45% of Students Do Volunteer Work for Record
By Park Si-soo
Staff Reporter
About half of surveyed secondary school students here were found to have participated in volunteer activities for practical purposes.
According to Rep. Ahn Min-seok of the United New Democratic Party Wednesday, 45 percent of students in secondary schools surveyed said they took part in volunteer activities to do the amount of service time their schools recommended.
The lawmaker conducted the survey on a total of 1,297 people, including 1,037 students, at six major cities nationwide including Seoul, Gwangju, Daegu, Daejeon, Busan.
Meanwhile, 51.3 percent of high school students admitted they had attempted to inflate the actual service time done.
Most teachers agreed that the ongoing service program failed to meet its initial purpose.
The government first added the volunteer activity program to the school curriculum in 1996. Although the program was improved in 2000, many educators still voice discontent over the program, saying the current system only considers the amount of service time and does not evaluate the quality of the students' activities.