The Peace Corps

(This is the first in a series of editorials dealing with major policy problems that will confront the new Kennedy Administration.)

Of all Senator Kennedy's campaign proposals, none elicited a more enthusiastic response among students than the idea of a "peace corps," first mentioned prominently in a Kennedy speech in San Francisco November 2. Since the election, however, Kennedy and his aides have not come far in making the program anything more specific than some sort of youth service in underdeveloped countries. Most discussion has centered on the peripheral though important issue of draft exemption, with not enough attention going to exactly what the peace corps is going to do.

Yet if the peace corps in practice is going to fulfill any of its great promise in principle, it must be something more than the good will of several thousand ardent young Americans. With or without draft exemption, the manpower is probably available and willing to serve, but serious thought is required to determine how it can best be put to use. What kind of peace corps the Kennedy Administration wants, then, is much more important than whether the participants will be granted exemption or deferment from the draft, for youth service per se will solve no problems for the underdeveloped nations and will win no friends for the United States.

What a peace corps can and cannot do will be determined in large measure by what the potential beneficiaries most urgently need, and by the somewhat limited qualifications of the participants. Young people, recently graduated from college, obviously cannot provide the advanced technical advice required to help help build a dam or to plan an economy; here aid must still depend on more mature professional personnel. On the other hand, the nations of Africa and Asia have quite enough unskilled labor, and a number of young Americans in an overseas "work camp" will accomplish nothing the underdeveloped countries couldn't do by themselves with native labor. A worthwhile youth service program must find its proper place somewhere between the sophisticated technical assistance it cannot provide and the unskilled labor that is not needed.

Where this happy medium will be found is most likely in the realm of education and training of semi-skilled personnel. The developing nations are aiming above all at self-sufficiency, and they prefer aid programs that will train natives to do jobs to those that bring in foreigners to handle every phase of an operation. American college graduates are capable of instructing native workers in certain simple skills, and can also teach English, mathematics and the sciences in the secondary schools (the great source of semi-skilled manpower). Graduates of agricultural or engineering schools can be particularly useful in their fields, and no special training would be required to teach in the African secondary schools. These educational programs, then, are both what the underdeveloped countries need and what American youth is able to provide.

Since the only training the peace corps members would need would be some amount of orientation on the area in which they are to work, the active participation of the native governments should be sought in preparing the students for their jobs. In fact, as the underdeveloped nations are the best judges of their own educational needs, their advice should be used at every stage of the program--from selection of participants through their actual assignment. In order both to do the most good and to reap the most good will, this country must be sure it is giving the Africans and Asians what they want and need.

Once the Kennedy Administration decides what it wants the peace corps to do, it must still face up to the politically explosive question of the draft. As first proposed, the peace corps was viewed, quite correctly, as an alternative to the draft; it was argued that there should be a way other than military service for a young person to discharge his duty to his country. In the discussion since the election, however, everyone seems to be shying away from the concept of draft exemption. Some say that draft deferment would in effect accomplish the same thing, without raising a comparable political storm. Others report that students are willing to serve whether exemption is granted or not.

All of these arguments, of course, evade the issue: the fact is that the peace corps, if carried out properly, is a real and meaningful form of service to the country, and as such it should be considered an alternative to the armed forces. If draft-dodging is what is feared, any effective selection process (and a good one is essential if the program is to work) will weed out the draft dodgers, and anyway most lazy people would prefer six months in the Army to two years teaching school in tropical Africa.

The withdrawal of perhaps five thousand people from military service would scarcely cripple a defense establishment based more on technical skill than on numbers of men in arms, and these five thousand would surely do more good in the peace corps than in basic training. If draft exemption runs into too much political opposition (and thus endangers the entire program), the least the Administration should insist upon is effective exemption in the form of deferment until age 26.

The peace corps, though not a new idea with Kennedy, got its first real push from him during the campaign. He has shown a continuing interest in the program, and hopefully will keep on pushing it after his Inauguration. The peace corps will never be anything terribly large or expensive, but it can become very important, for aid in the form of people willing to help, rather than in the form of money, is often more useful and more appreciated.