In times of crisis, it’s easy to feel helpless. What can I do? What difference can I make?

When faced with the coronavirus pandemic, and the threat that fatalities will grow exponentially over the coming weeks, it is hard to see what an individual could do in response. Meeting basic standards of hygiene hardly feels heroic.

“What did you do in the great pandemic, Daddy?”

“Well, my dear, I caught it, killed it and binned it.”

So it is wonderful to see so many people offering support to their neighbours, delivering food to doorsteps, fetching necessary prescriptions for those who can’t get out, and phoning those lonely in their isolation.

I find myself cheered and moved by these simple acts of kindness. It seems that, at their core, people are good, and capable of selfless service to others. 

I hope we teachers are developing these traits in our students. Character education has provoked lots of discussion in recent years, yet the idea that school does not just shape minds, but hearts as well, is nothing new. 

Encouraging students to act in the service of others is thoroughly embedded into practice. In cases such as the International Baccalaureate, service is built into the curriculum: students can’t pass their level 3 qualification without it. The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, on the other hand, is a well-respected extra: a way to go above and beyond the normal run of academic lessons.

We tend to think that an education that encourages service to others is a good thing. But why - or rather for whom - is it good? In whose service is this work done?

The first, and obvious, answer is that service is undertaken for the benefit of those whom the students help. Service isn’t service unless some purpose or person is served. 

But there is a problem with this. Anyone who has had to supervise students being helpful knows that it does not always work out this way.

A number of years ago, I was responsible for a small group of students helping at a local charity shop run by formerly homeless people. We were given a simple job to do in the back, sorting through donations. 

The students were really motivated to help. Having met former beneficiaries of
the charity, they recognised this project as something worth supporting. After we had spent two hours sorting through stuff, a volunteer came to see how we were getting on. It turned out that the pile he had vaguely pointed to was right next to the pile we had, in fact, been sorting. Our work had been absolutely no help at all, but it was time to get on the bus and go home.

Though despondent, the students gained lots from that experience. They had come together as a team, they had done something dull with good humour, they had learned to value a cause, they had met new people, and they had formed new, more empathetic understandings of homelessness. Although our work that day helped no one else, it was undoubtedly of huge value to them.

And, if we’re talking about character education, isn’t it right that it’s the students we are focused on? If this act of service was meant to build kinder, more thoughtful adults, it may well have achieved that. Maybe service in school is there to encourage good traits: it is for the student, and not primarily the person helped.

Moreover, in a climate where anxiety is reportedly rife among our young charges, one of our main focuses as teachers must be their wellbeing. Helping others is a very good way for them to help themselves. The Ancient Greeks knew this. You can’t, they said, be
a total scumbag and still be truly happy. 

If the wisdom of the ages were not enough to convince us of this, Martin Seligman’s Perma model of happiness - comprising positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning and accomplishments - has demonstrated it more quantitatively. One of the five ingredients of Seligman’s “authentic happiness” is meaning. He has shown that deriving meaning from causes bigger than ourselves is key to wellbeing. So, if we want students to be happy, encouraging service is clearly important. 

A while back, a representative from a local food bank came to talk at school. Afterwards, colleagues were saying how good it would be for our students to be able to volunteer there. It was clear, though, that they were not saying this because they thought our students were particularly well placed to be of actual help. It would be so good for them - the students - they said, to volunteer.

But hang on: is this really moral? Seen
in this way, service of others is a kind of commodity, which schools are providing for the betterment of their students. Just as a school might boast a sports centre or
a theatre, it can similarly provide facilities for developing the student’s character. But isn’t this using the unfortunate as a means to an end, which is the moral refinement of the more fortunate?

One of my students once used a great phrase to describe this failing: “poverty tourism”. In the worst cases, fortunate kids - whose family and friends can afford it - are sponsored to run, swim, climb things or cut off all their hair. With the proceeds, they travel far away, beyond their comfort zone, largely in order to conclude that the people they were working with “were terribly poor” and that “something should be done”.

It gets worse still. Sometimes students are just as keen to serve others as they are about doing double PE in a hailstorm. Service to others therefore often comes with a reward of some kind. Students may do it because they get badges or awards, or because “it’ll look good on my CV”.

Aristotle would not worry too much about this. He saw cajoling as an inevitable part of moral education. Being virtuous means building your practical wisdom and cultivating good traits. None of us is born virtuous. We have to be trained. Carrot or stick, we have to be encouraged to do the right thing. 

But it all pays off in the end. Over time, Aristotle said, we will grow to love good things for their intrinsic value, and to have those traits ourselves.

So service might have to be selfish in the short term for the sake of growing the good guys of the future.

But is this expecting enough of our students? If Greta Thunberg has shown nothing else, it’s that we should not underestimate the capacity of young people to believe in causes, take action and collaborate to achieve goals that transcend their daily lives. The school climate strikes have demonstrated that, like anyone else, our students want to act for causes they believe in. They are not just playing at it, but can provoke a response and effect change.

Aristotle was, of course, right that children sometimes need encouragement to grow moral, but that doesn’t mean that this should characterise the nature of the service students undertake or lower our expectations for what students can contribute. 

Maybe it is the word “service” that is the problem. It implies a relationship that goes one way. Our students turn up to serve others. The “others” are there to be served. The beneficiaries have no say in what they supposedly get out of the relationship. The word “service”, conceptually, does not seem to allow for them to be partakers in the success of the projects undertaken on their behalf.

This is why so much service can seem so patronising: it is. So it is, therefore, our duty, in conceiving such projects in schools, to avoid this one-sidedness.

Despite the fact that, in the most obvious ways, my students’ work at the charity shop was pointless, it was nevertheless a very positive experience. Looking at this unlikely case can offer some basic guidelines for getting “service” right.

The project was conceived as a partnership. The charity needed some help, and we had hands to offer.

Those with whom we were working were former beneficiaries of the charity who deserved (and got) the dignity and respect of anyone instructing us in a task. This was a powerful corrective against any sense that we were “there to help”.

It encouraged empathy, not sympathy: students felt they walked a step or two
with those who understood homelessness first-hand. They saw for themselves that bad things can happen to good people. It was not like a visit to the zoo, to peer through the glass at something unknown.

This is not a bad start, but still there is more to say. Having been so useless, we got on the bus, went home, and never went back. Service needs to be sustained. It is this that makes the partnership meaningful. Above all, the key is reciprocity. 

The answer comes, therefore, in recognising our common humanity. Service is not for our students, and it is not something done for or, let’s face it, to the (perceived) unfortunate. It is about calling on our students to recognise shared humanity with others - something that is in the service of everyone. 

Clare Jarmy is head of academic enrichment and Oxbridge, and head of religious studies and philosophy, at Bedales School in Hampshire

This article originally appeared in the 3 April 2020 edition of Tes magazine under the headline “Student volunteering: are you being served?”