CELPIP Listening Part 6 Practice Test: Required Community Service

NARRATOR: Since 1999, every Ontario high school student has needed forty hours of community involvement to earn a diploma. Elsewhere in Canada, the idea resurfaces from time to time, and a few school boards in other provinces are now weighing their own version. Supporters regard it as a modest investment in civic life; sceptics contend that mandatory volunteering is something of a contradiction in terms.

NARRATOR: Marcus Bell, a principal in Hamilton who has overseen the requirement for over a decade, is firmly in favour. He recalls students who grumbled their way into a seniors' residence or a soup kitchen and ended up staying long after their hours were logged. For many teenagers, he argues, the obstacle is not unwillingness but simply not knowing where to start, and a requirement gives them a nudge they would not otherwise get. Bell also points to a practical benefit: students graduate with references from adults outside their family and school, which can prove invaluable when applying for a first job.

NARRATOR: Education researcher Joanne Tremblay remains unpersuaded. Her quarrel is not with volunteering itself, which she wholeheartedly endorses, but with what happens when it becomes an obligation. In her interviews with Ontario graduates, a considerable number admitted to choosing whatever placement was quickest, or having a relative sign off on hours they had barely completed. Compulsion, she argues, teaches young people to treat helping others as a box to be ticked. Tremblay is also troubled by unequal access. A student in a city has dozens of organizations within walking distance; a student in a remote town, particularly one who works after school to support the family, may find forty hours a genuine hardship.

NARRATOR: Bell concedes that some students cut corners, but questions whether that should doom the entire program. Plenty of students cut corners in mathematics, he observes dryly, yet nobody proposes abolishing it. As for access, his school now counts certain family responsibilities, such as looking after a younger sibling, toward the total. Tremblay considers that a sensible adjustment, though she wonders how consistently it can be applied from one school to the next.

NARRATOR: Ultimately, the evidence on whether such requirements produce lifelong volunteers is inconclusive at best. What does seem clear is that a rule alone cannot manufacture generosity; what students actually experience along the way may matter far more than the number of hours they record.