Holiday giving necessary, must be meaningful

For the past several years, the schoolwide Second Harvest Food Drive has been extended for lack of enough contribution; many students seem to lack the time or thoughtfulness to donate. On the other end of the spectrum, big hitters such as social studies teacher Robert Freeman’s second period class have put losers to shame by donating thousands of pounds of food every year.

Both extremes, however, point to a general lack of meaningful charity and illustrate a shortage of true generosity toward the less fortunate.

According to Second Harvest Donor Services Specialist Ali Duncan, one in four people in Santa Clara County are food insecure, meaning they live in hunger. Many forget that the school is in close proximity to thousands of people who are in dire need and can hardly celebrate the holidays.

As one of the school’s goals is to encourage students to be respectful and mature individuals, staff members should see it as their responsibility to motivate students and themselves to place importance on giving back to the community in a valuable way.

But even for those who do donate, giving should be more meaningful.

“We collect money from everybody and then we go buy the most food we can get,” Freeman said. “We chose flour because everybody has to eat bread. … It’s a combination of being really generous and really smart.”

Choices like these seem to lose something essential when donors become preoccupied with numbers rather than connecting emotionally to the parties involved.

The inherent spirit of giving, and a genuine desire to connect with and help the poor, is lost when donors obsess over numbers. There is a difference between fun competition and self-congratulatory competition.

It is not only important to donate quantity, but also quality. Freeman’s classes pay one dollar for every five pounds of flour they donate, a cheap price compared to the cost of canned food or other donations that could better serve those in need. Flour is of little nutritional value and is not on the list of foods that Second Harvest prefers, according to the food bank’s website.

Methods such as these yield the highest numbers, and for that the school should be grateful. However, if teachers turned their energy and charisma to showing students the emotional value behind giving, the donations would be more impressive.

Students and teachers should donate, but they should also take care that they give off a sense of heartfelt compassion for the less fortunate. Simple bulk donations of items like flour do not offset the school’s overall lack of generosity, as donors lose something when they become focused on winning and enhancing their reputations through their gifts.

True compassion is different from cutthroat competition based solely on numbers and not a desire to win. Teachers should encourage students to empathize with the poor and purchase foods from the bank’s most-needed list. The school should emphasize more meaningful charity, as the importance of giving is an idea that will follow students for the rest of their lives.