ABSTRACT
In a 1996 op ed essay in The New York Times, Scott G. Bullock charges President Clinton with “distorting the concept of volunteering” by calling for mandatory high school community service. Like many other critics, Bullock thereby commits himself to the view that service is about volunteering and about building altruistic character rather than about fostering civic identity and cultivating a sense of the relationship between rights and responsibilities. Service education is not tantamount to the claim that service is education, but represents the belief that service plus education can help create contributing, responsible citizens. One can view community service programs as requiring three sorts of evaluation: an assessment of the program’s impact on the community itself, an assessment of its administrative efficiency, and an assessment of the impact of service on volunteers and service workers.
