Volunteering is one of the best activities to get into during your spare time. By volunteering, you are able to devote time and effort to a cause that is much larger than your own, and you have the ability to touch the lives of tens, hundreds, and even thousands of people. That is a big deal. That is what makes the spirit of volunteering so appealing to many people from all walks of life. The spirit of volunteering is alive in everyone, rich, poor, white, or black, we are all human beings sand we all have the capacity to care for one another through the act of volunteering. The three articles written by the editors of StarTribune.com, The Christian Science Monitor, and author Dave Eggers, all emphasize the importance of volunteering.
In the articles, the three authors all make a common argument, that is volunteering is beneficial to the learning experiences for students. In the article concerning volunteering by the Christian Science Monitor, they make the argument that volunteering is an effective way to decrease the student dropout rate in schools. In Dave Eggers article, Serve or Fail, Eggers explains why he would like to see colleges and universities impose a “serve or fail” graduation requirement, making students volunteer their time to serve their communities in order to receive their degree. In the StarTribune’s article, they claim that volunteering is an excellent way for students to learn valuable experiences outside the classroom as well as allowing students to see the importance of community and helping others.
These three articles do a good job at highlighting the importance of volunteering. For the most part, I agree with most of the authors, that volunteering is an important experience that every person should go through at least one time in their life. However, there are some points in the articles I do not agree with; starting with the Christian Science Monitor’s argument that volunteering can reduce dropout rates. In the article, the editorial board gave anecdotal evidence about the effectiveness of volunteering in terms of the dropout rate. In the fourth to last paragraph on the first page of the article, the editorial board also gave a statistic about Fowler Unified School district achieving a 97 percent attendance rate after the institution of the service learning programs in the district, to reinforce their argument. The problem with this article is that it only covers one school district. To test the true effectiveness of volunteer service on a school’s dropout rate, other schools across the nation need to be tested as well. In addition, another possible cause for the high attendance rate is the lack of delinquents in the class. Second, Dave Eggers article, Serve or Fail, Eggers would like to make volunteering a mandatory college graduation requirement for all students. I think in the ideal world, where time isn’t an issue, and motivation among the student populace is in abundance, this requirement would make logical sense; help the community in exchange for a degree. But this is the real world, and in the real world, there are deadlines to meet and a host of classes to attend. The average college student’s schedule is usually jammed packed with school work, studying, readings, class attendance, and on top of that, a good deal of students, including myself, have a paying job and a boss to answer to after class is finished. There is simply not enough time for students to volunteer their services. Finally, in regards to the StarTribune article, I wholeheartedly agree with all the points that the author or authors are trying to make. I simply do not have any criticism for this article.
Volunteering is a good way to spend your free time, if you have it, and I can recommend to anyone who hasn’t yet, that volunteering will teach you things about your community that you haven’t seen before. This is coming from a former Henry Ford Health Systems volunteer, who spent nine months working alongside an expert hospital staff. These three authors make excellent points for why volunteering is important, be it by helping the community, decreasing dropout rates, or making college more useful by making volunteering part of the curriculum. Though I have some disagreements with some of the points made by the authors of the articles, I think that these articles overall make good points for volunteering. Once again, to those who havent’ volunteered yet, get out there and help your community.
