A Formative Experience by Mark Goyder

Mark Goyder is the Founder Director of Tomorrow's Company. This piece is written especially for this blog...

The one thing I wish for my own offspring and for people everywhere is that they will meet someone who inspires them as Alec Dickson inspired me.

I was 17 years old, sitting in a waiting room for a gap year interview when Alec walked in and asked me who I was. He looked nondescript, with a shiny dome on his head framed by white hair. But there was an intense look in his eye and determined drawl in his voice.

As Alec asked about me, I felt my own self-esteem rising. Clearly he believed me capable of almost anything. I started to believe it myself.

And so I embarked on seven months as a full-time “catalyst” volunteer with CSV (Community Service Volunteers) – the most formative experience of my life.

I was away from exam revision, school rules and restrictions. Suddenly I was an independent adult, with a role in the community in a small town in Shropshire where people needed me. I lived in a hostel for those with learning difficulties: I had access to all the local schools and my task was to connect people with time to give with people who needed their help or company.

Never mind the details of what I did. Enough that nobody asked for a qualification; nobody prejudged me; and I discovered what I was good at (mixing, getting people to listen, seeing opportunities) and what I was bad at (disciplining anyone, keeping records, focusing on a single task)

You cannot think your way into a new way of acting. You need to act your way into a new way of thinking.

That’s what the experience of community service did for me. I saw it happen to others, including a group of young offenders who didn’t have the choice.

Then I noticed something about many of the adults now in their 70s. When I asked them what shaped them they kept talking about how narrow their lives had been until they were forced to do national service. Suddenly they were forced to mix; forced to readjust their prejudices; forced to try things they thought they could not do; forced to learn skills they thought they weren’t interested in.

I spent years trying to persuade political parties to create voluntary community service schemes. We have these now.

I am now convinced that we need to overcome our hang-ups about compulsion. We should make national service/community service compulsory.

To earn entitlement to all the benefits that the state offers (pension, social security, etc) everyone between the age of 18 and 25 would be obliged to undertake a period of service to the community.

Let them choose what they do and where they do it and when, within that window of time they do it. But make it a requirement. For a determined 20% there would be no benefit: these are either the ones who have always known what they want to do with their lives, or the ones who are utterly determined not to give any new experience that is imposed on them a chance. For 60% it would be a great learning experience, albeit negative - finding out one or two things they are not good at. For 20%, it would be as it was for me, a revelation of the potential their formal schooling had never alerted them to.

That’s the balance sheet from the point of view of the individual. Now look at it from the point of view of society. This is living citizenship. Getting stuck in to make your community in some way a better place. Learning the hard way that you do not get something for nothing. Whether upper class or underclass, seeing how the other half lives and learning that the world is more than a consumer magic roundabout ready to dish out all the material goodies you need. What better way of getting Pakistanis and Poles, atheists, Moslems, and Goths to recognise they are all part of one community and they need each other?

Our society is only what we make of it. It isn’t made or protected by anything that elected governments do. Ultimately it is made and maintained by us. We all of us need to learn this before it is too late.

Years ago I was part of an exercise that did all the sums. Measured conventionally, a national community service scheme is prohibitively expensive. But imagine the savings from reducing by 10% the money we spend on the juvenile courts and prison system; and increasing by 10% the motivation of just 20% of our citizens; reducing by 10% the numbers of people with no interest in contributing to the economy or society.

Not everyone is fortunate enough to have their Alec Dickson moment. But collectively we need a handbrake turn in our social attitudes. We need a new focus on the potential each one of us has to contribute to enriching our society. For me compulsory community service represents the best catalyst. Oppose it by all means. But what is your alternative?

Mark Goyder