Mission Trips & AmeriCorps

Matt Yglesias discusses Sen. Chris Dodd's national service plan, and in doing so touches on something that often arises in church regarding the practice of mission trips.

Here's Matt:

There's nothing wrong, generically, with such programs but they really need to be looked at one-by-one on the merits primarily through the lens of whether or not they're cost-effective methods of achieving the public purpose in question. Does appropriating more money to the Peace Corps make sense as a development strategy, or would it be better to boost funding for the Millenium Challenge Corporation or the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria.

The question he raises is often asked of church mission trips. A local church youth group raises money for a weeklong trip to, say, Haiti, where they will be helping to build a school. This works OK. The school gets built. But it may not be the most cost-effective approach. A significant chunk of the funds raised winds up going to the group's travel expenses, all so a bunch of kids with little or no construction experience can travel thousands of miles to help out. If the goal is to get the school built, it would seem to make more sense to raise the money and let the folks down in Haiti use it to hire local skilled laborers -- people who are already there, who know what they're doing and who may desperately need the paycheck.

But the point of these mission trips is not only to get the school built. That's part of it, but it's not the only goal. The mission trip is also designed to give the American youth group a tangible, visceral stake in the fate of the Haitian community. This is vital for the people in Haiti too. The problem with the calculus above is that it presumes that the total level of contribution is a constant. That assumption is probably not true. It's unlikely that the youth group, the church, or any other given community here would raise the same amount of money without the personal stake of the trip itself.

The purpose of the mission trip is not exclusively to change the Haitian community where the school is to be built. Part of the purpose of the trip is also to change the young Americans who are going there, and to change the community that sends them. Part of the reason for such trips is to nurture a sense of empathy, of solidarity, and an ethos of service -- to create and maintain the capacity to care whether or not children in Haiti have a decent place to go to school, and to create and maintain the desire to help.

This should also be a part of what Matt refers to as the "public purpose" of any kind of national service program. This additional purpose is what separates things like the Peace Corps or AmeriCorps from other more professional and specialized development efforts. The service corps may not be as efficient as a more professionalized "development strategy," but they exist to promote and achieve additional goals that the development strategy does not address. They exist, in part, to ensure that our national character remains capable of supporting those other, more targeted and efficient, development efforts.

Having said all of that, I'm not persuaded that a big federal program like Dodd's proposed "American Community Initiative" makes sense. What Matt calls Dodd's "conceptual confusions" could be clarified with a better understanding of subsidiarity* (or, for you Kuyperians out there, "sphere sovereignty"). Programs like the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps have symbolic importance. Among other things, they help to ensure that bully-pulpit praise for volunteerism isn't completely hollow.

But the heavy lifting here will not and cannot be done by the federal government. It will be done, rather, by those closer to the ground: by families, schools, churches (synagogues/mosques/temples/covens/Hitchens Book Clubs), civic organizations, business, labor and media (old and new).

If all of these other actors play their part, then service will be a vital part of our national character regardless of what the federal government does or does not do. If all of these other actors fail to play their part, then anything the federal government attempts will be as ineffective and dim as a thousand points of light.

I like the parts of Dodd's plan that focus on creating incentives for service, and even more so the parts that focus on removing disincentives. (Apart from his proposed massive expansion of AmeriCorps, however, he seems to offer little to address what may be the largest single disincentive -- educational debt.)

I'm still not completely sure what to think about Dodd's idea of mandatory service as a requirement for high school graduation. I get the impulse -- a self-absorbed little prick really shouldn't be handed a diploma and declared "educated" until someone has pointed out to him that he shouldn't be such a self-absorbed little prick. And the idea of mandatory service for high school students begins to look more attractive the more you listen to the whining of its most vocal opponents. Yet for all of that "mandatory service" still seems like an oxymoron. Berea College provides an inspiring model for service and education, but students can choose whether or not to attend there. High school students don't have a choice. I'd like to see high school students encouraged to serve. I'd like to see them empowered to serve without suffering any opportunity costs. And I'd like to see their service rewarded. But, unlike Dodd, I don't think I'd like to see their service required.

This is where I'd like to conclude with a paragraph tying together all the disparate half-thoughts above into some coherent whole, but for the life of me I can't figure out what such a paragraph would say.

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* For a primer on subsidiarity, see "Who is you?."

Comments

[tinheart]

Rather than making this a "me too" post, I'm going to give a shout out to Berea College. (Class of '87! Wooo!! Go Mountaineers!)

[--susan]

The most compelling reason I can think of off the top of my head for not making service mandatory for high school students is that there is a significant population of high school students who are struggling to graduate while being interrupted by such harsh realities as navigating foster care or taking care of their siblings (or parents.) Or it's just not financially feasible for some kids. Some sort of waiver would need to be instituted.

Assuming for a moment that some sort of need-based aiver is obvious, I don't see why not make such service mandatory for everyone? Regarding the "self-absorbed prick" problem that Fred references, I gotta say that high school kids by no means have the market cornered on arrogance and ignorance. And on a positive note, think of all the ways such manpower and diverse skillsets could be utilized!

[KnightHawk]

In addition to what Susan said, you also have to ask yourself: "Dowe really want to eqate servicing the less fortunate with an onerous chore no one in their right mind wants to do?"...because if we make it mandatory for those self-absorbed pricks that have been mentioned, that's exactly what we're doing. I mean, can you see those little bitches off my super sweet 16 working at a soup kitchen? Not only will their whining and shirking make them more of a hinderence, you've also so completely turned them off helping the poor that the chances of them handing out cash to them later on goes out the window.

Love. Peace. Metallica.

[the opoponax]

-susan, knowing the way stuff like this has to work, yeah, there would be waivers, as well as funding plans and other ways of enabling people who can't book a ticket to wherever their assignment is to participate.

i'm actually very much in favor of a mandatory service program (i'd make it mandatory for college admissions, though not for a high school diploma, that way it's a little more flexible in terms of folks who absolutely can't do it). with a big "but" now that it's 2007 and we've seen initiative after initiative become as fucked up as humanly possible under the Bush Administration. mainly, i'd want a timetable for getting out of Iraq first. i don't want this to end up a secret draft. and I can definitely see these kids getting sent to "help rebuild Iraq", that being a euphemism for, y'know, helping out with another surge. i'd also want to see an end to No Child Left Behind, the immigration debacle settled in a way that is not completely ridiculous, etc. if we're putting kids' into the hand of the government for unspecified periods of time, i want to know that government is going to do right by them. the last 8 years has not given me a lot of confidence about that.

[Shannon]

I agree with KnightHawk. I know people who had to do mandatory service for National Honors Society in high school, who didn't want to, and that sort of person just brings down the whole project. Some service really isn't fun, and having people who are going to be negative about it the whole time might just turn other kids off from it as well.

Plus, that "mandatory service" often transforms into something stupid to appease said whiny brats. For NHS, at least half of your 30 service hours had to be done "in school." Except for tutoring, most of the "in school" service was ridiculous - selling tickets for football games and setting up for the winter dance. I suppose it serves someone, but what good does that actually do for the community that wouldn't be done otherwise? Meanwhile, someone who was doing a lot more good out in the community each week wouldn't be able to even count a lot of those hours towards the required ones. Needless to say, most of my in-school service was done tutoring.

[the opoponax]

"...because if we make it mandatory for those self-absorbed pricks that have been mentioned, that's exactly what we're doing. I mean, can you see those little bitches off my super sweet 16 working at a soup kitchen?"

i dunno. maybe my high school classmates and i were exceptional cases, but we had a school-wide service requirement that was mandatory for graduation. some of which was in school, and some of which was out of school (but none of it was "fun" stuff, it was things like working in the cafeteria). of course there were things nobody wanted to do, and we probably all did our share of half-assed work. but everybody sacked up and did it, and i don't think even the most entitled kids in school tried to pull any bullshit. it was also seen as a generally favorable thing, something we all agreed was an important part of our high school experience.

[Angelika]

In Germany there is a mandatory service for the able-bodied males. It's actually a mandatory military service, but it is relatively easy to obtain a exemption and do civil services instead. Many young men choose the later option and most of them do a decent job where they are employed. I don't see, why that should be any different with American high-school seniors.

Of course, the German Zivis get a salary similar to that of the drafted soldiers. Is a salary included in the idea for madatory high school volunteers or would they be expected to work in soup kittchens or building projects, while at the same time raising the funds to support themselves? B(Probably, doing it for free would be ok, if it happened for two weeks instead of regular school. But expecting graduates to work for a month or longer without payment after graduation might cause serious financial difficulties for some of them.)

I guess, if there were some money to be earned while chipping in a year of social services, many American High-School graduates would be happy to jump on that option, because it would ease their difficulties of paying for college afterwards...

[hapax]

Honestly, I think that on the whole adolescents tend to be LESS whiny and self-absorbed than most adults. I've worked with teens for many years, and they are by-and-large an idealistic, compassionate, generous species.

The biggest problem with service projects for high school students is not the willingness of the teens, but the cynicism, pessimism, and lack of imagination of the adults who sponsor them. I don't know how many times the teens would propose ideas and projects, only to be told "No, that won't work", "No, we can't afford that," "No, you're not allowed to do that."

When I was working with teen volunteers, my only rules were: 1. Don't spend more than x dollars net (raising money was allowed); and 2. Don't get me fired, you'll like my successor less than me. Those teens did amazing things. They didn't change the world, no, but they changed a tiny patch of it.

I miss them still.

[Kate]

I'm just north of the border up in Toronto Canada and we have had mandatory social service requirements since a few years before I graduated (I don't want to think about how long that is now... 15 years at least), and I have to say that it was a very useful experience especially for those kids raised with a sense of entitlement. When they had never been to a soup kitchen or didn't understand the need for a place like Second Harvest, it was eye opening and I know a few of them stayed involved in charities they wouldn't have heard of otherwise.

As for kids who are already burdened with taking care of families for one reason or another, I knew one who was able to get their 40 hours by helping at the afterschool tutoring/literacy program that a younger sibling attended and another who was given an 'complete' when she was able to demonstrate that she was the sole source of income for her family.

I think that the main point is that it wasn't an onerous duty for most of us, it was learning something entirely new and it forced us to look beyond the suberbian car culture that keeps people seperate in their own bubbles and helped us to see those less fortunate as real people who deserve our help. And that's a lesson that will stick with alot of them far longer than they will remember how to determine the root of a quadratic equation or how many tragedies Shakespeare wrote.

[the opoponax]

kate, you mention 40 hours above. is that 40 hours total? because that's like a week worth of work. i think the US is proposing a longer-term situation.

to be honest, i wouldn't mind seeing some sort of program that required all able-bodied adults (within reason) to do 40 hours of volunteer work per year. i mean that's like a week of your life. unless you're in seriously dire straights, that's not a lot to ask.

[Kate]

It was 40 hours a year every year they were in school while I was there, but I've heard recently they've upped it slightly (maybe 60 hours?). And while yes, that's only one full week of work, when it's fit in around other committments one hour a week that's a full school year committment, or a full saturday for 5 weeks, or sacrificing the entire march break to get the hours in. That's enough to ask of kids, getting them involved without making it onerous imho. It also makes them realize that it *is* a committment and not something that can be knocked out at the last moment without making some REAL sacrifices just when school's at its hardest...

So ya, that's how Ontario is working at keeping kids involved.

[Izzy]

KnightHawk--Most of the stupid bitches you describe, though, wouldn't ever be inclined to help out anyhow, with cash or otherwise. At least, this way, one or two of them might get some idea that there's a wider world out there, and the work would get done. Plus, frankly, I think that promoting the attitude that we *do* perform community service, and that *not* performing said service is unacceptable, would do more for society than gently talking to entitled brats about how it'd be rilly rilly awesome if you helped out the poor.

It's the same principle as most high-school-level subjects, really. Algebra has done me, personally, no good whatsoever in post-high-school life--in fact, I think I've forgotten most of the high school math I ever learned--but I'm sure there were kids in my math class whose lives *would* have been worse, and who probably would contribute less to society, if we hadn't *had to* sit through five hours a week of the quadratic formula. And it's impossible for the teachers, or the kids themselves, to know who that's going to be. So we throw what we consider important knowledge at everyone; some of it sticks, some of it doesn't. Why not include "serving your community" in that knowledge?

[Angelika]

Reading the last few comments, I came to realize that the mandatory service is just about a 40 to 60 hour commitment. So I better add to my previous comment, that for such a short time working for free makes actually better sense.

shannon: Except for tutoring, most of the "in school" service was ridiculous - selling tickets for football games and setting up for the winter dance. I suppose it serves someone, but what good does that actually do for the community that wouldn't be done otherwise?
The school is a community, too. I don't think it matters all that much, whether the service fills the greatest need of the nation or just a need in the local school environment. What matters is, that students can learn that it is normal and good to contribute to the community that surrounds them. (At my highschool they had us picking up the trash on the school grounds and carrying in items for the cafeteria. These duties didn't come with a fancy name, and we didn't like them overly much, but I guess it taught us at least to carry our trash to the waste-basket.)

[Elmo]

Our high school (semi-rural graduated 140 students this year) has had a graduation project requirement for about 10 years. Sometime before the end of the 1st semester of their senior year, they are required to plan, execute, and present the results of a project. The definition of a project is free form -- up to the student to decide. Some do a physical project (build a piece of furniture) but many structure their projects as fund raisers for various community organizations and charities. This is not an onerous requirement but I would hate to see someone try to implement such a program in one of those mega schools with almost 1000 students in each graduating class.

[djmagaro]

Maryland has a "Service Learning" requirement for all its student to graduate from High School. Essentially, it's a form of mandatory volunteerism, and while many students meet the requirements by serving as church ushers and altar servers (we lived in a highly Catholic area), many more students who were poor, lacked transportation (no public transit in rural MD), and/or weren't affiliated with a church were screwed. We teachers found ourselves scambling for ways to get those kids their hours by doing anything from litter clean-up on campus to working on school plays. In the end, most students I talked to - including those who had no trouble meeting their Service Learning requirements - expressed the belief that the requirements themselves did nothing to instil the spirit of volunteerism. I recall one girl saying something to the effect that she would have done her good deeds anyway because that's who she was - while those students who wouldn't have otherwise volunteered view it as another obstacle to be overcome and the forgotten.

One a slightly different note, when my wife was in grad. school to become a teacher, she was required to do over a hundred hours of Service Learning in addition to the perfectly reasonable requirements of student teaching and course work. We called it "Servitude Learning" because of its being mandatory, and frankly, it was utterly ridiculous and condescending to tell an ADULT studying to become a TEACHER that they need to "give back" and "serve the community."

Now, if one takes a Utilitarian approach to all this, I suppose lessons being learned and issues of treating adults (and young adults) as autonomous individuals doesn't matter. After all, 40 more hours worked is 40 more hours, regardless of how the "volunteer" feels about it.

[the opoponax]

Kate -- just to clarify, i wasn't trying to say that the Ontario requirement "isn't enough", or something.

just that it doesn't sound very much like the propositions i've heard for a national service requirement, which all seem to involve 6 months or a year of service, full time. more like doing Americorps or City Year (or a slightly less intense Peace Corps) than simply having an in-community volunteer requirement through high school.

though i do think the program you describe sounds a lot more feasible, and would be a good test program to see if something more intensive really would work or not.

[Bugmaster]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't religious conversion one of the top priorities of mission trips ? I.e., you're not building the school just so that the heathens could have a place to study; you're building that school so that they'd have a place to study and See The Light. I could be wrong, though -- I've never been on a mission trip...

[Angelika]

Bugmaster: You are wrong. At least, if the mission trips of my church are concerned. - The first and foremost purpose of the trips are to help people in need and do what they need to have done. On the one I joined I was mostly occupied disassembling an old porch, while wearing a protective mask. I have no idea how I could have kept a theological discussion going at the same time. The owner was very happy that we did the work - and very happy that he was remembered. Just the plain fact that somebody cares and comes at all, means often more than the actual work accomplished. Our work was organized by the Presbyterian Disaster Relief, so they knew where we came from.

[hapax]

Bugmaster, I can't speak for all mission trips, but no, that's not generally the point of any that I've heard of. There is a certain unpleasant whiff of "white man's burden" about a lot of them, as Fred correctly points out, but the purpose is at least as much about helping those on the mission trips as the communities in which they serve.

[PurpleGirl]

I work for a non-profit which places and supports volunteers to tutor students (among other things) in the NYC public schools. For a period of time during the 1990s we had a "service learning" project using high school students to tutor elementary school students in reading. It was a voluntary program. The results with the elementary students were sketchy, although the high school students seemed to like working with the younger children. Ultimately we had to stop the program because of logistical problems -- we needed adults to supervise all the school children, finding time in the day for the high school students to travel to an elementary school, setting up the tutoring period with the elementary school, etc. (All our school program operate during the school day and are classroom based.) Personally, I think any service programs should be voluntary, include a good orientation about volunteering, involve a satisfying job and outcome; they must also take into consideration the personal situation of the high school student (does the student work, what travel is involved, can they travel easily, etc.) and allow for waivers as necessary.

[Bugmaster]

@angelika, hapax:
Fair enough. For what it's worth, I've heard some Mormon friends of mine describe their mission trips, and it seems like conversion was on the agenda along with everything else -- but maybe Mormons are an exception to the rule in this regard.

[Elahadrun]

I don't know if a mandatory service requirement is the way to go, but there's one possible side effect of it that I'd like to see. As Izzy points out, not everyone uses the Algebra they learn in school, but it's considered essential that our kids are taught algebra. So there are Math teachers, who are trained to teach teenagers algebra, and (the good ones, at least) try to get the kids excited and confident about algebra.

Imagine if your high school had had a Service Teacher (or Coordinator). Say once or twice a week you had class with him/her, and they connected you to programs and resources like local shelters, or people in need like Haitian villages without schools, and kept you on track. "Well, your parents probably won't let you all go to Darfur this summer. Have you thought about writing to people who have the power to influence the situation? Is there a project you'd be interested in doing to support people who have infrastructure established in Sudan?" I think this would be AWESOME.

As hapax says, it's usually the adults who are the killjoys for the kids. If school systems and teachers were suddenly required (and, of course, funded) to create the infrastructure that would teach teenagers that they do have the power to improve people's lives and how they can wisely exercise that power, I think we might have a very different country in 20 years.

[the opoponax]

Bugmaster, an LDS "Mission" is a completely different beast from what most Christians mean when they refer to a "mission trip".

the Mormon Missionaries really are setting out to make conversions. their job while on mission is to meet people and convince them to join LDS, as well as to help out in the existing Mormon community. they might occasionally do a "public service" type thing, but it's usually tied in very closely with strengthening the Mormon presence in the area, with a heavy emphasis on conversion and evangelism.

most Catholic and Protestant groups i'm aware of who talk about going on Mission Trips usually mean that they're going on a trip that will involve some kind of volunteering or public service. sometimes it's very secular (my dad goes to Nicaragua every year with an ecumenical group which provides medical care completely outside of any particular religious framework), other times it might be quasi-religious (for instance a denominational group going down to New Orleans to help rebuild an area church or the homes of co-religionists). but it usually doesn't have much if anything to do with conversion or direct evangelism. it's just doing good deeds. my church growing up used to do their mission trips through Habitat For Humanity, actually.

i guess you could make a case that one secondary role of mission trips is to increase the religious presence in the area, to give locals good associations with a particular faith or denominations. and a lot of the time such groups are hosted through a local church, so it will be quite apparent that their presence has to do with a particular religion. i guess you could get cynical and say that the work mission trip groups do only helps people who share that religion, or helps that particular denomination make more conversions. i.e. building a well on the property of a church so that locals will be tempted to attend, providing services through a church apparatus thus pressuring the needy to become a part of the church community. but that's usually not the way the church groups see it, and it's definitely not a primary motivation in the minds of the people doing the volunteering.

[Bugmaster]

There's no mandatory service requirement that I'm aware of, but most colleges do look for some sort of volunteer work, as a factor they use to decide whether to admit the student to the college. It's just one of many factors, so, for example, if the student is a math genius who invented calculus on his own when he was five years old, then the student would probably be admitted into the math department no matter what -- but, on the average, volunteer work does make a difference.

[the opoponax]

i don't know that that's true, Bug. i did volunteer work in high school, and lots of stuff in a wider sense of "participating in the community". but i didn't emphasize that in any way on college applications, and i got into every school i applied to. because both high schools i attended required some form of community service, it's possible that i didn't need to emphasize it, that information about that came packaged with my transcript from my high schools. but if that was the case, the colleges would have known that said service was not voluntary, which might have made it look less important than some other kid who really took a lot of time out to something more "voluntary".

it may, however, be more vital if one is applying to an ivy league school or something especially competitive. i know most Rhodes scholars seem to have done a lot of that sort of thing (even down to starting nonprofits of their own, or organizing massive local initiatives), and the Fulbright people are more likely to select your proposal if it involves some kind of community work. it probably appeals to the Peace Corps, as well.

[Bugmaster]

@opo:
You're right about "voluntary" service. I think colleges just look at service, period; they don't really care if it was voluntary or not -- although, voluntary service would probably weigh a little bit more in your favor. And yes, AFAIK colleges, and especially prestigious ones, do look at the school on your transcript, so it's possible they know about the community service requirements.

[sievetronix]

To be honest my high school had a requirement for service for graduation. I went to an old age home a few times shot some pool got someone to sign off on the rest of the time I was supposed to do and went on my way.

It didn't even dent my self absorbed prickishness.

You can't mandate maturity.
Not at all, I would gladly make programs to help people as a way to lessen or remove student loan debt.
That is a win win.

[hapax]

Actually, from what I've heard, the point of LDS (and JW) missions isn't so much to convert other people, as to strengthen Mormons in their faith.

Look at the model. You take a small group of idealistic young people at the age when they start seriously questioning the institutions of their youth. You remove them from their families, friends, any place familiar, any support structure or distractions that isn't supplied by that institution. You send them out to strangers to repeat over and over with every bit of sincerity they can muster how that institution is the best, the most, the only important thing in the world. At that point, the strangers will either a) agree with them (unlikely, but will reinforce the message) b) reject them, usually with hostility (more likely, but will reinforce an 'us against them' worldview) or c) ignore them (which will send them back into the arms of the institution as the only source of attention positive or negative). Missions like these are an incredibly effective mechanism for binding people to the church for life.

I am always very very polite and friendly to LDS and JW missionaries.

[the opoponax]

oh, of course they look at the school. but unless the school sends them something to explain their community service policy, just seeing "oh, she graduated from X High" isn't usually enough to get them to tick to "volunteer" box. and knowing you were required to do community service work is not exactly going to make you jump out in the eyes of the admissions people.

personally, i don't think any but the most exclusive colleges in the US look very much at volunteerism unless you did something particularly exciting in that regard, in which case they'll look at it the same way they look at other high school accomplishments. the nice thing about community involvement from a "getting into college" perspective is that if you have no hobbies, interests, or talents that distinguish you in any particular area, you can always fall back on that in terms of looking "well-rounded" on your applications. if you aren't an athlete or a drama kid or the editor of the school paper or involved in student government, and you're not enough of a nerd to have an extracurricular record full of Academic Decathlon and stuff like that, you need something to distinguish you, and volunteer work is a good choice.

[the opoponax]

i'm polite to them as long as they're polite to me. and i'm very rarely rude, just sometimes curt. no, i do not want your pamphlet. no, i do not want you to come in and have a talk about your church. no, there is no better time. no, i am not interested in having anything to do with your group. please go away and take me off your list, kthxbye.

i do have a certain degree of respect for what the LDS missionaries are going through. i'm just honest with myself about what they're doing, and how i feel about that. the primary job of an LDS missionary is to convert people. period, end of story. sure, they definitely get more out of it, and i'm sure the Mormon church has complex interests in having them do this kind of work. but at the level where Mr. Missionary and i interact, he is there to do one thing, and that is to convert me. and i'm not interested, thanks.

the jehovah's witnesses i have no sympathy for whatsoever, and i am often tempted to figure out who it is in my apartment building who keeps slipping tracts under my door and start dropping off all my paper garbage in front of his/hers. i'm sure that in the interests of Jebus, he or she would not mind dropping it off in the recycling room for me.

[Bugmaster]

personally, i don't think any but the most exclusive colleges in the US look very much at volunteerism unless you did something particularly exciting in that regard, in which case they'll look at it the same way they look at other high school accomplishments.

Well, all the colleges I was applying to had a "volunteer work" field on their applications; and my guidance councellors all told me that this field was important. They did say that this was for the purposes of looking "well-rounded", like you said -- but they also said, specifically, that colleges look for community-service-type work in particular, and also for work outside your field. For example, if you're applying for CS, and you were the president of the Computer Club in high school, it won't help you as much as being the president of the Drama Club, and even that won't help you as much as volunteering at the local school kitchen. But that's just my personal experience, I can't claim that it has general applicability.

[Bugmaster]

Heh. Missionaries stopped showing up at my door some time ago. My guess is that this is due to the fact that I was always polite, courteous, ready to engage in pleasant conversation about their faith, and occasionally even had a Bible handy, for those occasions when I needed them to clarify a passage. There are an awful lot of passages in the Bible. An awful lot of really interesting passages. Watching the expression on the missionaries' faces as they read them was a rare pleasure.

Ok, granted, the missionaries came around fairly rarely, so I can't claim to have had any kind of a statistically valid effect on them. But still, it's nice to hope...

[hapax]

opo, you misunderstand. I am not friendly with the missionaries out of sympathy for their situation or their message. I am polited, interested, and engaged for exactly the same reason that Bugmaster is.

There is no better way to undercut their mission than to show them that some "gentiles" are in fact nice, Bible-reading, God-fearing people who live happy lives and can think for themselves.

It's sort of like finding your minister in the liquor store, at the porn rack, with his pants around his ankles. Only in reverse.

[twig]

The only Mormon missionaries I've ever had the opportunity to interact with looked EXACTLY like Meryl and Milly from the anime 'Trigun'.

Something like this: http://www.sivosten.com/gfx/broi2/dblm.jpg

It was fantastic. I think they wondered why I hung around so long.

[the opoponax]

oh, of course the guidance counselors tell you it's important.

i just don't think the admissions people count it very much unless you did something exceptional. just like i'm sure my stint as Vice President of the Spanish Club probably didn't weigh one way or the other, either.

of course, if you're applying to really competitive programs, all of that sort of thing will help you because you've got to have SOMETHING that helps you stand out from the 10 zillion other CS kids who want to go to MIT or CalTech. Being president of the Drama Club isn't better in an absolute sense, it just makes the admissions folks remember your application.

but in terms of the way most Americans apply to university (picking schools that aren't the most competitive in the country), the majority of your extracurricular career doesn't matter that much. especially little one-off things like "volunteer camp counselor at a day camp for inner city youth" or "member of the Prom planning committee". for the most part, you get into college because you have on-paper proof that you are up to the task and can handle the material. not because you are a good person or you demonstrate a typical high school kid's interest in stuff.

i do, on the other hand, feel like my extracurricular work that actually pertained to what i wanted to do in college probably helped me get in, because it basically said "this person has a genuine interest an aptitude in a particular area." and sure, maybe some of the other stuff i did made me stick out in an admissions person's mind. and hey, i'm glad i did all of it, even the mandatory "volunteering", and even Spanish Club.

i just don't think we should frame community service as "a thing that will get you into college", because at the usual levels it won't, and that's not why you should be doing it anyway.

[Jeff]

twig: Meryl and Milly from the anime 'Trigun'.

Looks like 90% of the anime "people" I've seen. I hate, loathe and despise anime, so perhaps that should be taken into account.

[the opoponax]

i'm by no means advocating being rude to missionaries (ok, except for that garbage factory in my building). i'm just very aware of why they're knocking on my door. it's not my job to have little scriptural heart-to-hearts with them, in hopes that i'll change their minds. to be honest, i don't care what they believe, or what their opinions of me are. if they want to think "man, those pagans sure are a bunch of psychotic bitches", by all means, be my guest.

again, i'd never do anything deliberately rude, mean, or hurtful to a missionary. but my response is generally either "sorry, not interested. ever. period. please stop ringing my doorbell" or just to ignore them completely. the latter being the tactic for when they've apparently decided to ignore my polite response of the former. after one "please don't come here anymore", i will just not answer the door when i see you through the peephole.

[hapax]

Opoponax, I didn't mean to say everyone should do that. It just happens to be one of my hobbies.

If you really just want the JW's to go away, next time just say, "Sister, brother, you don't want to talk to me. I've been disfellowshipped."

Doesn't work on Mormons, though.

[Bugmaster]

it's not my job to have little scriptural heart-to-hearts with them, in hopes that i'll change their minds.

Yeah, I never even dreamed that I could change their minds. I was just messing with their heads for sport, much as hapax was. It's free entertainment !

[connie]

Mandatory volunteer work in Lebanon is called the Service to the Flag. It is a requirement immediately following high school graduation. 15 months in the armed forces for ALL. No way for the children of Congressmen to avoid it. Pacifists work in the medical corps. Those going on to college have only lost 1 school year--and so have the other students in their graduating class.

I think this would be nice for the U.S. Perhaps Congress would not so eagerly vote to start/continue a war if their children were part of the service. Some Congressmen may be happy their children are being shot at, but most would be cautious about declaring war.

[Bugmaster]

To all the anime-haters out there, here's an approximate recommended viewing list, off the top of my head. I can virtually guarantee that none of the animes on this list are even remotely similar to the anime you love to hate (though I'll try to keep this list fairly eclectic, as far as subject matter is concerned). Hating all anime is like hating all movies... sure, it's possible, and most movies are indeed crap, but chances are that there are really some good movies out there that you're missing out on.

• Serial Experiments Lain
• Now and Then, Here and There
• My Neighbour Totoro
• Neon Genesis Evangelion
• Spirited Away
• Gasaraki
• Jin-Roh
• Princess Mononoke
• Last Exile (though this one is closer to "typical" anime than the others)
• Revolutionary Girl Utena (takes a while to really start messing with your head, though)
• Planetes (best of all the recent animes, IMO)
• Whisper of the Heart
• The Cat Returns (kid stuff, but still fun... horrible title translation)

There are many others; this is just a file listing (recited from memory) of what I have on my current backup drive.

Keep in mind that, unless you speak Japanese, you want subtitled anime, not dubbed. Dubbed anime is the best-known agent that can drive an average human being into mindless, berserker rage in under 10 seconds. Additionally, most official subtitles for anime are of extremely bad quality; what you want to do is find a good fansubber group (Live-eviL and Solar are not bad), and see if they have your anime fansubbed.

[Scott]

This should also be a part of what Matt refers to as the "public purpose" of any kind of national service program. This additional purpose is what separates things like the Peace Corps or AmeriCorps from other more professional and specialized development efforts. The service corps may not be as efficient as a more professionalized "development strategy," but they exist to promote and achieve additional goals that the development strategy does not address. They exist, in part, to ensure that our national character remains capable of supporting those other, more targeted and efficient, development efforts.

Ah yes, that last ditch defense of govt (yes, I saw you said the feds weren't the best ones to do this) action - the forcible indoctrination in your beliefs makes the poor results worthwhile.

In Germany there is a mandatory service for the able-bodied males.

It's called "invading Poland".

[hapax]

Scott, are you feeling okay? The best invective you can come up with is to evoke Godwin's Law?

[Bugmaster]

I know how he feels. I'd feel exhausted too, if I had to face my own robotic double in every post. Oh crap, now I gave people ideas...

[Drak Pope]

How would you know how he feels? I see no BugmasterBot harrying you at every turn.

[Bugmaster]

Good point. I should've said, "I can somewhat relate to how he feels in a hypothetical fashion".

Hm. I remember when I was a kid, they told me I had to write everything in cursive up until I graduated from fifth grade or they wouldn't accept it at all. This was supposedly to ingrain us into the habit of writing cursive and get us some experience.

And of course, that's the primary reason that I haven't written anything in cursive outside of my signature since then. It's hardly intentional anymore, but man, people really underestimate how stubborn some people can be.

I'm not sure how much people like me matter in the great scheme of these sort of things, but I do know that if I'd been forced into community service in high school, it wouldn't've been pretty. Especially being out in the middle of goddamn nowhere where the most likely possibility for it would be joining the prison gangs in cleaning up the highways...

[Jeff]

that last ditch defense of govt (yes, I saw you said the feds weren't the best ones to do this)

\\me wonders how Scott keeps his head from exploding?

[twig]

Bugmaster;

You forgot Cowboy Bebop. And Gasaraki is so boring I wanted my eyes to crawl out of my head to spare me the pain. And Satoshi Kon is unbelievably amazing. And I couldn't make it through Now and Then, Here and There - too painful, even if I made it through Saikano, somehow.

Hating 'anime' is like hating 'books' but whatever.

[twig]

Also, the ending of Last Exile sucked, which was terribly, unbelievably unfair for how awesome the getting there was.

Yeah, thread hijack. Wev.