Real LEARNing

Roll up those sleeves, kids

It may be the most overlooked part of LEARNS, but may prove invaluable for generations. The governor’s attempt to push, pull and prod Arkansas into the top categories in K-12 education—or at least get the state out of the bottom categories—has been in the news columns lately. If you’re a regular reader of the paper, you know her attempt—called LEARNS—has been in the opinion columns, too. Chalk up another one today.

Starting with this year’s ninth graders, who will graduate in 2027 if they’re on time, LEARNS requires 75 hours of community service. Thankfully we don’t have to do the math because Cynthia Howell, the news-side education expert, already has: “That single Class of ’27, an unusually large class of more than 39,000 students statewide, has the potential to generate almost three million hours of community work over their four years of ninth through 12th grades. And similar numbers of service hours could be expected from subsequent classes of graduates.”

To put too fine a point on it: That’s three million hours of community service, per class, that Arkansas didn’t have before.

Schools can define community service. The Little Rock School District already has a list of partners, including Arkansas Foodbank, American Red Cross, Arkansas Special Olympics, Little Rock Animal Village, and several others.

Certain readers will be old enough to remember when there was a mandatory public service—namely the United States draft. This isn’t that. Helping collect and sort at a diaper pantry isn’t marching toward gunfire. Doubtless we’ll have to explain that again to those who oppose this requirement, or maybe just LEARNS in general.

A required public service—local or national—has always struck some of us as: How could this ever be a bad thing? It can be argued (as we sometimes do) that a public service requirement for school, or, say, an Eagle Scout rank, is an appropriate way to create a common bond among Americans of all stripes. This is not an overly burdensome requirement for high schoolers. It might be more eye-opening for some students than any math class.

The LEARNS Act requires high school graduates to earn—what a concept!—75 hours, but there is no maximum. Anybody want to bet that, through this rule, some high schooler might get involved in the Special Olympics and never want to get out of it? Or that time spent at a pound inspires a once nearly uninspirable kid to become a veterinarian?

This beats a lot of what we have seen offered as electives in high school. (“Most men would feel insulted if it were proposed to employ them in throwing stones over a wall, and then in throwing them back, merely that they might earn their wages. But many are no more worthily employed now.”—Henry David Thoreau.)

We were struck by one of the quotes that Cynthia Howell gathered up in her reporting the other day. It came from a faculty member at Sylvan Hills High in Sherwood. We hope you’ve read far enough here to see it again:

“Most students don’t know where to start when you tell them, ‘Hey, you need community service hours.’ They don’t know what that means. It’s a blank look you get from the students.”

Which might best explain why the community service requirement will do so much good. Not only for all those outfits that look to gain from three million hours of help, but also for all the young people of Arkansas’ public schools.

With this service requirement, they’ll get so much more than a diploma out of school. They might get an education.