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July 08, 2008

Opinion: Volunteerism Should Not Be Mandatory

In an opinion piece for the Los Angeles Times, Jonah Goldberg criticizes Sen. Barack Obama’s promise to “set a goal for all American middle- and high-school students to perform 50 hours of service a year and for all college students to perform 100 hours of service a year” if he’s elected president.

Mr. Goldberg argues that America already has a healthy culture of service and says that spending federal education dollars to meet new service goals would make public service something people did because they had to, not because they wanted to. Such a shift in public perception would ultimately do more harm than good, he writes.

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Tuesday July 8, 2008 | Permalink

Comments

1. This ‘goal’ shows the relative immaturity of Obama and what he perceives is important ‘change’ for the nation. As I see it, most college admissions and scholorship committees already require community service that probably exceeds 50 or 100 hours annually. If not they should. That would leave a bit more of the presidential braintrust for issues of economic, environmental and national defense issues.

   — Jim Chaney    Jul 8, 04:27 PM    #

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