Selflessness is a great virtue, but I do not think this is something that a person can learn. It is inbuilt, and not everyone can have it. Those who have it are becoming cautious now because of the users and bad eggs in society who are taking their acts of selflessness for granted.
Community service, on the other hand, is a free service rendered to the public, and it can either be voluntary or forced.
The first time I saw and heard what community service looked like was in a movie. A student had committed an offence, and he was asked to perform community service by cleaning the school every day for two months. I did not clearly understand it back then until later.
This explains why community service can be forced on you as a means of punishment. Then we also have people who derive joy from performing community service. They gather themselves and do things that make them happy, such as donating to orphanages, cleaning the streets, helping the elderly on the streets, and so many others.
Now that we have two different kinds of people involved in community service, the volunteers and those who are forced to participate, I think those who find joy in doing it and are not in any way forced are already selfless. This is because it takes a selfless person to do things that do not benefit them, just to make others happy or ease their stress.
On the other hand, forcing someone to be good will not make them good.
However, I think there is a difference between teaching someone the importance of selflessness and forcing someone to perform acts of kindness. While selflessness may not come naturally to everyone, people can learn to appreciate its importance through proper upbringing, experience, and the examples they see around them. You may not be able to force someone to become selfless, but you can help them understand why being selfless matters. Whether they eventually embrace it is another thing entirely.
It is just like telling a child to be generous. You force him to share his things with others, and he does it in your presence, but there is no assurance that he is going to do it when you are not around.
So, forcing community service on students and expecting it to produce any results will not work. They will do it because you ask them to, because they see it as a criterion for graduation. Once it is done, they will go back to their old ways.
Selflessness cannot be forced. It is inbuilt, and for those who have it, they do not need community service to know who they are. Little random acts will reveal it.
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