Is campaigning for a political party what the Ontario government had in mind when it introduced the requirement that secondary school students should do 40 hours of community service before they get their graduation diploma?
Michael Travers, a 38-year resident of Mississauga, certainly doesn’t think so.
He was “outraged” this week when, while driving through the Fieldgate Dr. and Burnhamthorpe Rd. area near his home, he came across signs posted by Mississauga East- Cooksville Liberal candidate Peter Fonseca that invited students to sign up with his campaign team to fulfil their volunteer commitment.
“Handing out leaflets for a political campaign doesn’t cut it (as volunteer service) in my opinion,” Travers says. “If a kid doesn’t feel like going to the old folks home in his neighbourhood, he can just hand out some literature. This is an easy way out.”
School boards don’t allow political activities on their properties, and candidates can’t campaign there. But they do allow students to volunteer with political campaigns, as per Ministry of Education directive.
If you go to the Peel District School Board web site, in the Your Time Counts section that deals with the community hours, you’ll find a volunteer job board (http://www.peelschools.org/student/time-board.htm.) At the top of the list, above the Canadian Cancer Society, the SuperWalk for Parkinson’s and Community Living Mississauga, you’ll find a volunteer opportunity from Sept. 11-Oct. 10 with Brampton West-Mississauga MPP Vic Dhillon.
Something about that just doesn’t sit right.
All of the postings include a disclaimer which says that the volunteer organization meets the criteria for community involvement. “This posting is provided as a service to students--it is not intended to be an endorsement by the Peel District School Board of any specific organization or program,” it states.
The school board is simply following the provincial guidelines for eligible activities, says the board’s director of communications and strategic partnerships, Brian Woodland. Eligible groups include, “any club, religious organization, arts or cultural association, or political organization that seeks to make a positive contribution in the community.”
The rules, “are all based on the ministry requirements which are designed to promote good citizenship and the role that students can play in their community,” says Woodland.
Peel Board Chair Janet McDougald believes that, “getting young people involved more in the political process would be a good learning experience” for them.
It’s like all such volunteer opportunities, McDougald says. It could be very good if the student is answering phones, learning about organizational management, watching strategic decision-making and acquiring valuable people skills, or it could be bad if they are just stuffing envelopes and licking stamps or dropping literature in mailboxes.
“It’s admirable that people want to get involved in the political process and learn about it and isn’t education all about choices?” she says.
Point taken, but I have to agree with Mr. Travers that there is something that clearly rankles about giving as much weight to working on a political campaign as organizing a food drive for a charity or coaching Special Olympics.
Speaking of which, Travers himself knows something about volunteering, having served with Special Olympics for 25 years and participated on the boards of Orphans’ Hope and Canadian Food For Children.
“I think the politicians are taking advantage of a grey area of what volunteer hours are for,” he says. “If you go back to the spirit of this thing, this was supposed to be a way to get students involved in charity and the community.”
Think the problem is that politics is partisan by nature and volunteering in the greater community should be non-partisan in the broadest sense.
You can’t blame the school boards or the MPPs for abiding by the rules but as Mr. Travers succinctly says, “it has an odour to it.”