2006.12.01: December 1, 2006: Headlines: COS - India: National Service: Speaking Out: Orlando Sentinel: India RPCV Charles L. Griffin Jr. writes: I am for universal national service
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2006.12.01: December 1, 2006: Headlines: COS - India: National Service: Speaking Out: Orlando Sentinel: India RPCV Charles L. Griffin Jr. writes: I am for universal national service
India RPCV Charles L. Griffin Jr. writes: I am for universal national service
"I served in a draft Army, but as a volunteer. I followed that with two years in the Peace Corps, also as a volunteer. In total, I put in five years of service that gave me experiences that would have been difficult to gain on my own. Volunteers in the Peace Corps were also from every walk of life, with the exception that most were college graduates or had valuable life experience to share. Young people, 18 to 30 years of age, mixed with professionals or retirees who might be as old as 80, and all trained together before being broadcast about some developing country to isolated spots in a totally foreign culture. It was not something they all could handle. Being volunteers, they could un-volunteer at any time, and many did. Some simply could not meet the physical requirements or could not adjust to a different culture or the lack of privacy. Through these experiences I came to believe that the dynamics of becoming engaged in an alien culture, and I include the rituals and traditions of the military as a culture alien to everyday Americans, is as valuable in one's education as a degree. Perhaps more so."
India RPCV Charles L. Griffin Jr. writes: I am for universal national service
Alternative worth considering?
Charles L. Griffin Jr. |
Posted December 1, 2006
I served in a draft Army, but as a volunteer. I followed that with two years in the Peace Corps, also as a volunteer. In total, I put in five years of service that gave me experiences that would have been difficult to gain on my own.
Among the draftees in the Army were raw youths from around the country who, often for the first time, met people totally unlike themselves. It became an unparalleled learning experience. There were married teachers, aspiring actors, ghetto youth, kids straight off a farm, city-bred wiseguys, Hispanics from Puerto Rico, Texas and the West, and immigrants from around the world. They all began as various shades of black, white and brown who came together in the Big Green Machine and learned how to work and play together. It wasn't a perfect melting pot. Bigots could remain bigots, the ignorant could stay ignorant, but for the majority it worked.
For many of them, it was not something they would have chosen to do.
During the same time frame, the Peace Corps began. Volunteers in the Peace Corps were also from every walk of life, with the exception that most were college graduates or had valuable life experience to share. Young people, 18 to 30 years of age, mixed with professionals or retirees who might be as old as 80, and all trained together before being broadcast about some developing country to isolated spots in a totally foreign culture. It was not something they all could handle. Being volunteers, they could un-volunteer at any time, and many did. Some simply could not meet the physical requirements or could not adjust to a different culture or the lack of privacy.
Through these experiences I came to believe that the dynamics of becoming engaged in an alien culture, and I include the rituals and traditions of the military as a culture alien to everyday Americans, is as valuable in one's education as a degree. Perhaps more so.
For that reason, I am against a draft. I am for universal national service. I believe that every American youth should be required to serve at least two years in federal service, with the option of doing so after either high school or college graduation. I believe that all of them should be required to undergo two months of basic military training to acquaint them with physical exercise and the handling of firearms, field sanitation, first aid and survival training.
Following that, they should have the option of continuing in the military (with the advanced training that requires) or several choices of public service in America or abroad, including any necessary training for the duties of that service.
At the end of two or three years, most people who experienced such service will want to resume their lives, go back to family, friends and a regular job or further education. Some few will want to continue their service. This was true for the military when I served and is true today. It is also true for many of those who served in the Peace Corps, although they were prohibited by law from doing more than five years' service as a volunteer. Many former volunteers have gone on to greater public service as educators, diplomats and occasionally as politicians.
But so have many veterans of military service. The ultimate benefit of both kinds of service is the production of citizens knowledgeable of the sacrifice and dedication of those who work to better the world or protect it from those who would bring about chaos and destruction. Neither route is safe. There is a long list of volunteers who died in service and a much longer list of those who died in the military.
Today's American youth are famously regarded as soft, fat and self-centered. While there are many exceptions to that stereotype, a universal national-service requirement would go a long way in countering the trend.
Charles L. Griffin Jr., a photographer and writer, lives in Daytona Beach.
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Headlines: December, 2006; Peace Corps India; Directory of India RPCVs; Messages and Announcements for India RPCVs; National Service; Speaking Out
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Story Source: Orlando Sentinel
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