Sol Writing Prompt: Should High School Students Be Required to Volunteer in Their Communities?

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SOL WRITING PROMPT PRACTICE Students should not be required to volunteer in their communities in order to receive their high school diplomas. This is because community service is not academic, volunteering is something that a person does if they want to help, not because they’re being forced to, and while some may say that community service looks good on resumes, if everyone does it then it’s not special anymore. Volunteering to do community service is a beneficial activity for the volunteer and the community, but making it mandatory to graduate defeats the purpose. High school diplomas are received based on a student’s academic credits and scores. Or at least they should be, because students go to high school in order to get an education and learn and improve their academic knowledge. While community service is a good experience and volunteers often take away some knowledge from it, it usually doesn’t pertain to the academic curriculum that students learn in school. Community service is also something that is often done off school grounds, and/or after school hours. In order to graduate high school, a student shouldn’t have to complete volunteering activities outside of high school. For example, a very common act of community service is cleaning up trash in local parks. While this is beneficial to the community, it doesn’t provide every volunteer with knowledge relevant to their high school classes. Therefore, volunteering should be kept separate from high school in terms of graduation requirements. Community service should not be mandatory also because the idea of volunteering is that it is voluntary, and that volunteers are doing it because they want to help. By making volunteer service a requirement, schools are making it more of a chore or assignment rather than an act done out of kindness or will to improve the community. Additionally, if a student goes

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