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How many of your high schools have a "community service" requirement? I am here to raise a warning flag about this based on some long-time thoughts I& #39;ve had and triggered by an experience I had today.
So I& #39;ve been volunteering to give away food at my school site this summer. 1/
So I& #39;ve been volunteering to give away food at my school site this summer. 1/
There has been a very helpful white-presenting HS boy there the last few days. We never got to talk because it& #39;s BUSY -- we gave out 1000 meals today, BEFORE 11 am -- but today I got to talk with him for the first time. He& #39;s a rising sr. at a local prestigious Catholic School. 2/
Why are you here? I asked. "I have a community service requirement, and I& #39;m about 2/3 of the way done," and then he said that "coronavirus cancelled my trip to West Virginia to help the poor people in Appalachia."
Okay. 3/
Okay. 3/
The food line was busy. Like, really busy. A line down the block. I mentioned something about the crowd, and he said, "You know, I think people just like the idea of free stuff. Like last week we had diapers, and like really old people were grabbing them. Like, what?" 4/
In the midst of my duties, I tried to explain that we were at 20% unemployment, and even without unemployment being what it was many parents relied on school meals for 2 meals a day....but clearly, whatever I said was not going to be enough for this young man, at that moment. 5/
His school, in requiring a white kid to do "community service in a low-income community of color, did nothing to address this kid& #39;s simplistic, untaught, racist, classist perceptions of social problems. In fact, the experience reinscribed racist, classist ideas (FREE STUFF). 6/
I don& #39;t blame the kid. I blame the school structure that frames community service as a savior-ish personal mini-solution instead of recognizing huge systems of oppression. But it could be different! 7/
