Service Learning Required

By Joel Westheimer and Joseph Kahne

Interest in government may be down, but volunteer work is up. Studies show that young people in particular are less inclined than a decade ago to take an interest in government affairs, while they are far more likely to be involved in nonpaid community-service projects. Both contributing to and capitalizing on this phenomenon, school- based service-learning programs have become increasingly popular, spreading community-service actions across the nation like points of light at a planetarium.

Last fall, in an effort to foster a sense of civic duty in teenagers, the Chicago public school system became the largest district in the nation requiring students to spend a set number of hours volunteering in soup kitchens, cleaning up parks, assisting in hospitals, or monitoring pollution in streams in exchange for the right to a diploma. Cities such as Atlanta and Washington and the entire state of Maryland already have similar requirements. And this past September, Ontario instituted the first province-wide rule in Canada to oblige students to volunteer for a minimum of 40 hours. A recent study by the National Center for Education Statistics reveals that 83 percent of high schools currently offer community-service opportunities (compared with 27 percent in 1984).

Indeed, by next year, the total number of students in North America engaged in community service will top 13 million. Why? Because most agree that schools should encourage good citizenship, and that good citizenship means helping...