Seriously, is it possible to force people to become more charitable?
Ok, here's the situation: The trainee teachers now all do a compulsory module called General Endeavours in Service Learning ( GESL ) called "je-sul" by all of us.
It is a non-graded module, and briefly what we are expected to do is to get into groups of 20-25, and work with an organization to provide some sort of service to the community at large. Eg, some group last year worked with a dyslexic organization to teach dyslexics mathematics. Another group went to the National Library for storytelling sessions with children.
You get the gist. It's somewhat like community service for trainee teachers. Here is the official description from the website:
"GESL is an experiential learning experience for trainees to acquire and develop skills in project management, self- and team-development, and community service. This will provide them the background and experience for trainees to eventually take on leadership roles in their school's community involvement and service-learning projects (CIP) and academic work."
So my question is more towards the 'community service' part. How successfully can you inculcate a sense of 'community service' in us in one year?
For me, I think community service should be something that's entirely voluntary. If you force people to do it, then they may do it, but they aren't necessarily doing it sincerely aren't they? And I thought this was why the compulsory CIP thing in schools was being scrapped. Because of all these piles of schoolkids going in and mucking around just so they could fulfil requirements, and in fact, not doing out of some sense to the community at all.
So now, instead of schoolkids doing it, you have all these trainee teachers doing it instead. :p Same problem, different groups of people.
And you know, so far as I can see, or hear, there really isn't a lot of community spirit being built up yet. Judging strictly by my cohort of people, most of us just find it a waste of time better spent doing assignments due very, very, very soon. And why aren't we getting the community spirit?
I think part of the problem lies with the amount of time we have. We are in this campus for one year. One year. Already the modules we are taking resemble something of a Crash Teaching 101, rather than those who are here for 2 or 3 years. Most people just feel that this thing has become something of an additional burden to bear, on top of all my modules. Not to mention, it's ungraded, so given the choice, would you spent more time on this, or on your graded modules which may affect your job security in the future? I think the answer's clear.
And I shudder to think of more insidious motives behind this. Could the purpose be to somewhat make future teachers feel more indebted to society, and more willing to serve, serve and serve society and never question or ask for anything in return? [Ok, no more 1984 after dinner.....]
Herein lies the flaw of the program then. You may force people to do a job, but you cannot force them to do it out of their heart. Sure enough, most groups will do the project, fulfil the requirements and write glowing reflections about the whole process. One or two may even come away genuinely touched.
The problem is that the number of people turned off by the whole process is that much more. And whether it is worth turning off that large number of people in order to reach those few hearts......
You think about just how much good this does the community.
4 comments:
It's a fine line to walk, though, between encouraging people to do something and making it mandatory. With my JC class some years back, I toyed with the idea of the class doing a community service project together --- something they could keep up throughout the school year, not just visit a home once and be done with it. But I didn't feel like I ought to make it compulsory either, so nothing ever quite took off. And it wasn't till late in JC2 that I realised I had a lot of good-hearted kids in that class, who would've really enjoyed such a group community service project.
So you win some, you lose some.
I hope you find something meaningful to do! Don't let the 'requirements' or 'guidelines' about the project hamstring you!
This is why I didn't like community work in IJ and NP... only did it cos' we *had* to, not cos' we *wanted* to... I mean how can you grade someone on the community work done? Like gimme a break... I can pretend to be caring and what have you... but at the end of the day, doesn't mean I learnt anything...
CIP in schools is not to teach people how to serve, or incalcate a sense of comm service. It acts as a trigger, a prompt for our students. If given a choice, who would ever bother to do CIP? However, looking back, it's also my CIP experiences in sec/jc that prompted me to do CIP projects on my own now. :)
It's not all that bad. And looking back, i don't regret doing cip, however much i cursed and swore to fulfil my 50 hours of CIP in college.
I guess I'm not so much worried about the people who are 'triggered' by it, as I am by the people who will be potentially turned off forever by such a mandatory project? Which is why I feel such a thing is not much use unless you can get people to involve themselves voluntarily.
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