02/22/11

Dear TEACHER_NAME,

I am writing to you to discuss my feelings on requiring students to do community service. I firmly believe that requiring students to participate in community service would not make for a happy school environment. For example, forcing students to help would make them angry about having to give up their free time to help if they would normally choose not to. Also, if community service is forced onto students, they will most likely not perform to the best of their abilities or return to do extra services.

If you force community service onto all students, many things could happen as a result. Grades could drop due to less studying time, extracurricular activities could suffer due to less time to participate, and students could become more hostile towards faculty and each other. This, in turn, would cause upset parents to complain about their child's grades or behavior. All in all, this is just not the kind of thing the school district would want to deal with.

As has been shown throughout history, forcing people to do tasks they do not wish to do has hazardous results. And as we have recently seen in Egypt, people can revolt. Now I'm not saying the students would overthrow you and send you into exile, but there are other ways students can cause revolt. Students could act out and cause disruption while performing community service. Obviously neither you, nor anyone would like to have the school district represented this way. Furthermore, if community service was mandatory, students most likely would not enjoy it and would not volunteer any further.

I have a few suggestions on how to get students to volunteer without making it required. Talk about volunteering on the announcements or have someone come to the school to speak about how good it feels to help in the community. Offer rewards and incentives for doing service. Hold a contest to see who has the most volunteer hours all year with the winner getting a special prize. Any of these things would get many students to volunteer because they enjoy it, not because they were forced to.

Sincerely,

STUDENT_NAME

8th Grade Student