Teaching the Art of Giving
That sinking, end-of-summer feeling is familiar. The traditional school year is starting. That means more than textbooks, homework and waking early to make the school bus. It also means a never-ending series of marketing lessons for students who are inveigled into raising cash for their pinched campuses. Opportunities to win a limousine ride if they sell the most magazine subscriptions. Candy sales between the lessons on nutrition and teenage obesity. And surely everyone out there needs a few more rolls of wrapping paper. At least when children ask for a pledge for their jog-a-thon, they’re getting a little exercise.
The aunts, neighbors and parents’ co-workers sigh, but no one has the heart to protest too mightily.
Those fund-raisers pay for things like safety scissors and lab equipment and construction paper. They keep teachers from digging too deeply into their own pockets so that kids, even those whose parents can’t afford crayons, can have supplies for learning.
Still, it’s reached the point where a little school reform is needed for fund-raisers as well as for reading instruction. Instead of buying that dozenth costly roll of wrapping paper, the community could pledge a quarter for every 10 minutes spent reading to bedridden elderly people in a nursing home. The students would get some reading practice, the school would get the money and some lonely people would be happier.
Or how about a dollar for every bag of trash the students pick up from the beach or a wildlife preserve? That’s a lesson about the environment and a cleaner world, as well as an enriched school.
Or 10 cents for every head of cabbage they pick at a field that grows produce for the hungry. A transformation in just one fund-raising campaign each year at each school would make a difference.
No doubt about it, putting together a fund-raiser like this takes more care than a commercially managed wrapping paper sale. Students have to be supervised and kept safe in the less-controlled world off campus. Schools manage this all the time with field trips, though. And surely a walk along the beach to pick up garbage is as safe as going around the neighborhood with magazine brochures.
Helping out schools is fine. Learning the art of giving instead of the art of selling is even better. We as a community need our children’s energetic good works more than we need oversized, overpriced chocolate bars.
