OPINION: Why Schools Should Stop With Their Community Service Requirement

By Catarina Vita

September 15, 2020

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As Western influence spread around the world, schools south of the Equator started adhering to Western educational policies, from using new technological advances in the classroom to teaching in English in non-English-speaking countries. As schools from the United States updated their core curriculum, so did these other schools. The community service endorsement commenced in the late 20th century in the USA and soon became a crucial curricular element globally.

The community service requirement is completed by recording hours and providing evidence of some kind to back these records. Originally, the purpose of this curricular component was to help students develop leadership skills that could apply to future job positions. However, the outcomes that came with this are often neglected. Although helping the community is a curricular obligation, pupils are constantly congratulated for doing the bare minimum, such as picking up trash from the beach or streets. The community service requirement in Western schools encourages students to help people out of sheer obligation instead of desire, and by congratulating the students for having minimum human decency, schools encourage a white saviour complex that passes on from rising high school freshman to rising college senior.

To fulfil the community service hours component, some kind of evidence is necessary; some schools are more flexible than others, but the most common form of evidence is a certificate or — even worse — pictures. These two methods can be easily feigned, so some students can graduate without acquiring the school system's so-wanted leadership. The latter method encourages students to often invade others' privacy and take pictures without their consent in order to pass high school.

Taking pictures of yourself working with elders or lower-income people makes you, an upper-middle-class high schooler, to be the protagonist instead of the ones you're helping. This encourages the white saviour complex: when people use community service or charity work to boost their popularity instead of doing it because others need it. In other words, when one does community service without the sole purpose of helping others.

In the light of the curricular component of community service, helping people is encouraged just to fulfil scholarly requirements instead of aiming to help people in need. Often, students learn to love community service and helping others in general, but the school generates a mind-crippling paradox. After students help others in any way, they are rewarded with awards and prizes, both physical and verbal ones. Therefore, do students like helping others because of their empathic selves, or because of their need for recognition and their high expectations to get into Ivy Leagues?

Some might think that this paradox is not a problem. Technically, either way, they are still helping people regardless of their motive. However, at one point, these students stop getting recognition and soon their 40-hour requirement elapses; the people in need would not be cared for anymore. An unfortunate real-life example of this phenomenon is the Greg Mortenson case. Mortenson is a US mountain climber, "humanitarian", and author of his autobiography, Three Cups of Tea. When Mortenson got lost after an attempt to climb one of the world's highest peaks, K2, a Pakistani village gave him food and shelter. This prompted the author to create a non-profit organization to build schools in that region. He got internationally recognized and praised from 2006 to 2008. Until 2009, when it was discovered that his organization only used 41% of its funds to build schools. This is exactly what the community service requirement encourages: once you get praised and fulfil your requirement, you don’t need to help people anymore.

With that being said, schools should not stop endorsing community service, but the way they are doing it needs to change. Instead of only portraying developing nations and other marginalized groups as “less than”, schools need to teach students their history and their customs. Conversations about the white saviour complex are very necessary, as people in need do not benefit from being used as a prop to enhance another's image. Lastly, the school system needs to stop congratulating students simply for helping others. Praise is given to someone that does something beyond the necessary, and helping others is just necessary.