Mandatory Service

Here education expert Alfie Kohn comments about “the risks and potential of making service mandatory” on the Huffington Post.

At first thought it would be great if all students were required to participate in service activities as a part of their curriculum.  However as Alfie Kohn points out, this could have its difficulties. It should certainly not be just a matter of community service, which is often a mere practice of counting hours of involvement and ignoring the impact of the service, both on the community that is apparently benefitting from the action, as well as on the student themselves who are doing the service.  Unfortunately we still see this happening in some IB schools, and, according to Alfie Kohn, may find this to be the case in other schools where top-down decisions are made to make service a mandated part of the curriculum.

Without the correct approach many students would see service as a chore and could possibly develop a negative attitude about being engaged in their community.  Developing a school culture of a positive attitude towards service, the topic of a previous post, is important here.  Additionally the service programme needs to be well-planned, and follow the practices briefly outlined by Kohn, which are not dissimilar to that found in the guides of the IB programmes as well as respected service-learning guides. If top-down decisions were made about service being mandatory, then schools would need to be supported with resources and time to be able to facilitate positive service engagement of their students.