Young People Should Spend a Year in Public Service

To the Editor:

Your My View column by Susan J. Ellis, “The Wrong Way to Encourage Volunteerism” (February 21), along with enlightened editorial comments in the local and national media of late, are fueling a lively and hugely important public debate on the critical issues of volunteerism and national service.

The Dick Armey/Rick Santorum brigade in Congress was apparently absent from ninth-grade civics class on the day the rest of us learned that, in our cherished republic, some tasks are best assigned to the government, some to profitable businesses, and some to the not-for-profit sector. Knee-jerk conservatives all too readily reject all government-administered programs as conceptually obnoxious, wasteful, and better accomplished by the private sector.

Fortunately, President Bush provides bipartisan leadership for a more balanced view. While his proposed budget constitutes a mixed bag for charities, his State of the Union address and proposed substantial increases for volunteerism offer a glimmer of hope for a meaningful community-service revolution.

Ms. Ellis has posited some thoughtful challenges in her piece. The stakes are far too high for volunteerism to equate with amateurism, in both service assignments and program management. Most important, she raises the fundamental issue of whether our ultimate national goal is the promotion of after-hours community volunteering, or a much more ambitious program of national service.

Our brave new world is quickly teaching us that patriotic duty can encompass more than the military, and that our country is running a major deficit in national service. As the privileged citizens of this blessed land, we tend to be obsessed with the litigious defense of our rights, while we ignore our responsibility to serve the national good.

If our patriotism goes no further than flags on our cars and firemen singing at ballgames, we are in for a rough ride in the coming century.

Our vital national interests demand that public policy move beyond the concept of “volunteerism,” and beyond Sen. Richard Lugar’s patrician view that national volunteers should not be paid.

A year of public service (voluntary only in terms of choice of assignment) should be obligatory for all young men and women of able body under the age of 24. From inner-city education, to environmental reclamation, to homeland defense against terrorism, there is certainly no shortage of meaningful work.

The result would be a far stronger country than any acceleration of military spending might provide us. Let us not forget, the “Greatest Generation” was forged by the character-building challenges of the Great Depression and World War II, not by the vacant bliss of “youth without responsibility,” nor by an ever-climbing Nasdaq.

Two of the most burdensome problems facing young people today are a nagging lack of purpose, complicated by a permissive, affluent society, and the exorbitant cost of tertiary education. A well-conceived and well-executed AmeriCorps writ large could go a long way toward providing answers to these and other grave challenges to our nation.

The long-term national policy goal should be to raise community consciousness and patriotic spirit through a year of required, but highly meaningful, national service. The result would be many more citizens proud of their 4,000 hours volunteered over a lifetime, after national service, and a resurgence of the “independent sector” in America.

William C. Austin
Senior Director
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital
Memphis