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Steve says...
The strangeness began about 20 minutes into the meeting when a number of the assembled academics launched an all-out orchestrated attack on the survey [entitled "A Measure of Commitment: Volunteering for Serious Social Problems."], contending that it was wrong to single out any type of volunteering as being of more importance than any other. The parent, for example, who volunteered to coach his own child at Little League was building just as much "social capital" as the person who volunteered to feed the homeless. To conduct a survey of just those volunteers who worked with the very needy and to publicize their work would result in denigrating the contribution made by all other volunteers who also, in their own way, enriched society. It might, for example, imply that what they did wasn’t "serious."

All volunteering is thus equally "worthy."

I’ve pondered this over the years and about the only thing I can say is that it strikes me as an argument that accomplishes the difficult feat of being perfectly logical while remaining totally irrational.

So, some propositions to ponder or to disagree with:

Susan says...
It’s been a while since Steve and I disagreed on a topic enough to warrant a side-by-side "Points of View." And while I DO agree with much of what Steve says and applaud his saying it I also have some different perspectives to offer.

It sounds totally reasonable to want to direct volunteering effort at serious social problems (which I refer to wryly as SSPs). But who decides what those SSPs are? You may think it’s a case of "I can’t define it, but when I see it I know what it is," but I wonder. My concerns fall into two categories:

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