"Community Days" at schools. Anybody any thoughts on these ?

[SCOUT909]

My Son who is 13 has come home with a letter last night from school saying on Friday they are having a "Community Day" which is a non-lesson day. He has to meet at school at 12 noon and the school will take pupils to a local open space/park/lakes and they are going to "clear up other peoples rubbish - to help the community".... he has been told to wear old clothes, this will last for 2 hours and then they can go home for the rest of the day. If they dont attend they will get a 5 hour detention spaced over next week. I cannot actually believe it. So he misses school lessons for a whole day to go and clear up other peoples rubbish? Am I missing the point here, anybody else think this is bang out of order?

[sbalas]

A very good suggestion from the school. Everyone should get to know what it is to lead a whole life cleaning up 'other peoples rubbish'. When we know what difficulties are faced by other people in performing their duties, we will (I feel) throw less litter and behave more like a responsible citizen.

And then, losing one day's school in a whole year will not ruin the studies in any significant way. Children waste as much time playing pranks on their mates.

[ojread2]

All of the above is moot anyway
It doesn't work

[Bobicle39]

Certainly a good idea in principle, if exam time has passed, but has to be correctly managed. Wearing old clothes is one thing: will the children be briefed on what to be wary of?; will each manageable group have a "supervisor" of whom they can enquire, and who can deal with "problematic" items?; are suitable "grabbers" and disposable gloves being provided? If yes to these, then it is an idea which could do a lot of good and find widespread application. Any acceptable means of reducing litter is beneficial healthwise and for local finances. Not sure about the detention though, and pupils who may have physical problems need to be involved in some other community activity -maybe, after the work has been done, collating a summary of what was collected or risk being "labelled" - you know what I mean. And no - I'm not in Teaching or Health and Safety!

[biddycatt]

Of course its not out of order--I wish this was done by all schools- One lesson free day wil[ make no difference to his education. and hopefully he will be learn the selfishness of chucking litter on the streets

[hc4361]

These are supervised 13 year olds that would have been provided with gloves, pickers and bags and briefed on what to pick and what to not touch.

Any 13 year old should be capable of this.