Excerpts from an Internet debate identify issues and opinions on mandatory community service as a graduation requirement and court-ordered volunteering. The debate ranges over such topics as quality of the service experience, freedom of choice, intended outcomes, and values conflicts. (SK)

Describes the pitfalls that schools may encounter in requiring community service for high school graduation. In planning service-learning programs, schools should ask "In service of what?" Schools should first define their ideological, political, and social goals; provide teacher training, and incorporate the program into the curriculum. (LMI)

"Ivy-clad towers" in academia still exist today and always, they require their students to spend considerable time in community service to learn about social justice. The poor almost seem to exist so that academics can study them or so that university students can elevate their own consciousness by serving them for a short period. As…

Young people in the United States today are much more likely to be involved in volunteer work of an apolitical sort than in politics. As part of a study on political engagement, the author and other colleagues surveyed students at a diversity of colleges and universities and asked them why they and many of their peers are so much more likely to…

The Federal District Court ruled in favor of the Chapel Hill, North Carolina, school board's requirement that, as a condition for graduation, each student must perform 50 hours of unpaid community service. (MLF)