How is mandatory gym class like helping others? Answer: Studies show that regular service to others also improves student health, and some school districts are adding community service to their curricula alongside phys. ed.
Research conducted by this author in 1991 involving 3,300 volunteers across the country, as well as a federal government survey of senior citizen volunteers and a Cornell University study of the health of working women, have revealed a direct link between helping others and enhanced emotional health. For example, among weekly volunteers who had a personal relationship with those they assisted, from 60 to 85 percent reported sharp increases in self-esteem and reduced stress.
Low self-worth is not only an indication of poor emotional health but also one of the research-identified factors involved in young people dropping out of school, using drugs, committing violent acts, and becoming pregnant. Self-esteem grows when someone experiences positive responses from others. Not every young person can receive praise for being a gifted student, a wonderful athlete, good looking, or a great dresser. But just about any student, including those with disabilities, can succeed at helping someone else--and receive good feelings in return.
Studies show that such service needs to be done continuously and frequently--for about two hours each week--so that the self-worth-enhancing feelings received from others are experienced regularly. But most students will not take on such an obligation--unless required by their schools. This has led to the controversial school-mandated service programs.
Few students volunteer to help others after school or on weekends because it places them at a time disadvantage with other students for playing sports, having a job, socializing, or studying. Only the most self-assured youth raise their hands to be with people who are different and do something they have never before attempted.
Similarly, adults who volunteer usually say they had to be "socially pushed" to start--by neighbors, friends, a religious organization, or their child's school. The studies show it makes no difference why people first become helpers. As long as they continue with regular, personal-contact helping, they experience the benefits.
SCHOOLS THAT HAVE required service, for example, report that after a while only a few students still see this as "one more obligation" and do as little as possible. The more frequent responses echo that of a Chicago-area youth who said, "It's the greatest thing I've ever done. I'm glad they made me. I hope to do it for the rest of my life."
A Rockville, Maryland resident wrote recently in the Montgomery County Journal about the local school's required service: "Many if not all of those students, after getting their feet wet with several weeks of community service, expressed that this was the best thing that happened to them."
A survey of Washington, D.C. students participating in a new program--they have to complete 100 hours before graduation--found that 71 percent now favored required community service. Eighty-eight percent said they believed they made an important contribution, which reflects raised self-esteem.
Helping activities that involve personal contact are limitless, and go from kindergarten through college: The youngest students can write or draw pictures for a nursing home and then visit the residents. Older students can tutor, coach, visit the homeless, or aid in a shelter.
In 1992, Maryland became the first state to mandate community service for all high school students as a graduation requirement--each student is required to put in 75 hours. Individual school districts with required service include Atlanta; Rye, New York; and Bethlehem and Elizabeth, Pennsylvania. The hours required by these programs fall short of the two hours a week the studies recommend. Only 8 percent of the nation's teen-agers said their schools require any community service.
Still, these few restricted efforts have aroused conflict. Unsuccessful lawsuits in Rye and Bethlehem challenged the service requirements as unfair burdens on students, forcing them to work without compensation. Unfortunately, the school materials in these districts too often reinforce the opposing parents' concerns. Elizabeth officials, explaining why the service should be done after school on student time, said, "Our committee feels that service to our community should be sacrificial service."
Required student service programs have so far failed to educate their communities as to how much the students themselves change and benefit. Once parents learn about the relationship of the programs to lessening drug, school, and peer problems, and even improving family relationships, most of these parents become supporters. Eighty-eight percent of the Washington, D.C. students surveyed said their parents now supported their schools' new community service requirement.
Opponents also challenge required service because of its extra cost. But how much is that? Assume a school coordinator can handle the service requirements of 500 youth. That means 94,000 coordinators would be needed for the country's 47 million students, from kindergarten through high school.
Pay each of these coordinating teachers an extra $10,000 a year for their part-time work and the cost is $20 per student, or $940 million yearly to involve 47 million students. That compares to the $20,000 a participant or half the $2 billion yearly for the White House's proposed national service concept, which involves just 100,000 college students to do community service as a way to help pay off tuition debts.
The Clinton administration's plan would pay community groups to supervise these college students. But local non-profit agencies do not expect to be paid to accept student helpers from their own communities. More than 100 non-profit agencies in Bethlehem provide supervision to their student placements at no cost.
Maryland started its statewide program by allocating $12,000 a school for planning, but no money for implementation. It was argued that supervision could be shared by homeroom and subject teachers. Legislative opponents in Annapolis pointed to this lack of funding as an unfair burden on the schools. The Baltimore Sun dismissed the objections, noting, "As for the ongoing costs, school officials who believe in community service say it will cost little; school systems that consider it a headache say it will cost millions."
IF COMMUNITY SERVICE is seen as just adding another responsibility to schools and their students, it invites opposition. New York City's Board of Education recently dropped a plan to require service for its nearly one million students, explaining, "Opposition to such mandates by teachers' unions, superintendents, parents' groups, and civil libertarians has been fierce."
But some have asked whether two hours of service each week might not do more for their children's and society's health than required gym class. This should not be an either/or choice. But such a public comparison would challenge those who say their school schedule has no time for student helping.
For such a public dialogue to begin across the country, national leadership is required. For example, the federal government could issue reports about the impact of service on the emotional health and social behaviors of the students themselves, and explain why this service has only grown when it is mandatory. For it to be successful, the federal government would also need to offer funding to states for schools that choose to participate.
A service requirement in the nation's schools could affect tens of millions of youngsters--without any new government bureaucracy.
Once the government began such a public awareness campaign, the decisions would then be up to individual school districts. When local districts are free to make their own decisions, their actions work best--in contrast to when change is imposed from the outside. When certain school districts demonstrate success, more and more neighboring districts copy these efforts, until the state feels comfortable legislating a requirement.
Required service abroad is usually carried out under the banner of furthering "national integration." High school graduates in Botswana, for example, serve for a year, usually helping rural people, before getting a job or going on to higher education. Nigerians who have graduated from a university must do 11 months of service, also primarily in rural communities.
America leads the developed world in the rate at which we hurt one another--one of the truest tests of a society's social fabric unraveling. For young adults, homicide is the leading cause of death after motor vehicle accidents. Can our society wait to educate the American public about a proven option that can begin to reduce the tension and violence that are tearing at our national integration?
Allan Luks was executive director of Big Brothers/Big Sisters of New York City and the author of The Healing Power of Doing Good when this article appeared.
'It Really Makes You Think...'
Jesuit-run Gonzaga High School in Washington, D.C., has required community service of its seniors for more than 15 years. Sean Britain, who volunteered at So Others Might Eat soup kitchen last year through the Gonzaga program, said his experience helped him "see a different side of the homeless."
"A lot of kids at my school drive in from [the suburbs] every day and go back there at night--myself included--and never really live with the rest of the world," Britain, 18, said. "The homeless for me was a drunk guy passed out on a grate or someone panhandling. So [through the program] you really saw the human side of it. And a lot of these guys would actually talk to you. You saw them as people, rather than just as nuisances. It really makes you think a lot, especially when you see the children there."
- The Editors
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