Civic Health Needs More Than Nerds
It’s nearly impossible to find anyone defending America’s teenagers. Is that because they’re really so indefensible?
The truth is, if young Americans got a dollar every time a loud-mouthed adult criticized them, many could soon afford Harvard. Overly critical and pessimistic adults should therefore be required to read an amazing new report, “Volunteering and Giving Among American Teenagers.” This product of Independent Sector, a Washington nonprofit group that seeks to encourage volunteer and charity work, offers considerable reason for optimism. It finds that America’s teens are volunteering time to charities and nonprofit institutions more and more every year. In fact, over the past four years, total teen volunteer hours increased by a magnificent 17%.
Maybe teens aren’t as clueless as everyone thought, eh?
Let’s look at this counterintuitive finding more closely. If someone had paid for all of the volunteered hours at just the chicken-feed minimum wage rate, the tab would have come to nearly $8 billion. That’s a pretty nice gift to America. To be sure, dressing up the college admissions application often motivates the teen charity work, but so what? Roughly two out of every three high school students volunteer and about 95% of all young adults believe they should be involved in volunteer community work. Better yet, two-thirds wish that their high schools would make community service a requirement for graduation. In Los Angeles, it seems, this is more true of our private than public schools. It wasn’t until 1994 that the first L.A. public high school, Chatsworth High, required volunteer work of students. Elsewhere in America, few public high schools require student volunteerism and not enough encourage it. What a waste.
In fact, there’s a whole lot we adults don’t do for them. “The fascinating part,” comments Steve Culberston, the CEO of Youth Service America, “was that the study found that if you ask a teenager to volunteer, nine out of 10 will. But you have to ask them.” Right, says Sara Melendez, president of Independent Sector: “Volunteers are not made but asked.” Conversely, when adults fail to make the request, the chances of teens’ volunteering drop alarmingly to 24%.
What a difference adults can play in the lives of America’s teens. Too bad, then, that adults have not been pressing young people as hard as they should. In 1992, adults asked a higher percentage of teens to volunteer than in 1996. Worse yet, black and Latino teens were far less likely to be asked to volunteer than whites. Not good.
What about Asian Americans? Alas, the new study failed to examine the volunteer participation of America’s fastest-growing minority. So I asked around myself and found that Asian American teens, often pushed head-first by their parents, are deep into community work. “A lot of their parents realize that you can’t just excel in academics,” says Citania Tam of the San Francisco-based Richmond Area Multi Services agency, “so they encourage their kids.” Adds Toby Hur, of the Korean Youth Community Center in Los Angeles, “These days, we’ve seen a real increase in volunteering around here.”
Not so in their home countries. And certainly not in those Asian countries where teenagers outscore their U.S. counterparts on standardized tests. Studying apparently doesn’t leave students with much time for anything else. “In Asia, kids do very little volunteer work,” confirms UCLA sociology professor Lucie Cheng. “They go to school, and when they get out of school, they go to school again, to the ‘cram schools’.” Agrees Connie Wang of the Asian Youth Center in Rosemead, “In America, we look at how well rounded people are. But in Asia, we look more at achievement in academics. You don’t see very much volunteer work or community service.”
Some in Asia, especially in Japan, are beginning to see the sweet light of charity work. “In Japan, volunteering has kind of been looked down upon because it’s not a paid job and there’s no point in it,” explains Masako Hoshino, of the Oakland-based Japan Pacific Resource Network. “But recently, because of the Kobe earthquake, people wanted to help out. College students in particular are disillusioned by Japanese society because they don’t have any options other than working in business or government. But when young people helped with the disaster in Kobe, they felt they were useful and needed.” Japan’s parliament is now considering legislation to make it easier for volunteer organizations to thrive.
Yes, grades are important, but grades are not everything. In this increasingly technological society we absolutely do need our nerds, but total nerd-dom does not a fully developed civic culture make. When teens get involved in volunteering, they sense quickly the benefit to both the community and their own souls. But when adults don’t ask them to get involved, they can’t say yes. And when we don’t ask, in effect we are saying we don’t care. And if we don’t care, why should they?
Not to be uncharitable, but for all the bad publicity that today’s teens get, it may be we adults who are not doing the job.
