The Ethical Implications of "White Coats on Every Kid"

"Doing good is not about doing something, it's about doing the right thing." 

Did you do good? What good?

How do you determine whether you did good or not?

What does sustainability have to do with it?

Was your service project sustainable?

What could you do differently in the future? 

What is you biggest critique of the service project?

Four students and I started White Coats on Every Kid (WCOEK) last year when I was in grade 11. This became part of the Global Issues Network. This club provides underprivileged primary school students with hands-on science experiments to foster an appreciation for scientific discovery and promote interest in continued education. The members including myself do realize that it is not realistically possible to teach the students science in the purest form of education. We have not enough materials and no proper curriculum. However the biggest hinderance is that the volunteer students are not experienced teacher. Still, knowing that education is one of the greatest problem in developing countries, we decided to tackle the problem in another direction.

There are many organizations, rather big or small, where they teach different classes. We thought that the action is thoughtful, but is not that good. Rather than simply giving some education, we decided to change them: to make them continue studying on their own. There is a saying that "if a fisher gives a fish to a poor, then he is feeding for lunch. However if the fisher teaches the poor how to fish, then he is feeding for the lifetime." or something like this... This is what we wanted to do. Making it sustainable. This is what we members find the club good and proud of.

It is many times tiring after the activity. I am also lazy to prepare ahead and go to school on Saturday morning. Even with all these things, what really makes me feel good is seeing kids having fun and saying that they want to come back for more experiments. We might be using their Saturday morning for our own interest. We do not even know if they want to attend school more for science classes. However we believe that it is really good especially that they do not get to have such experience in their school. After the science experiment, if students, or even just one, feel interested in science and education, then our goal has been met. We want to encourage the students to go to school more often and learn more.

As mentioned, WCOEK started last year and that we did not have a fixed curriculum. So what we did was just do some fun experiments with the kids. So we can probably gather the experiments we did in different fields of science or learning objective, so that when students learn science with the experiments, they can understand scientific concepts with ease. Also, we have kids ranging from grade 1 to 6. We are finding easy experiments so that the young ones can follow. However if we divide the group such as 1 to 2, 3 to 4, and 5 to 6, then we can have more focused topics. We can also give presentation to whomever is in charge of the children about the importance of our project, so that they can be more supportive.

The biggest critique other than the fact that there is no fixed curriculum is that many members are not working hard enough. It is only a few members who really care about WCOEK, while there are more than 20 members. The time management might be not effective. We would gather on Saturday morning, but probably spend more than an hour doing nothing much... We have to be more productive. Also, like my case, some students are not good in dealing with young children. I easily get annoyed by the children, even if I know that I should be more patient and friendly. So we need practice in teaching skills too, which can be prepared before with the help of lower school teachers.