Forget volunteering. Parents are now being conscripted - do the time or pay the fine.It's a sad reflection of the way society is heading that the local Aussie rules club is now billing parents who fail to sell enough chocolates in the annual chocolate drive.
It makes a nonsense of the very term drive which the dictionary defines as " a united effort to accomplish some specific purpose, esp. to raise money, as for a charity". Charity may begin at home but it now seems that it ends there to.
We are not being asked to lend a hand for our child's school or club we are being told to turn up or cough up.
The Freddo fundraiser is far from an isolated case.
A quick search of the internet will reveal an education system that is making parents pay for a growing number of services once done by volunteers.
There are kindies where you "volunteer" for classroom duty a day a term or pay $40 each time you miss your turn.
One school charges families a $130 a year "school grounds assistance bond" which is refunded if you work four full working bees or assist in the tuckshop for 40 hours.
Another slugs parents a massive $220 a year P and F levy which can be worked off if parents do a minimum of two and a half hours work per term in the tuckshop, gardens, resource centre or at working bees.
Problem is that the reason people can't or don't help out is not just that both parents are too busy out earning the big bucks for anyone to be bothered to cut sandwiches in the tuckshop.
What about the single parent family, or the low-income families working two jobs to make ends meet, or the mum with younger kids at home or families caring for sick or elderly parents?
It hardly seems fair to fine these families for failing to sell enough chocolate frogs. Forget time poor, the new user-pay attitude to charity makes us all poorer as a society.
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