What do you think about national volunteer programs and public works projects? Can experiences like this unite people who would otherwise be divided? If set up, should they be compulsory or voluntary? If voluntary, how could people be encouraged to participate? What benefits would they get out of the experience? How would a Slovak react to Kennedy’s famous line: "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country"?
National volunteer programs are in my opinion not as popular as the compulsory programs in countries yet, even though their occurrence increased. There are way more people who are looking for volunteer programs where they can make good impressions, as there used to be. Both, national volunteer programs and public works projects bring people together, since people are not forced to do something; they simply contribute because of their wills. I agree with the article what Cooper say, that: “There is a lot of good that could come out of national service.” Forcing people into compulsory programs or works isn’t in my opinion right, because everyone should have their right to choose which program they want to join. This can decrease the social behavior, because not all people agree with the compulsory projects. Brooks also describes the compulsory projects as “almost an initiation into society, more than normative and compulsory.” Lack of generousness may occur any time throughout the running of the compulsory projects. As I already mentioned, in my opinion, experiences like this may unite people who would otherwise be divided. People get to know each other, they make new friends and it is then more or less sure that if some join other programs, the people they know would join them with them. People usually have to cooperate together in these programs, so different social groups or other groups have to work with each other, which wouldn’t necessarily happen without the programs. If I would set up new programs I would definitely choose volunteer projects even though there is a lower possibility of joining them, though people have their own rights to decide whether they want to join it or not. To encourage people to join, I would talk about how the projects would help to other people and how they would have good impressions from themselves. Though, it is really difficult to encourage people to join these projects, because people are more used to the ones which are compulsory. Volunteer projects are more about gaining experience and “finding the good soul of you.” Experience is very important in our lives, because without experiencing we would hardly know something how mistakes and successes in life work. Kennedys famous line “ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country” is a statement, really for thinking. It is hard to say whether a Slovak would agree or not, because people are not the same and everyone has a different opinion so some would, and some wouldn’t agree. Personally, I think that there is some truth, though I don’t think that a single person can do much for a country, there should be more people for it.
ReplyDeleteThe issue in this article poses dilemma. The problem with compulsory service like the draft is that it deprives people of their freedom and as a result, it makes them slaves to the government. This might be a greatly disturbing thing to most people, including me. However, on the other hand, the draft is known to teach profound discipline and control to its conscripts which is something a normal “non-drafter” would never learn nor experience, and on top of that, it also provides an opportunity for people to explore and experience new things as well as meet other people.
ReplyDeleteNowadays most countries attempt to be as libertarian as possible, this concept evolved as a result of several wars and different regimes. It is considered to be the peak of modern civilization. The implementation of any compulsory service would purge any right of freedom, and thus render the libertarian idea a joke. The reason why libertarianism works is because people have an incentive to be better, while at the same time they are not forced to do anything at all. If the people were forced to do something, their desire to work would drop radically. This is because freedom is an elementary and basic human need which provides moral support and desire to explore and learn.
I agree with Sabina that the programs should be voluntary, and thus be a symbol of free will. What I think government should do is to provide more support to such programs. The problem is most people don’t know where to find such programs, of course, there are programs like the Red Cross, but honestly who knows what the Red Cross actually does? I for one don’t, all I know is that it helps other people in need, which is frankly a quite vague piece of information, if the Red Cross was to have more advertisements I’m sure that more people would enlist.
When I first saw the title of this section of the blog “Expanding CAS to everyone”, I thought it was a bit closer to IB than it really is. If it was up to me, and we would be talking about all three parts of CAS, I would make both Service and Action compulsory. Action is healthy and service is good for the community. Creativity should be optional, because I do not think it can be enforced efficiently without taking the creativity out of it. Inspiration cannot be forced to come. Sports and service can.
ReplyDeleteI think that expanding Service on everybody would have several positive aspects. First of all, cooperation on anything strengthens the bonds between the cooperating people. Service is basically a team building activity for complete strangers. A problem of today's society is, that people do not care about each other. In some cases a person can be living in a building for years and not know his or her neighbors. In the past, people that lived in an entire village knew basically everyone that lived there too and now they do not even know their neighbors. If not the neighbors, the service would at least enable them to meet new people and build the firmness of the coexistence population.
The next result however, is even more interesting and important. Many people do not realize how much work there is behind everything. They walk the street, see things that other people put there and take care of, but they do not see the actual work behind it. By becoming a part of CAS (or in this case only the Service part), they would see what it is like to do something for the community themselves. It is not easy to just do something. Simply by walking to the street and seeing a street lamp you see two hours of work of the person that had to repaint it at least once since the time it has been put there.
Now why would that be useful. Nowadays we have a lot of vandals in the streets. Careless people that damage things for no reason, or simply just because they enjoy doing so. After having to repaint a lamp, a sprayer would think twice before he would spray on a lamp again. He would already see the value of a clean lamp. Now I am using the lamp as an example, but the same would go for everything. From lamps to whole buildings, parks or natural resorts.
That is why I would expand Service to everybody. To let them see for themselves the value of the world in which we live and to teach them to cherish it.
Prior to the CAS program in IB (and bits of the Community and Service in MYP) I had not even considered doing some kind of service for the community. I had no knowledge of the organizations that offered it, and, although it might have been because I was still pretty young, I had no motivation to find out more about them. To be honest, I think that had the Service part in CAS not been compulsory in IB, I still would not be actively taking part in some sort of community service. However, despite this, similarly to Sabina and Andrej, I still hold a firm belief that such service should definitely not be compulsory, at least not in over a long period of time.
ReplyDeleteIf you force individuals to do something, especially with people around my age, their own personal motivation to do it definitely decreases by a large amount. This applies to not only before doing that required thing (be it studying, washing the dishes, or, in this case, something with community service) but also the feelings the person feels while doing it and after doing it. When doing something of my own free will I will feel “in control of my life” and that I am doing something which I might be rewarded for later (just because I did it without being forced to do it). On the other hand, when doing work that I have no choice but to do I feel precisely like I’m “doing work” and not doing something that I have chosen, of my own free will, to do (and, since it is work, it will not get the recognition it deserves because it is considered to be completely normal that I do it). The satisfaction and certain degree of pride that comes with completing a task that was not obligatory for me is missing when I complete a task that I was ordered to do. The fact that I did not choose to do it myself causes the task to lose its charm and I feel like the effort I put into it is not appreciated anyway. Andrej also mentioned this when talking about the approach libertarianism has.
From my personal experiences I can state with certainty that making national volunteer programs and projects which improve the community compulsory would be a huge mistake. Firstly, the people that would be forced to do these activities (and under normal, voluntary conditions would not do) would feel that they are wasting their time and thus they would complain the whole time and not try their best. Secondly, the individuals that would still take part in such projects even if they were voluntary would feel like the hard work that they put into it is unappreciated, and because of the lack of motivation of some of the people surrounding them, their effort level would go down as well. Ultimately, the satisfaction from “doing something good for the community” would perish, and the general “team spirit” and unification between the people would just stop at “How much longer are we going to have to keep doing this?” and “Let’s go home.”
The issue of how these volunteer programs could become more wide spread but still remain voluntary is something that Brooks also referred to: “You would have to create enough incentives to make this ‘passage’ a normal thing, but not something everyone has to do.” I completely agree with this. If it was possible to make enough people enthusiastic about volunteer programs (by, like Andrej said, increasing the amount of advertisements and making such projects as publicized as they deserve to be) so that it would be normal to take part in them, then I think the whole community would be able to achieve a whole new level of responsibility, consideration and cooperation.