Face Off: Should volunteering be mandatory for secondary school students?
- Each week, two of our readers debate a hot topic in a showdown that doesn’t necessarily reflect their personal viewpoints
- This week, they discuss whether teens should be required to volunteer in the community
Volunteering allows you to give back to the community and grow as a person. Photo: ShutterstockIf you are interested in joining future Face Off debates, fill out this form to submit your application.
For: Grace Lam, 14, Diocesan Girls’ School
Volunteering provides remarkable opportunities that transcend personal boundaries and empower people to make a lasting impact on the world around them. It can be a transformative experience, fostering personal growth and igniting a lifelong commitment to creating positive change. There are so many lessons a person can learn from volunteering, which is why it should be mandatory in secondary school.
Volunteering enhances civic engagement and helps students learn about issues facing the public. Civic engagement is a powerful force that drives positive change, and through volunteering, students can better understand the needs of different communities, become more connected to their homes and learn to appreciate their lives.
For example, tutoring underprivileged children through my school’s service club taught me to be grateful for what I have, and visiting an elderly home reminded me to chat with my grandparents, who I always neglect due to my busy schedule.
Volunteering also gives students a unique platform to develop their skills. They can become better communicators through their interactions with diverse groups and individuals and learn to problem-solve as they navigate any challenges that may arise.
As the founder of ECO Impact HK, a youth-led environmental organisation, I have organised several beach cleanups. These invaluable opportunities to take on responsibilities and coordinate projects have nurtured my leadership skills, and event planning has also allowed me to gain practical skills such as time management.
Volunteering is also good for your mental health: as secondary school students, we spend most of our time after school stressing to finish homework or revising for our next assessment. Volunteering can relieve some of that stress, as helping others and making a difference releases dopamine and endorphins, hormones which can make you feel happy and calm.
Although some might argue that volunteering should be voluntary, as its name suggests, making it mandatory would help students learn that life isn’t just about sports or grades; it is also about helping others and making the world a better place.
Against: Samantha Yeung, 16, The King’s School, Canterbury
Whether to bolster their CVs or gain a competitive edge in university admissions, volunteering is a secondary schooler’s go-to way to spend the summer. Some curricula, such as the International Baccalaureate, even require students to volunteer to graduate from secondary school.
This isn’t a good idea; when things are required, students lose autonomy. In addition, students pushed into volunteering may not be compelled to do it because they believe it is the right thing to do, but to tick a box.
The beauty of volunteering at Bristol Pride
A 2007 study from researchers at Wilfred Laurier University in Canada investigated the impact of mandatory community service programmes, noting that while it did introduce more students to the volunteer sector, “some students felt that they did not have a positive experience because they did not believe they were doing anything important or worthwhile”.
The same study also found that “those unhappy with mandatory volunteering” may “not perform effectively while completing their requirements”.
Half-hearted students delivering poor service may do more harm than good. Those in charge of organising volunteer programmes might spend extra time correcting mistakes or dealing with unhelpful behaviour due to uncommitted students doing something they don’t believe in. Why should we make other people’s lives more difficult when they needn’t be?
Furthermore, a 2017 study by the Department of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the US concluded that “youth volunteering had a positive return on adult volunteering” only when “service [was] voluntary”, questioning the effectiveness of mandatory service in the context of building good habits for the future.
Therefore, what would likely happen is this requirement would simply become another task to add to the pile of work students already have. It is unlikely it would inspire a love of community service. Students must already balance their academic and personal lives; mandatory volunteering would threaten this balance and send everything toppling.