Tonight, Barrack Obama and John McCain joined a CNN crew at Columbia University to talk about, among other things, the idea of a "national service" initiative. Unlike many countries, the United States does not have a service requirement, military or civilian, and McCain and Obama both spoke very strongly in favor of establishing one.
What do you think? Do you believe that young people ought to be required to serve upon graduating from high school? Should high school graduates have to serve in exchange for scholarship aid? Should tuition loans be forgiven in exchange for military or civilian service? How will this initiative impact our families, economy and country?
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4 comments:
Living a life of your own design? Hardly.
I mean it makes sense with McCain’s need for recruits for his mounting wars and Obama’s sense of divine power when it comes with what people should be doing with their lives (and money).
I hope there’s enough sense of independence and individualism out there for people to say that they’re not going to be forced by anyone to give up years of their life. Public service is, in my opinion, a noble pursuit, but forcing our youth into slavery is hardly going to accomplish anything but getting cheap labor and deferring their true dreams…
Over the centuries of my career in schools, we have many times debated the issue of whether we should require community service of our students. I have always wrestled with this idea because part of me understands the value of serving others while another part has felt the contradiction in required volunteer work. How do we get young people to move beyond their inevitable self-involvement if we don't require service? I wasn't sure then, and I am not sure now.
But I worry about our country and Andrew's view of service as tantamount of giving up years of life--giving up independence and individualism. I worry about the sense that our wars are McCain's (or Bush's) wars--and I fear the sense of disenfranchisement, impotence and congressional dysfunction that have created this view. I worry about contempt for any leader, potential or incumbent, who envisions a world as it might be or "should be"; I worry about the growing reverence for independence and individualism over a shared sense of human community--a sense of the things that bind us together--or a sense that there is a greater good, something larger and more significant than our individuality.
I share Andrew's fear that immoral wars and corporate greed may be the real motive of some behind enforced service. I think people need to trust their leaders in order to sacrifice for a new vision, and I have lost that trust, but I don't necessarily conclude that required service is "slavery" any more than I believe Long Trail's service requirement enslaves our children.
So while I worry about the motives and specifics of McCain's and Obama's plan for service, I worry equally about a country that has a monomaniacal focus on individuality and has lost the sense that personal dreams sometimes need to be deferred for a greater good.
The generation of young people now entering the workforce, the product of the self-esteem and self-involved movements of the '80s, seems unrealistic in its assumption that they must be given what they want now and that they should have what they want regardless of the needs and wants of others.
So perhaps this issue deserves careful thought and recognition of its complexity.
That’s it.
Cheers,
Denny Blodget
Denny, I respect your view that the greater good sometimes supersedes the need of the individual, but its hard to reconcile what exactly that greater good might be. No one really agrees, so inevitably there will be people will be forced to fight for a greater good they don't consider worth fighting for... and that I don't agree with.
I hate to sound pessimistic, but I think this is a relatively pragmatic argument:
I truly wish my (youthful) generation was being left with a world in which we could afford to be as idealistic as your generation. But your collectivist ship is sinking faster and faster. Much of your generation seems to be covering their ears and stomping their feet when it comes to what's going to happen when you have no money to retire, pay for health care, or pay down your credit card debt.
Forget digging ditches in parks, you've already nearly sealed the deal with enslaving our generation.
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