Gilroy Unified School District is considering a new graduation
requirement: that all high school students must volunteer. The
details are yet to be hashed out as to how many hours of what
activities constitute volunteering, but I oppose the concept in
principle for two reasons.
Gilroy Unified School District is considering a new graduation requirement: that all high school students must volunteer. The details are yet to be hashed out as to how many hours of what activities constitute volunteering, but I oppose the concept in principle for two reasons.
First and foremost, I stumble over the entire idea of mandatory volunteering. The essence of volunteering is that it is voluntary. Compulsory volunteering is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms.
Secondly, GUSD should and must focus on three things: academics, academics, and academics. As soon as all Gilroy High School seniors can pass the CAHSEE and 90 percent of GHS graduates are proficient enough to place into English 1A and calculus at four-year universities, we can start thinking about other ways to challenge them. Until then, it is vastly more important that students learn to read fluently and thoughtfully, write cogently and coherently, and solve accurately and logically. Society relies on schools to teach academics. Until that basic responsibility is fulfilled, schools should not be – ahem– volunteering to take on others.
At the Editorial Board meeting, Jaime Rosso gave an impassioned plea in favor of the requirement. He says that volunteering is good for the volunteer and good for society. I agree wholeheartedly with both those points. Church attendance is also good for the church member and for society, but that does not mean that church attendance should be compulsory, far less that it should be required by the school district.
In one week, the world famous Gilroy Garlic Festival will open its stinking gates, staffed entirely by volunteers from all walks of life. Food processing plant workers will dish out garlic ice cream, Elks will cook pepper steak sandwiches and calamari and pesto, Rotarians will pour wine, the Chamber of Commerce will pour beer, church youth will park cars, Daughters of the American Revolution will make change, swim club members will pick up trash. Proceeds will benefit the various charities and a good time will be had by all.
I have been to the GGF as a visitor and as a volunteer. I vastly prefer volunteering, and not just because volunteering for four hours gets me free admission and a gourmet meal. The other, intangible reason is that I enjoy being a small cog in a great, cheerful, philanthropic enterprise.
I have found that same joy in every volunteer job I have ever done. For the past 25 years, they have been associated mostly with providing parental support to whatever activities my children have done.
I have volunteered as a labor coach, breastfeeding counselor, pre-natal yoga instructor, newsletter editor, support group facilitator, soccer mom, banner maker, publicist, fund raiser coordinator, creek cleaner, graffiti eradicator, field trip and event coordinator, cookie, AWANA leader, Sunday School teacher, librarian, scout leader, registrar, secretary, and Quiz organizer.
Every single job has brought great joy, but the only one that I would volunteer to support again, now that my kids are grown, is White Stag Leadership Development Camp. This is partly just because it is so fun to camp in the beautiful high Sierras – and this year camp will be at Marin Sierra near Emigrant’s Gap, the most beautiful of all the Boy Scout camps I have ever seen.
But it is also because in my daily life, I use the concepts and skills my kids and I learned at White Stag … and I see the problems that ensue when the people I deal with have not learned those skills.
When my bathroom repair guys leave the job site without leaving a message as to why or when they will return, I tsk tsk: “Poor communication skills.” When the interim head of the Economic Development Committee talks of vision and objectives, I smile: I have seen 14-year-olds use these concepts and apply them to plan and carry out three-day backpack trips.
White Stag is open to all youth ages 11 to 17, and there are still openings for this year’s camp, Aug. 9 through 15. Eleven-year-olds learn how to be members of a small group, 13-year-olds learn how to lead small groups, 15-year-olds work on leading groups of groups. Visit www.whitestagcrew122.org to find out more about the program and to register.
