Alright, this is another one of those entries that most of my NYRAnian friends will be wanting my head on a platter for, but screw those whiny idiots, I’m saying it anyway.<\/p>\n
I really don’t have a problem with the student service learning hours that are required for a high school diploma.<\/p>\n
“Oh, WTF, Katrina?! We thought you were a youth rights supporter! How can you be okay with being forced to do community service?”<\/p>\n
Funnily enough, the main difference here is how I’m choosing to look at it. It’s not forced community service, or at least calling that misses the point. It’s more a very freeform homework assignment.
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\nBut let’s look at this actual SSL thing, shall we? Over the course of the four years of high school, in order to get your diploma, you must complete 60 hours of community service (give or take location or whatever, that’s just what it was when I was in high school). What kind of community service? You know, it’s pretty much just about anything you want! Camp counselor. Help out with some old people at a nursing home. Environmental cleanup. Museum or zoo volunteer. And a lot more. I don’t know about you, but these all sound like educational and rewarding things to do. Not to mention that 60 hours over the course of four years is rather painless.<\/p>\n
In fact, seeing as it does involve getting out in the “real world” and doing some real good, as opposed to the usual scholastic requirements of working endless math problems and memorizing the minutest details in a Victor Hugo book, I don’t really see why it’s a problem, let alone that I sort of wonder that school should be a lot MORE of this service learning stuff! I mean, most of the libertarian naysayers on the NYRA forums hate the above-mentioned endless math problems and literary memorization, yet somehow they think it’s still superior to a community service project. To them, it’s just forced labor, “slavery”, an excuse to make you work without being paid for it.<\/p>\n
But, who cares what they think since they’re too busy jacking each other off with their pie in the sky beliefs in abolition of compulsory schooling and public schools (a whole other load of bullshit I’ll tackle another time).<\/p>\n
It’s true, though, school needs serious improvement. The list of things wrong with it would extend across the country even using five columns and 8pt Times New Roman. But the thing is that not everyone can agree exactly on what things really are a problem, and even if there were any semblance of agreement there, you realize no one can agree on what a viable solution would be.<\/p>\n
So I’ll be realistic here and see school for what it is, an educational institution in which you’re given required tasks for the purpose of learning in order for you to achieve the prize (diploma) once you’ve finished it. And student service learning is just another one of those tasks, and perhaps by far the most educational and inspiring and freeform of them. Which, if I recall, is something we all believe school needs more of.<\/p>\n
So, yeah, why are we supposed to be against this exactly?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Alright, this is another one of those entries that most of my NYRAnian friends will be wanting my head on a platter for, but screw those whiny idiots, I’m saying it anyway. I really don’t have a problem with the student service learning hours that are required for a high school diploma. “Oh, WTF, Katrina?! … Continue reading “Service Learning”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-youth-rights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eightminefortress.com\/surewhynot\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eightminefortress.com\/surewhynot\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eightminefortress.com\/surewhynot\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eightminefortress.com\/surewhynot\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eightminefortress.com\/surewhynot\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.eightminefortress.com\/surewhynot\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eightminefortress.com\/surewhynot\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eightminefortress.com\/surewhynot\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eightminefortress.com\/surewhynot\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}