Head Strong: Require a year of service

Michael Smerconish



Posted on Sun, Jan. 18, 2009


Head Strong: Require a year of service
The timing is perfect, and the need is great. Using bailout funds would give it a push.
By Michael Smerconish - Inquirer

Inquirer Currents Columnist

Thirty years ago, future U.S. Sen. Harris Wofford led the committee that concluded that year-long mandatory civilian-service programs were politically infeasible.
Wofford, however, did not give up on the idea. And as the nation prepares to mark tomorrow's annual Martin Luther King Day of Service, maybe what was infeasible then is workable today.

What's changed? The economy, for one thing. Consider City Year.

City Year corps members, young adults ages 17 to 24, volunteer for a year of service in cities throughout the country - usually in public schools - and receive a college scholarship in return. It was described to me as an "urban Peace Corps" by David L. Cohen, executive vice president of Comcast, which is a community partner of City Year.

Cohen also told me something else of interest. With the economy in the tank, and the end nowhere in sight, City Year has seen its applications increase threefold in the last year. Which got me thinking.

Maybe our economy would be well-served using a portion of the $800 billion-plus recovery package for mandatory service programs.

We know that the unemployment rate rose to 7.2 percent in December, and the biggest jump came among workers ages 16 to 19. Their jobless rate is 20.8 percent, up from 16.9 percent in December 2007. The rate among 20- to 24-year-olds is 12.1 percent (it was 9.2 percent the year before). By comparison, 6 percent of workers ages 25 to 54 are out of work today.

Granted, the unemployment rate for younger workers is traditionally higher than that of the rest of the workforce. But we don't have to ignore its continued rise, especially when there is a worthwhile alternative.

Here's what else we know: Time magazine reported that more than 61 million Americans accounted for 8.1 billion volunteer hours in 2006 - numbers that have been on a steady rise for 20 years.

Long before he was president-elect, Barack Obama advocated expanding AmeriCorps and doubling the Peace Corps. "This will be a cause of my presidency," he said back when the unemployment rate was a relatively tame 4.9 percent. John McCain, a man who knows something about service, has struck similar notes.

Then, there's the e-mail I received last week from Arianna Huffington, who is urging her Huffington Post network of bloggers and pundits to "leverage your following" by signing on for a specific commitment of service and urging readers, viewers and listeners to do the same via a newly developed Facebook application.

The point? Many young people need jobs, the nation is buzzing with calls to service, and Americans are willing to listen. So why not up the ante by offering service programs backed by the federal government?

Many years after initiating this discussion, Wofford shared with me his current vision for how it might work:

"I want to see a year or more of full-time, active-duty citizen service, either in the military or civilian service, become a common expectation of young people, and favor a system of universal registration at age 18, with a lottery draft to fill the needs of the armed forces if voluntary recruitment is not adequate, but with a civilian-service option for anyone whose number is called," he told me this week.

If you want to serve the country in the armed forces, that's an honorable choice. But if not, how about something like City Year?

Not a fan of universal registration - especially as it applies to community service? Let's insert an economic quid pro quo into the equation. Tying service to college loans is one proposal.

I also like the idea of granting each American baby a sum of money to remain untouched (and earn interest) until he or she turns 18 or 20 years old. If the young adult fulfills a year of service in the military or an organization such as Teach for America or City Year, he or she can access the fund to help pay for college or start a business. If not, the federal government gets it back.

That way, the program isn't mandatory. But it is more viable - for both the country and its citizens.

And given the state of the economy - and, perhaps more significantly, the pessimism it pushes out into America via newspapers, radios and television - we can use all the viability we can get.



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