Dear Principal,

I do not think that community service should be mandatory because unless someone is jailed or imprisoned, even the law can't force them to do community service. I think it is unfair to force students to do community service because it is their decision to make. I am not saying that community service is bad. Actually, I think that I should do it more often. But you have to give the students a chance to make their own decisions as what to do for extracurricular activities. Imagine if every year, you were assigned an extracurricular activity. No fun in choosing it! Students should be able to choose what they want to do outside of school hours and off of the school grounds.

Another problem with this idea of community service is that it could take away from valuable family time and other activities, such as sports, parties, and even just taking a day and doing nothing. Students have less free time than ever nowadays. Are you saying that you want them to have even less free time? Preposterous! I know that I sound a little vehement, but I think community service is a great idea. Maybe you could have a community service volunteer extracurricular activity. Speaking from a student's perspective, the best thing you could do to lower morale around SCHOOL_NAME Middle School is force the students to do something that they don't want to do. I agree that a volunteer-based community service extracurricular activity would be very good, and I might even take part in it. But you already send us to school for 7 hours a day. Do you have to take away our free time, too?

I stand completely and vehemently opposed to a forced community service activity for many reasons. Most of the students wouldn't try at all with the community service. Imagine a bored eighth grader that has to read to a group of cute little kindergartners. The student puts no effort into it and comes across as unmotivated and stupid. Now that would be a great way to lower your school's reputation.

Mandatory community service is just a bad idea all the way around the whole wheel. The kids wouldn't even have their heart in it. It would lower the morale around the school. Even some teachers are probably opposed to the idea of mandatory community service, and they would be unhappy. Your school's reputation would go down. You would take away the students' free time. You would take away their sports. Their activities. Their time with friends. Their time to do homework (don't you want them to do that?) . Their time to explore their passion and find things out about themselves. Their time to do anything. So, please, I beg you, I implore you to not make community service mandatory for all the students in the school.