Should schools make community service compulsory?

Write my answer and get scored

Requiring students to volunteer before they graduate strikes many people as a contradiction in terms. I largely agree with the requirement, though the objection deserves a serious answer. The objection is that compulsion removes the generosity that gives volunteering its value. Students forced into a hospital ward count hours rather than help, and some finish the requirement more cynical about service than when they started. The stronger case for the policy is that it corrects an accident of background. Middle-class students already accumulate voluntary work through family networks, and university admissions reward them for it, while a student whose parents work double shifts never hears about the opportunity. A school requirement distributes that experience to everyone rather than to the already connected. It also puts young people in rooms they would otherwise never enter, and contact of that kind changes attitudes more reliably than any lesson on citizenship. The design decides which effect wins. Hours ticked off a form produce resentment; genuine responsibility, real choice among placements and time for reflection afterwards produce volunteers who continue once the requirement ends, which is the only outcome worth measuring. In conclusion, I support compulsory service because it spreads an advantage that is currently inherited, provided schools treat it as an education rather than as a box to be filled.