the most selfish that it's ever been. In the words of JFK.. "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."
Most of the schools around here require community service hours to graduate. I don't see these types of programs taking away jobs from anybody.
I am floored by the number of people who keep saying "Oh great, now my taxes are going to be raised." None of the people I've heard say that make anywhere near $250K a year. As my ex-husband was grumbling, I looked at him and said "If you're making over $250K, then you're not paying me enough child support" and he got this look on his face and said "Yeah, I guess I'll worry about when I make that much, which is never.." LOL
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I'm just guessing, but I think you mean high schools requiring community service and I suspect that most of it gets done with organizations that have always done community service, like the Boy Scouts, Girls Scouts, Beta Club, church groups, etc. It'd be interesting to know how many more kids do it than did before the schools required it and how well the community is served.
And I also suspect that what is currently required is a relatively small number of hours done by a relatively small numbers of schools, compared to the number of schools you would have involved if you had a universal program. It could be incredible in terms of the benefits to society or could be a huge resource suck, depending on the requirements for administration and documentation of the program.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with community service. There could in practice be a lot wrong in how this gets done. Since the language has now shifted to merely setting a goal of the relatively small number of hours for a year, I'm not thinking it's going to amount to much but maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised.
(The job loss thing was just in response to the dish washing example. I honestly expect the increase in community service to be so small scale that it wouldn't really matter in the labor force. What I see with kids at my high school is that they do things they'd do anyway, but they just track the hours.)
I'm not sure that you can compare the Israeli program to what you could expect to see in the US, for a lot of reasons.