The latest issue of National Review contains a special section on education, featuring Victor Davis Hanson (a contributor to Fordham's recent publication Terrorists, Despots, and Democracy: What Our Children Need to Know) on the Iraq War and college campuses. But our attention was caught by Princeton student Carlos Ramos-Mrosovsky's piece on the hypocrisy of student service. As competition for spots in elite colleges becomes fierce - and post-college prospects grow more straitened - many students are turning to volunteer service to differentiate themselves from the pack. Problem is, this service has now become just one more box to check off on the application, which lends a workaday attitude to what ought to be spontaneous service to one's fellow men. We guess we'll take service-for-reward over no service at all, but in San Diego the unions don't want either. The local paper recently reported that parents who tried to organize community cleanups of weed-ridden schools in response to cuts in maintenance budgets were turned away after unions complained that volunteers were displacing union workers. "What happens when the district gets in better financial shape? Why rehire the landscape crews when the work is being done free? If people really want to help, they should be writing their elected officials about the budget," said a union official.
"Special education section," National Review, October 13, 2003,
"Schools caught between weedy yards and union jobs," by Maureen Magee, San Diego Union-Tribune, October 5, 2003,