Community Service in High School

Community service, work done without pay, is becoming increasingly familiar to high school students nation-wide. Schools are encouraging student to participate in communities that contribute so much to their public education. However, requiring 100 hours of community service is asking too much of students and should be reduced to 50 hours. Students already have their hands full among homework, clubs, sports, and their actual lives.
Because the work may not be volunteering if it is required, then students can receive grades and credits that will show up on their transcripts for the community service they volunteer for. It is true of course, that requiring 50 hours of community service would take up students’ time for homework, clubs, and sports, but the service could be completed during the summer and student would have 4 years of their high school career to complete. Wouldn’t requiring the volunteer work make it not voluntary? Well, yes, of course! But it would give students the chance to say, “I am never doing that again”, or “I am glad I did that.”
Academic gain. Students will tend to do better in school because they would be able to apply what they are learning in school. Increase in self-efficiency for students because they learn that they can all make a difference in what they do, “Can-do-attitude.” Additionally students will increase their problem-solving skills, while volunteering students will run into problems that requires the use of their brain to solve. Again, applying what they lean in school to use in “real-life.”
Right out of high school, students who volunteer are more likely to vote based on the attitude –“I can make a difference” – they get from the community service they partake in. Potential employers would see the community service hours attractive. That attraction could lead to a career, not just a job. The hours volunteered in the community could also help students receive future scholarships. The connections students create when meeting new faces or organizations would help with scholarships – the more people/organizations a students know = more possibilities of a recommendation.
Community service would be beneficial for all that are involved. Students learning skill that prove beneficial for life. The community being able to receive back what they contribute to public education. So yes, requiring community service hours to graduate high school should be passed.