Sociology Commons^™

Youth Entering Service To America, Yes To America

Civic Engagement

George Bush announced today his proposal for the creation of Youth Entering Service to America, a challenge grant program designed to spur more young people to serve their communities as a continuing androutine part of their daily lives in high schools, college, and after graduation.

Service: Meeting Youth's Need To Be Needed, James C. Kielsmeier, Rich Willits

Special Topics, General

In April 1861, hours after the smoke cleared at Fort Sumpter, the first volunteer military units from the North were organized in preparation for the battle to preserve the Union. They were from Minnesota.

The North Star State is again mobilizing, capturing some of the fresh air of the service movement sweeping the nation, and adding its own populist brand of citizen involvement. Youth service is blooming in America's heartland, and community educators are leading the way.

Violence, Youth And A Way Out, John A. Calhoun

Special Topics, General

It is a conviction shared by those who care for young people and their families that violence among youth has reached intolerable levels and that a response is demanded. The homicide statistics are chilling: In 1986, four to five people under age 18 were murdered per day, 10 percent more than in 1985. Equally chilling, three to four people under 18 were arrested for murder every day, a seven percent increase over 1985.

Evaluating And Working With Community Agencies: A Guide For The Principal, Carl I. Fertman

Partnerships/Community

Schools can take the initiative in dealing with community agencies, says this writer, who offers some suggestions on how schools can help such agencies develop programs to meet student needs.

Issues And Action In The Streams Of Service, Frank J. Slobig

Service Learning, General

The landscape across the country is sporadically spotted with an increasing number of locations where young people are engaged in sustained significant service. They are involved in part-time school-based programs in junior and senior high schools, in campus-based collegiate programs and in full-times corps.

The Impact Of Volunteer Experience On Adolescent Social Development: Evidence Of Program Effects, Stephen F. Hamilton, L. Mickey Fenzel

School K-12

The Social and Personal Responsibility Scale was employed in a study of the Youth Volunteers program, involving 44 adolescents in 12 projects, equally divided between child care and community service. Participants showed statistically significant gains on the Social Responsibility sub-scale. Girls gained more than boys and volunteers in community improvement projects gained more than those in child care. However, as in previous studies, gains were quite modest. Testimony from adolescents and adult participants was more strongly positive, volunteers citing improvement in their knowledge of themselves and others and the acquisition of new skills, adults seeing greater willingness to make decisions. …

The Roles Of Youth In Society: A Reconceptualization, Ruthanne Kurth-Schai

School K-12

The 1980s have been characterized as a decade of platforms for educational change. In 19S3 alone, five reports were released by national task forces and commissions, all expressing serious concern for the future of youth and society, and all proposing recommendations for ways in which educational policies and practices might be altered, to address such concerns.

Roots Of Service, Theodore H. Erickson

Special Topics, General

The thesis that I want to advance is a simple one: It is that service is rooted in religion. Service is religious in the sense that it expresses our bondedness with the universe (religare: to bind fast), and by extension with one another. Over time, service-oriented activities may become rationalized, institutionalized, and secularized. But the roots of service remain religious.

National Service And Religious Values, L. William Yolton, Edward L. Long Jr.

Special Topics, General

The idea of national service covers a range of proposals for organizing young people and, in some cases, senior citizens to do work of national importance to satisfy unmet needs in the society. How people at middle age would be engaged in service is rarely discussed.

Conversation Piece: National Service, Is It For Us?, Carl A. Bade

Special Topics, General

Many of the writers, conceptual developers, and advocates of a National Service Program for the United States credit William James with issuing, in 1910, the first call to youth to be enlisted in a program entitled "The Moral Equivalent of War,'' The program was envisioned to engage youth in industrial work and social service, according to their skills and interests. While that did not come to fruition, we saw some forms of it instituted during the bleak days and years of the Great Depression in the 1930's. Thousands of youth were enlisted in the Civilian Conservation Corps beginning in 1933, …

The Time Is Right: A Report Of The Youth Serviceamerica And Brown University Youth Service Leadership Conference, Youth Service America

Conference Proceedings

This report, summarizing the proceedings at a February 1988 conference at Brown University on youth service,presents briefly an overview of the emerging network of youth service programs in the following states: (1) Minnesota; (2) Pennsylvania; (3) California; (4) Massachusetts; and (5) Ohio. Rationales for youth service are analyzed. Eight strategies for implementing youth service programs at the state level are identified. Individual programs, such as the Youth Volunteer Corps of Greater Kansas City, and City Year in Boston, are discussed. The following types of youth service programs,and means of expanding them are outlined: (1) full-time corps; (2) campus-based service; and …

Service-Learning: An Annotated Bibliography Linking Public Service With The Curriculum, Janet Luce, Jennifer Anderson, Janet Permaul, Robert Shumer, Timothy Stanton, Sally Migliore

Bibliographies

Interest in "service-learning" is on the rise these days. The so-called apathy of the late nineteen seventies and early eighties has given way to a renewed upsurge in student activisim and public and community service. The Campus Compact coalition of university presidents has supported these efforts on their campuses through the strengthening of campus public service programs and through advocacy for "higher education for social responsibility" at the national level. One national commission after another includes community service or internship-based learning as a key recommendation for the reform of the undergraduate curriculum. In this atmosphere the concept and practice of …