YOUR CERTIFICATE WILL GIVE YOU A JOB BUT YOUR CHARACTER WILL KEEP IT __W241E3
Community Service: Should It Be Compulsory Before Graduation?
If you ask me, my answer is YES!!!!!. Students in high school and secondary school should be required to perform community service before they graduate..... It will teach them what it means to be selfless.
Let me tell you my own story to explain.
When I was in secondary school in Umuoji, we had what we called sanitation day. Every Friday afternoon, the whole school would stop classes by 1pm. We would bring cutlass, broom, and packer from home. We would cut grasses, sweep the assembly ground, clean the gutters, and pack all the pure water nylons that students threw around.
At that time, I hated it. I would complain. I would say, my father paid school fees, why am I doing cleaner work? Many of us would hide behind the classroom to avoid working.
But one day, our principal gathered us and said something I never forgot. He said, "Your certificate will give you a job, but your character will keep the job. And character is not taught on the blackboard, it is taught by service."
That word entered my head.
That small cleaning every Friday taught me that if I dirty my environment, I should clean it. It taught me that school is not just my own, it is our own. That is the beginning of selflessness.
That is why I support community service before graduation.
Many students today only think about themselves. They think about their phone, their data, their clothes, their result. Nobody taught them to think about their neighbour. Everything is "what will I gain?" If you say "go and help", they will ask "how much will you pay me?"
If we make community service compulsory from JSS1 to SSS3, they will learn early that life is not only about taking, but also about giving.......
Imagine if every secondary school student is asked to do maybe 40 hours of community service before they graduate.....That is not too much. It is like 1 hour every week.
What can they do?
Some can go to the local market and help to sweep. Some can go to a primary school and teach small children how to read ABC. Some can go to the health center and help the nurses arrange files. Some can go and plant trees in their community. Some can visit old people in their area and help them fetch water or sweep their house.
If a student does this for 3 years, by the time he graduates, he will not be the same person.
He will learn empathy. He will see that not everybody has what he has. He will learn teamwork. He will learn humility. He will understand that to be a leader tomorrow, you must learn to serve today.....
So, will this be a good step towards teaching students what it means to be selfless????__ Yes, 100 percent yes.
But I have one problem with the question. The part that says "Failure to do so could mean forfeiture of their graduation."
I don't like using graduation as a threat.
If you threaten a student that he will not graduate if he does not do community service, he will do it with fear, not with love......... He will come, sign attendance, snap picture for evidence, and go home. He will not learn anything. In Nigeria here, some will even pay 2000 naira to collect a fake community service certificate.
Instead of threatening them, let us make it interesting.
Let schools allow students to choose the service they love. Let them write in a small notebook what they did and what they learned each week. Let there be no money attached to it, no levy. Let teachers supervise and encourage, not punish.
If we do it like that, students will enjoy it. And even after they graduate, they will continue to help their community without anybody forcing them.
In my view, certificate without character is useless. We have many graduates today with good results but no character, no love for community. If we want a better Nigeria tomorrow, we must teach our secondary school students how to serve today.....
Make community service compulsory, but do it with wisdom and love.......❤️🩹❤️🩹❤️🩹❤️🩹
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