What good is "voluntary" service which is required?

Joanne Jacobs writes about a push to require students to perform service in Serve or flunk:

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Barack Obama wants to make federal funds contingent on schools and colleges requiring students to perform community service. He proposes 50 hours a year in middle and high school and 100 hours a year in college.
Actually, many young people volunteer voluntarily — often through their church, sometimes in political campaigns like Obama’s. Others work after school to help pay the rent, cover their expenses or save for college. In college, many students risk academic failure because they’re spending too much time working and not enough studying.
A Colorado superintendent, Cindy Stevenson, wondered how service would be defined. Who decides what counts?
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I agree with Cindy Stevenson. This proposal is fraught with problems.

But the fundamental question for me is why in the world should a government school be trying to force children to do voluntary service? Public schools should be focusing on education. Families, churches, and other organizations should be where children learn about helping others.

Oh, check out the comments on Joanne's post, there are 94 as of now. I liked Marshall's comment, the first comment:

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My local school has a graduation requirement that includes 20 hours of “volunteer” service.When my daughter ran up against that, I suggested several things she could do:
1) Campaign against school bond initiatives.
2) Hand out anti-CTA literature at school.
3) Start a school rifle team.
(and several others along these lines)
Sadly, she chose none of these.
“Mandatory volunteer” reeks of NewSpeak
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