Because our nation is breaking down and is in need of service.
To me this is another case where the American people need to step up and stand together to strengthen our fracturing nation. Part of that is having a discussion, about the need for asking young Americans in the verge of adulthood to spend a couple of years serving our nation.
I think one of the leading causes of our current disunion, is that we just don’t know each other anymore. Most people don’t move far from home for their entire lives. We have not had a great national mixing since the 1940s call up during World War Two, and in the many years since we have become locally entrenched, and we don’t know our fellow countrymen anymore. That is certainly my opinion.
I think one cure to that would be national service. Just talking about it is a good first step. And as part of that first step, I will also clarify, that I am calling for civic service, not military service.
One thing I noticed about myself when I was a teenager and about pretty much every other teenager, I’ve met in all the years since then, is that people getting out of high school rarely have a true clue about what they want to do “when they grow up.” They just know that the next step is supposed to be, go to college, or get a job, or maybe go into military service, it’s just the next step and you stumble through, you follow along.
I went to college, I hated it, I dropped out. I worked a few jobs; warehouse, auto shop, then bank. I went back to college at night for a while, then went back to college full-time, finished college, got a job and went on with my life.
Back when I was getting out of high school I was clueless and even thought about joining the military and even went and spoke to a few different recruiters, all of whom talked the chubby, undersized kid from private school out of joining the service.
So, I think that instead of these kids just stumbling around to take the next step toward getting on the treadmill of life, to see what happens next and hoping everything works out. I think instead of that, after high school in those weird couple years between 18 and 20, could instead be an amazing time of learning and self-growth, for young people passing into adulthood. Learning and self-development without the confines and pressure or school or the regimentation of a first full-time work experience. National Service can help ease and inform this path by providing real life experience through a series of hands-on immersive service adventures.
The amazing thing is we have had excellent programs like this in America for years. The AmeriCorps program https://americorps.gov/ has been around since the 1990s and the Peace Corps https://www.peacecorps.gov/ has been around since the 1960s, we just need to promote these programs to today’s teens and show them that there are other options beyond the next step on the treadmill.
