Government want students to do community service – and pay for it themselves
David Lammy, the Minister for Innovation, Universities and Skills, has this week come out in support of a scheme for compulsory civic service for students. Based on a report by the think tank Demos, university students would be required to complete 100 hours of community service in return for the state subsidy of their education in the form of loans and grants. Mr Lammy stated: “In a consumerist age young people need more opportunities to develop an ethic of service to others.”
Adding insult to injury, not only would students be expected to find extra time their busy lives to perform this mandatory service like the drunk drivers, vandals and petty thieves of this world, they are to pay for the privilege. The estimated £450 million cost of the scheme would be funded by raising the interest paid on student loans.
When questioned, Dr Sonia Sodha (who no doubt enjoyed a student grant) stated: “This will be a fair levy on those benefiting from state subsidised education”. Gordon Brown has recently put his weight behind similar initiatives suggesting he would like to see all young people complete 50 hours of community service before their 19th birthday, and with the Conservatives proposing similar schemes for sixteen year-olds this initiative could well get the go-ahead.
Whilst the hypocrisy of a generation that received free university education, wasted public money on wars of dubious legality and destroyed our country’s economy now expecting the nation’s undergraduates to perform civic service in return for our education is obvious, it is compounded in the case of the Rt. Hon. David Lammy. Not only did he receive state funding for an undergraduate degree at SOAS in London and a Masters at Harvard Law School, the MP for Tottenham has also claimed over £25,000 pounds in second home allowance despite being a London MP. That’s quite a lot more than the £8000 pounds my degree is costing the government, Mr Lammy.
What particularly irks me about this scheme, however, is the fact that the government sees fit to tell me what to do with my free time. I am a busy student in the 3rd year of a 4 year science degree. I have 2 full days of labs a week, another couple of days of lectures and that’s before I even begin to write lab reports, essays or presentations. In my free time I’m racing and training for a marathon and volunteer with the Red Cross, as well as helping to run a youth group for children with learning disabilities and working full time in the holidays. Last week, I did in fact spend about 20 hours helping prepare a stall and awareness campaign for World Aids Day, so no doubt I would be well on my way to my 100 hours and yet the idea of someone legislating to force me to do so just boils my blood.
P.S. I just can’t help thinking that perhaps if Mr Lammy spent less time telling the nation’s students what to do and partook in a little more studying himself he might have avoided his embarrassing performance on Celebrity Mastermind. He scored a grand total of 13 points, and let slip that he thinks Henry VII is the son of Henry VIII and that Marie Antoinette and her husband Pierre were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. If anyone’s interested in having a laugh the footage, look below:
Related posts:
James:
I agree with your take on this issue. The drive for universal mandatory national service is also underway in the US, and I have been writing about this topic for some time now. last week, I also picked up on the report coming from the think tank Demos, which made the recommendation for the mandatory service requirement for UK students, and wrote an article about this his at my blog ( http://go-galt.org/Galt_Pledge/JG_Blog.html#084 ). You might be interested in taking a look at my website for a fuller discussion relating to the philosophical issues underlying this abomination.
I support your outrage and recommend that you do everything possible to denounce and protest the implementation of this measure. Organize your fellow students, write to your papers, and try to educate people about the real meaning behind this action.
Best of luck.
–
C. Jeffery Small
http://go-galt.org/Galt_Pledge/
Yesterday I posted a comment. It initially appeared and then disappeared. Is it in the system?
[I will repost the missing comment]
James:
I agree with your take on this issue. The drive for universal mandatory national service is also underway in the US, and I have been writing about this topic for some time now. last week, I also picked up on the report coming from the think tank Demos, which made the recommendation for the
mandatory service requirement for UK students, and wrote an article about this his at my blog ( http://go-galt.org/Galt_Pledge/JG_Blog.html#084 ). You might be interested in taking a look at my website for a fuller discussion relating to the philosophical issues underlying this abomination.
I support your outrage and recommend that you do everything possible to denounce and protest the implementation of this measure. Organize your fellow students, write to your papers, and try to educate people about the real meaning behind this action.
Best of luck.
–
C. Jeffery Small
http://go-galt.org/Galt_Pledge/
It is in the system, but it hasn't come up.Send it again, and it should appear this time. Sorry about that.
[I will repost the missing comment]
James:
I agree with your take on this issue. The drive for universal mandatory national service is also underway in the US, and I have been writing about this topic for some time now. last week, I also picked up on the report coming from the think tank Demos, which made the recommendation for the
mandatory service requirement for UK students, and wrote an article about this his at my blog ( http://go-galt.org/Galt_Pledge/JG_Blog.html#084 ). You might be interested in taking a look at my website for a fuller discussion relating to the philosophical issues underlying this abomination.
I support your outrage and recommend that you do everything possible to denounce and protest the implementation of this measure. Organize your fellow students, write to your papers, and try to educate people about the real meaning behind this action.
Best of luck.
–
C. Jeffery Small
http://go-galt.org/Galt_Pledge/
Cheers for your comment Mr Jeffery Small, I've had a quick read of your website and about then John Galt pledge, and whilst you certainly have some interesting ideas I don't think my objection to this measure is for entirely the same reasons yours is. It also seems that the pledge is opposed to nationalised healthcare, which as a low income student with great faith in our NHS, I find incredibly mystifying.
James:
When you support nationalized health care, you are demanding that others be required to provide you with goods and services to meet your needs – in this case medical care. Once you have accepted the principle that your needs are a demand upon the goods and labor of others, then it is I who is mystified at to how you can argue against compulsory service being imposed upon you as a student. Your government has determined that the needs of "society" place a demand upon you and that you must be forced to work in service of those needs – just as you apparently are prepared to demand that other be forced to work for your needs. Based upon what principle are you advocating one but not the other?
It is only the principle of liberty — the recognition of each individual's right to their own life — that will provide you with a defense against your enslavement in the name of "national service". But that same principle protects others against your demanding that they be enslaved to fulfill your demands. You can't have it both ways. You either stand in support of a free society that promotes individual liberty, or you stand for a totalitarian society that enslaves every citizen. So as long as you support nationalized health care, you are powerless to mount a case against your own slavery.
Regards,
–
C. Jeffery Small
Without university students there would be no doctors for the National Health Service. Society NEEDS uni students, why lump them with criminals?
I pay taxes for a police service I never use, a health care system I haven't needed since I was born, a fire brigade that's never put a fire out for me and for roads I still haven't driven on. But I am allowed to, at no extra cost. For that reason, you can continue to pay for the education I am using, because you are allowed it.
People who want to go to uni tend to spend the rest of their lives paying taxes, funding the NHS, and police, and fire department. I don't see people on Job Seekers Allowance having to provide ANYTHING to society.
I feel there is a prevailing sense of elitism in british students today. We live in such a privileged society where we as individuals are given the freedom and independent thought to study what we wish and where we want to do so.
Incorporating 100 hours of civil service into university degrees will incite a substantial difference to communities and play a pivotal role in helping student’s cultivate an ethic of service to others. It will also provide unemployed 18-24 year olds with an opportunity to partake in a commitment to help build a better society and encourage responsibility amidst those individuals.
The levy on loan interest to fund the scheme pails into insignificance for those benefiting from state subsidized education and is estimated to generate £1Bn is economic and social benefits per annum Labour’s study suggests.
Students need to take less for granted and certainly are not above giving something back.
J the argument that civil service helps the unemployed is nonsense. It undermines job creation, especially those low paid jobs that 18-24 year olds need to get started, as why on earth would you pay someone to work in a care home when you can get others to do it for free?
Previous generations have benefitted from state funded education, and so surely it is hypocritical of them to expect us to both pay for it, and work aswell. At the same time they complain about consumerism having caused a recession due to their greed. We, the young will be left to foot the bill.
I am not opposed to a culture in which people give back to society, I myself spent my gap year working in a nursing home, I assume cleaning, feeding and toileting the elderly counts as giving back. Enforced civil service, however, is not the way to go about it. In sweden, 48% of adults volunteer regularly, due to encouragement. In Germany, all young men are forced into civil service and afterwards only 20% volunteer again.
I assure you, any interest rise on the £20K I will owe upon graduation will not pail into insignificance either.