Pennsylvania High Schools’ Community Service Plan Gets Mixed Marks : Education: Officials say the mandatory program will teach positive values. Opponents claim that it will force servitude and philosophies on students.

Along with reading, writing and ‘rithmetic, there’s a new graduation requirement for incoming freshmen at this city’s two high schools this fall: community service.

The supporters of the requirement in the Bethlehem Area School District say it will teach the basic American value of helping others. Opponents, who are taking it to court, call it involuntary servitude that forces ideals on students contrary to those of their parents.

“Community service is a clear national priority that has been voiced since President Kennedy’s inaugural address,” said Andrew Faust, the school board’s attorney. “It’s wrapped up in what we think of ourselves as a nation.”

Thomas Moralis, whose son is a student, is trying to block the program.

“I don’t want my son being told what to do,” Moralis said. “I went to school in a free America, and I want the same for my children.”

The suit, which isn’t expected to go to trial before the middle of next year, contends that the student service program violates the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which bans involuntary servitude. It also says the program violates the First and 14th Amendments by interfering with parental rights.

“Beyond the involuntary servitude, the parents object to the philosophical underpinnings,” said Robert Magee, attorney for the Moralis family and another family. “It’s force-feeding a certain set of values about altruism on children.”

The school board voted in April to adopt the program, a concept that has existed for years in voluntary form in some schools across the country and is now being pushed by legislation approved by Congress.

“I think it’s a contradiction of terms,” said Michelle Bennett, a student at Liberty High School. “You shouldn’t have to volunteer, but it’s a good idea to have it as an elective. I like volunteerism because I’ve done it, but it doesn’t make much sense to make it a requirement because uninterested kids won’t do as good a job.”

But another student, Gilberto Quinones Jr., disagreed.

“It’ll give the kids more self-esteem and teach them values in the work they’re doing,” he said. “It will teach them how to act maturely, and they can learn and see if they like the work.”

The Bethlehem district based its program, which requires 60 hours of community service, on one in Atlanta. Three other Pennsylvania districts have mandatory student service programs, and 30 have voluntary programs, according to Dr. Joseph Bard of the state Education Department.

Other states moving ahead with student service programs, some mandatory and some voluntary, are California, Maryland, Washington and Minnesota, said John Brisco, director of the state’s Pennserve program, which encourages volunteerism and sponsors grants to school districts that promote community service to keep students from dropping out.

“I’m excited about this. It seems to work,” Brisco said. “It helps kids understand why school is relevant to life, and it helps some of them find an area in which they can be successful.

“For too many kids, school is a setting where they experience failure. If you put them in a setting where they tutor kids or help old folks, they become successful. Once you’re successful in one phase of your life, you start doing better at other things like math and English. It’s a contagion of success.”

Nationally, an early voice for bringing community service into the schools was Ernest L. Boyer, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. The foundation recommended in a 1983 report that service in the community or school be required by every student.

“Young people should be given opportunities to reach beyond themselves and feel more responsibly engaged,” Boyer testified in March, 1989 before the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee. “They should participate in the communities of which they are a part.”

Before its recess, Congress passed a $287-million national service bill to promote voluntary community service, both for youths and their elders.

“The call to service should come early, and it should be a vital part of education for citizenship in every school system in the nation,” said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), a sponsor of the Senate bill.

The Bethlehem school board has issued a list of 95 local agencies where students can fulfill the requirement, including AIDS Outreach, the YMCA, the Special Olympics, the Girl Scouts, the Easter Seal Society, Meals on Wheels, the local public television station and a host of museums, hospitals and nursing homes.

Also on the list is the school district itself, which wants volunteers to read to kindergarten children.

The program applies only to the 900 members of the entering freshman classes at the city’s two high schools, Liberty and Freedom. They have until June, 1995, to fulfill the requirement of 60 hours, or about 15 minutes a week, on weekends or during the evenings.

School officials insist that they will be flexible in deciding what constitutes community service, and say they might approve something like a student-organized carwash with the proceeds donated to a charity.

Guidance counselors will oversee the program, and students will be required to submit one-page reports on their service, how they made a contribution and what they gained from the experience. They will receive half a credit toward their diplomas.

“The idea is to inculcate the value that there is something good about doing something of value for someone and not receiving pay for it,” Faust said.

Karen Ritter, vice president of Citizens Against Mandatory Service in Bethlehem, said her group believes in voluntary--but not mandatory--service.

“The whole thing is the mandatory issue,” she said. “Everyone who is involved in CAMS is a volunteer in one organization or another. My daughter worked with me in a soup kitchen.

“Bethlehem has a tradition of community service,” Ritter said. “Hundreds of kids are already doing this service. They’re doing it willingly because they want to do it. But once you mandate something, it’s no longer volunteering.”

Supporters of mandatory service argue that an optional program would be like preaching to the choir in church.

“Schools require a lot of things that they think are important,” Brisco said. “They require English, math. When an individual district mandates service, it says this is something that we really value.”