Editorial: Student philanthropy shows lessons beyond the classroom. It’s our role to support it
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Kids learn a lot of important lessons in school.
They learn the alphabet and simple arithmetic. They learn to read and, for some, to love it. They learn to make baking soda volcanoes. They learn about the scientific method, what happened in 1776 and how to find Nebraska on a map.
But there are other things kids are picking up in school that show a lot of hope for the future.
They are picking up a good habit: philanthropy.
Schools and fundraising have gone hand-in-hand since the creation of the bake sale. We all know there will be parent-teacher organization sales. There will be junior class sales. There will be cheerleaders selling candy bars and athletes selling raffle tickets and band members selling hoagies. So many hoagies.
However, increasingly more fundraisers are not about students raising money for their own activities. They go beyond getting the band to Florida or getting the French club to Paris. It’s about kids raising money for causes outside their needs.
Plum School District is having its 23rd annual Make-a-Wish Telethon from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. today, streamed on the district homepage, Facebook, X (formerly Twitter) and YouTube. Penn-Trafford’s is from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on YouTube and Facebook.
Franklin Regional’s Friday telethon — 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Comcast Channel 21 and YouTube — will raise money for the high school’s Mini-THON Club — which, in turn, raises money for the Four Diamonds children’s cancer charity. Four Diamonds is a great model for young people to give back, built on Penn State’s annual THON event, touted as the largest student-run philanthropy in the world.
These aren’t the only examples. Kids are raising money for other people regularly these days, finding ways to put funds toward things as local as the victims of the Rustic Ridge explosion and as global as the war in Ukraine.
Is there any better education we can give our children than the ability to recognize pain, to show empathy and to extend relief?
Is there any better example our children can give us than to exemplify those ideals?
If you want to show you’ve learned something from these kids, do what you can to support their efforts.