Should high schools require community service?

Waste in any form except for nontoxic biodegradable material creates a debt so large that it is entirely impossible to pay off. Even if you compost all of the biodegradable material you waste you still need to utilize effort to do it. Effort otherwise that might bring income to you. Many of us defer these types of activity to others or simply neglect to do them. If we as a civilization did not create waste in all of the many forms of product packaging and single use products we would diminish our debt to waste and our need to have all of the regulatory agencies we employ with taxes. What we can do is try to fix it and that is where volunteers are needed because there is no bank of cash to pay people from. I realize that this is a short explanation but hopefully you can understand what I am trying to say without describing every painful detail and example.
Thanks

I'm a student in MA and I think community service is a joke. I think it's unconstitutional and the liberal education heads probably came up with this. I have to do 60 hrs over four years. I'd like to get a job, do drivers ed, and have a life. More importantly though, my town and school don't do S*** for me. My parents pay their taxes (a lot of them), I don't even do any school sports or clubs. Basically, my town doesn't do anything for me that my parents don't already pay for in taxes. Why should I give my time and effort to my town and/or school if they've never done anything for me except tax me? For those people who say making kids do community service is like making kids learn math and do their homework, your wrong. The government makes children go to school through twelfth grade (unless you drop out). The US constitution amendment 13 says, "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction". If the government forces children to do community service to graduate in public government run schools, that directly violates the amendment our government created, basically hypocracy. One might argue and say "you don't have to do community service, you just won't get your diploma". Community service has no educational value to it, unlike any of the other subjects you learn in school. If it was a class that would be one thing. The fact that you have to do this community service on your own is different. The only possible educational value I can see is a moral or religious personal benefit, and in that case, church and state are declared separate in the United States. If you are going to make community service manditory to graduate from high school,you need to make high school optional (I'm not suggesting that that be done). It might be different in a catholic or private school because you have a choice to go there. I'm not saying that community service is bad, for example I think its good to volunteer for your church, but only because your church provides you a basically free service. I agree that the parents should decide if their children volunteer or not.

i didnt know that i had to serve 75 hours of community service for high school graduaation. But when i found out i still finished the requirement with a partime job and new born twins

well i have read several cases where situations like such have been taken to court and the court system seems to want to deny its existence on a sub note to note how lazy the American system has gotten of the last 100 years and back on subject to answer your question yes there have been cases of people taking it to court and some even go as far as the supreme court and this so called "community service" goes against amendment 13 of the united states constitution on another sub note the constitution seems to be getting referenced less and less because people believe there smarter then a bunch of foundational laws set by people in the government back when the country first started who were obviously smarter then the people who run our government now days back on subject once again the 13th amendment clearly states that it abolished and still prohibits slavery and involuntary servitude except as punishment of a crime by law, theoretically the only way the school system can legally do this by the rights and laws of the constitution is to give a reward for the service, and so as they cannot cheapen it i would personally advise the reward be suitable based upon public vote and student preference, in short there are a couple of ways this turns out, there is an uprising against the school system which might result in the school to reconsider and revise their making community service mandatory, the politics in America today finally cripple the government and economy and there's civil war and the school system is as good as forgotten or there's nothing the general public could do to change it and its something we need to deal with it, but it would have been smarter of them to do that at the beginning part of the 21st century though just to keep it with the changing times i don't know how it'll go I'm 16 years old a freshman in high school and i guess i can only hope things change

Steve, I'm in the Black River School District. It's a very long story, but our super and board are way out of control. They were rude to my daughter and myself. I can take it, but my daughter is a different story. They have been playing games for some time. They just make up things as they go along. I talked to their attorney and was told that they wouldn't hold their diploma, but wouldn't let them participate in commencement. They are just bullying the students and the parents. You can go on the district website and see for yourself, under graduation requirements. It is non-curricular. PERIOD. I can't get anywhere with them. I would love to find an attorney to take this and run. Maybe even a news channel would be interested.

wish I knew where you were in Ohio. I'm in Warren County, and hadn't heard of this 'community volunteer requirements' until moving up here. Where I came from, it was truly 'volunteering'. I want to know if it has been challenged in an Ohio court? I've never seen a state (and I've lived in 6) so dead set on running people's lives the way 'they' see fit as Ohio!

I agree 100% and I also wonder if there are any legal precedents. Have there been any court cases decided where a child was denied graduation because they had not met the required number of volunteer hours and the parents sued for compel the school district to grant diploma irregardless?

In my opinion of schools requiring that students do a certain amount of hours in community service is not unreal but highly unconstitutional in my opinion because schools are forcing kids to either do an activity that's natural purpose is to be a voluntary or fail. Personally their damaging a students integrity to be the best they can be because say a student doesn't have the time to spend doing something for his/her community because they have tests exams and allot of other things to do for their advancement in school. personally it isn't downright insane for kids to participate in services for their community but to make in mandatory is a down right indoctrination to get kids to believe its good to give back to their community on every chance they get because that also inflicts a person integrity to even live in today's society. So to conclude i think that community service should not be mandatory but voluntary.

Volunteering is one more tool to create community and to extend the boundaries of it - ironically, it shouldn't be the school asking the students to volunteer, it should be the students actively seeking an opportunity to do so - and , in my opinion, it should start much earlier than High school -