Should schools require students to complete community service?

 Some people think that mandatory service is inefficient and a waste of time. They say that true community service should be done not because it is mandatory but because they feel like serving voluntarily. In my opinion, mandatory service is beneficial for students so I think that schools should require students to complete a certain number of community service hours.

 The first reason why I agree with mandatory community service is because it can provide a relatively easy way for students to start community service. To do community service, students must visit a community center or sign up online at first, which is not easy for students who have never done community service before. Since the progress is not simple, students probably won’t sign up if they were just merely interested and they will only sign up if they really want to do community service.

 The second reason why I agree with mandatory community service is because through community service, students can have a chance to change their perspectives about community service. Most students think of volunteer work as something that is tiresome. However, after doing community service, students can feel that they were able to get more beneficial effects than they had thought before. Students who thought negatively about community service may change their minds after experiencing it, but if community service is not required, students even may not get a chance to experience it and they will keep the prejudice they have about it.

 The last reason why I agree with mandatory community service is because through community service students may make life-changing experiences that can affect them during their lifetime. Doing community service doesn’t just mean work requiring simple labor like cleaning hospitals and picking up trash. There is also volunteer work where you can donate your talents like teaching children math or English. When I was in middle school, I read English fairy tales to children at the library. I was able to feel satisfaction and happiness when the children who listened to me laughed and asked me questions in English. I confess this English book reading service started partly to fulfill the mandatory community service time, but this experience made me think of teaching students as one of my future dream jobs. Like what I experienced, students can earn a diversity of beneficial effects while doing community service even though it started at first as mandatory community service.

 In conclusion, I believe that schools should require students to complete community service. This is because there are not a lot of ways for students to start community service, students can change their perspectives about community service, and students can have a chance to make life-changing experiences.