What's Happening to the Peace Corps?

ARNOLD R. ISAACS '61 spent last summer in the Ashanti of Ghana as a participant in Operation Crossroads-Africa a research assistant in a study evaluating the participants' Recently, he participated in the Washington Con- on the Peace Corps. A History and Literature major, he Leverett House.

everyone knows by now, student response to President proposal for a Peace Corps has been overwhelmingly And let no one underestimate the significance of this Intelligently developed, competently administered, and operated, an assistance program such as the Peace Corps tremendous potential for real achievement. A manpower short- the university-graduate level does exist in the under-developed and in many areas it is critical. American college graduates be capable of filling that gap, especially in the three major of education, public health, and agriculture. If their skills are effectively by national planning and development boards, and selection, training, and supervision is wisely administered country and overseas, there is every reason to believe that the young people can do a valuable and urgently needed job.

Peace Corps is, of course, an experiment. Nothing quite like been attempted before. It is now in its most preliminary no team is in the field, no concrete or measurable implementation of the proposal is available for observation. Naturally it is to Criticize an institution that has as yet no definite shape Yet there is an increasing danger that the potentialities Peace Corps may be dissipated by misuse and misinformation. of the Corps that is presently being disseminated through official and unofficial channels is full of impressions that may dangerous and misleading both for Americans and for citizens nations. In several specific areas, an attempt should be immediately to correct those impressions, if necessary even any concrete steps are taken to implement the Peace Corps

Technical level on which the Peace Corps will operate has been obscured in the mass of favorable and critical publicity which has received. A recent CBS-TV broadcast presented as a of the Peace Corps films of a team of American students sledge-hammers on a Guinean hillside. Magazine articles newspaper stories about voluntary work-camp projects have blurred the public conception of the Peace Corps and its The image presented in these articles-and the recent Wash- Conference did little to correct it--is of a sort of international with a college diploma. Sooner or later, the Peace Corps will against the inescapable reality that manual labor is not its that it cannot succeed on the model of exchange work-camp like the American Friends Service Committee camps or on Crossroads-Africa.

Peace Corps must be prepared to do a job that cannot be done citizens, and it must be prepared to do it well. Its whole on must be different from that of the short-term work-camp There is no shortage of labor in the underdeveloped world, is a shortage of technical and professional skills, on top and levels. It is these skills which will be requested by foreign and the Peace Corps must address itself to Americans them. A mere desire to serve is sufficient for participants -camp, where good-will is the primary component and the essentially a channel to intercultural contact.

Corps members will be working for the most part in technical fields, where their duties will be more or less the same as these of professionals anywhere in the world. A science teacher in Nigeria or the Philippines does not swing a pick any more than a science teacher in the United States. He follows a classroom-plus-preparation routine just as any teacher. The physical hardships of a Peace Corps job lie in the realm of adjusting to a different climate and different physical surroundings. These adjustments depend on good health, not on good muscles. The spectacle of a Peace Corps "boot camp" in Puerto Rico supervised by an athletic director, of all people, is nothing short of ludicrous. Nor is the imposing list of athletic skills listed on the Peace Corps application blank. If the purpose of the Puerto Rico camp is merely to acquaint the recruit with the sights, sounds, and smells of a tropical climate, why not begin the process of acclimation in the country to which he is assigned? The expense incurred by shipping back those individuals who cannot adjust to the physical environment cannot possibly equal that of operating a permanent camp in Puerto Rico.

What has been obscured in these shenanigans is the basic fact that physical adjustment is the least of the problems confronting the Peace Corps. In almost all areas to which Peace Corps members may be sent, Europeans have been living for many decades. They have arrived at ways and means of living in a tropical area. With a little education and a little common sense, the risk of disease or debilitation need not be any greater for the Peace Corps member than they would be in this country. The emotional adjustment is by far the more important and the more worrisome problem. To a greater or lesser degree, every Peace Corps member will experience what is called "culture shock," "cultural isolation," or a loss of cultural cuts and supports. An adequate physical examination should suffice for the selection board to determine who can or cannot tolerate changes in climate. No one has as yet developed an examination to determine who can survive with the least damage the inevitable period of loneliness, frustration, and psychological uprootedness which will accompany any prolonged overseas experience.

Mr. Shriver and other have repeated endlessly the principle that Peace Corps members will live on the same level as the local peasant, that he will live in the same kind of housing, that he will try in every way to become a member of the community in which he is working. To a limited extent, of course, this is both necessary and desirable. The Corps member should obviously be flexible and open to new experience. He should realize, however, that a simple-minded attempt to become an African or an Asian peasant by adopting the outward forms of their life will not accomplish any constructive purpose. No matter what he does, he is not an African; he will remain an American, and no mortification of the flesh will change that fact. Leaving aside for the moment considerations of health and nutrition, it is certain that any American who tries to live in a grass hut and subsist on yams and termites will soon find himself ostracized by his colleagues at his own professional level, who will invariably live on a standard inconceivably higher than that of the peasant and who will in most cases be quite jealous of their own status and position. He will also find that the villagers, instead of living him, will quite rightly dismiss him as a lunatic.

Implicit in the hair-shirt approach is a curiously inverted or disguised condescension. It assumes that the peasant has no tolerance, no appreciation of differences, no standards of hospitality. It assumes that the villager would demand complete conformity to his own mores before he would accept the Peace Corps member as an individual. Both these assumptions are sheer nonsense. The peasant may be illerate, but he is not stupid, and he is as keenly aware as any anthropologist of the social divisions in his own world. He will expect the American teacher to live as a teacher, not as a peasant. The proper and desirable course of action for the Peace Corps mem- bers is for him to live on approximately the same level as citizens of the host country who have equivalent training and hold equivalent positions.

Above all, he should not feel called upon to sacrifice all his most deeply imbedded cultural tastes and traits in the name of intercultural good will. After all, nobody has suggested that the Peace Corps member, in an effort to cement intercultural relations, should enter into negotiations for the sale of his sister. No one could expect him to violate in this way his deepest values and beliefs. For the same reason, nobody should suggest that he be required beyond the limits of necessity to give up the habits and tastes of a lifetime of eating, drinking, working and playing. Tact, sensitivity, and consideration are certainly needed. Every Corps member will encounter situations in which he must be flexible and perhaps willing to go more than halfway in giving up his own preferences. But generally he will find that others are willing to make concessions too. He will be most effective if he is able to be himself. All our experience shows that one can reach across cultural boundaries most successfully if he is standing on the solid ground of self-knowledge and self-respect. The man who stands on the shaky and uncertain ground of self-rejection and martyrdom, the man who is not a fish and yet is trying desperately not to be a fowl, has no footing from which to reach across any boundaries.

Finally, in the area of policy, the Peace Corps may be in serious error in its announced policy of complete American financial responsibility for all Peace Corps operations. It is necessary and desirable that host governments should have the major authority for assignment, since most volunteers would have to be integrated into national planning and development programs. It would be wise to accompany this authority with a certain amount of financial responsibility, since authority without investment is the surest way to ineffectiveness and irresponsible behavior. An incompetent local administrator, or one who wishes for his own purposes to embarrass the United States overseas program (and there are plenty of these, in some areas) is far less likely to be overruled or replaced if his incompetence or malevolence does not cost his own government any money. system of United States payment and foreign control may possibly create a situation in which Peace Corps volunteers are assigned and just as carelessly dismissed if they do not success.

A sharing of financial responsibility would probably ensure a effective use of Peace Corps members, and in most cases it would not involve any unduly large expense for the host government. West African government were to pay the salaries of a hundred secondary-school teachers, for example, the total cost would to something like $300,000 a year, surely a drop in the bucket as budgets, even in Africa, are going these days. The United States would quite properly assume the cost of selection, transportation, and all expenses which would not be incurred by host government in hiring teachers from its own nationals.

The Peace Corps is going to confront some of these facts goes into operation. It is going to have to deal with them, to adjustments and changes. It will no doubt encounter other which no one can foresee at this time. No one should suggest this any grounds for abandoning the program, for there is a massive to be done and the Peace Corps should be able to do it. The this point is the creation of what might be called an "institute ideology" which will make the job more difficult. Some hard, thinking is urgently needed, and it would be nice to hear some realistic talk out of Washington in the near future

everyone knows by now, student response to President proposal for a Peace Corps has been overwhelmingly And let no one underestimate the significance of this Intelligently developed, competently administered, and operated, an assistance program such as the Peace Corps tremendous potential for real achievement. A manpower short- the university-graduate level does exist in the under-developed and in many areas it is critical. American college graduates be capable of filling that gap, especially in the three major of education, public health, and agriculture. If their skills are effectively by national planning and development boards, and selection, training, and supervision is wisely administered country and overseas, there is every reason to believe that the young people can do a valuable and urgently needed job.

Peace Corps is, of course, an experiment. Nothing quite like been attempted before. It is now in its most preliminary no team is in the field, no concrete or measurable implementation of the proposal is available for observation. Naturally it is to Criticize an institution that has as yet no definite shape Yet there is an increasing danger that the potentialities Peace Corps may be dissipated by misuse and misinformation. of the Corps that is presently being disseminated through official and unofficial channels is full of impressions that may dangerous and misleading both for Americans and for citizens nations. In several specific areas, an attempt should be immediately to correct those impressions, if necessary even any concrete steps are taken to implement the Peace Corps

Technical level on which the Peace Corps will operate has been obscured in the mass of favorable and critical publicity which has received. A recent CBS-TV broadcast presented as a of the Peace Corps films of a team of American students sledge-hammers on a Guinean hillside. Magazine articles newspaper stories about voluntary work-camp projects have blurred the public conception of the Peace Corps and its The image presented in these articles-and the recent Wash- Conference did little to correct it--is of a sort of international with a college diploma. Sooner or later, the Peace Corps will against the inescapable reality that manual labor is not its that it cannot succeed on the model of exchange work-camp like the American Friends Service Committee camps or on Crossroads-Africa.

Peace Corps must be prepared to do a job that cannot be done citizens, and it must be prepared to do it well. Its whole on must be different from that of the short-term work-camp There is no shortage of labor in the underdeveloped world, is a shortage of technical and professional skills, on top and levels. It is these skills which will be requested by foreign and the Peace Corps must address itself to Americans them. A mere desire to serve is sufficient for participants -camp, where good-will is the primary component and the essentially a channel to intercultural contact.

Corps members will be working for the most part in technical fields, where their duties will be more or less the same as these of professionals anywhere in the world. A science teacher in Nigeria or the Philippines does not swing a pick any more than a science teacher in the United States. He follows a classroom-plus-preparation routine just as any teacher. The physical hardships of a Peace Corps job lie in the realm of adjusting to a different climate and different physical surroundings. These adjustments depend on good health, not on good muscles. The spectacle of a Peace Corps "boot camp" in Puerto Rico supervised by an athletic director, of all people, is nothing short of ludicrous. Nor is the imposing list of athletic skills listed on the Peace Corps application blank. If the purpose of the Puerto Rico camp is merely to acquaint the recruit with the sights, sounds, and smells of a tropical climate, why not begin the process of acclimation in the country to which he is assigned? The expense incurred by shipping back those individuals who cannot adjust to the physical environment cannot possibly equal that of operating a permanent camp in Puerto Rico.

What has been obscured in these shenanigans is the basic fact that physical adjustment is the least of the problems confronting the Peace Corps. In almost all areas to which Peace Corps members may be sent, Europeans have been living for many decades. They have arrived at ways and means of living in a tropical area. With a little education and a little common sense, the risk of disease or debilitation need not be any greater for the Peace Corps member than they would be in this country. The emotional adjustment is by far the more important and the more worrisome problem. To a greater or lesser degree, every Peace Corps member will experience what is called "culture shock," "cultural isolation," or a loss of cultural cuts and supports. An adequate physical examination should suffice for the selection board to determine who can or cannot tolerate changes in climate. No one has as yet developed an examination to determine who can survive with the least damage the inevitable period of loneliness, frustration, and psychological uprootedness which will accompany any prolonged overseas experience.

Mr. Shriver and other have repeated endlessly the principle that Peace Corps members will live on the same level as the local peasant, that he will live in the same kind of housing, that he will try in every way to become a member of the community in which he is working. To a limited extent, of course, this is both necessary and desirable. The Corps member should obviously be flexible and open to new experience. He should realize, however, that a simple-minded attempt to become an African or an Asian peasant by adopting the outward forms of their life will not accomplish any constructive purpose. No matter what he does, he is not an African; he will remain an American, and no mortification of the flesh will change that fact. Leaving aside for the moment considerations of health and nutrition, it is certain that any American who tries to live in a grass hut and subsist on yams and termites will soon find himself ostracized by his colleagues at his own professional level, who will invariably live on a standard inconceivably higher than that of the peasant and who will in most cases be quite jealous of their own status and position. He will also find that the villagers, instead of living him, will quite rightly dismiss him as a lunatic.

Implicit in the hair-shirt approach is a curiously inverted or disguised condescension. It assumes that the peasant has no tolerance, no appreciation of differences, no standards of hospitality. It assumes that the villager would demand complete conformity to his own mores before he would accept the Peace Corps member as an individual. Both these assumptions are sheer nonsense. The peasant may be illerate, but he is not stupid, and he is as keenly aware as any anthropologist of the social divisions in his own world. He will expect the American teacher to live as a teacher, not as a peasant. The proper and desirable course of action for the Peace Corps mem- bers is for him to live on approximately the same level as citizens of the host country who have equivalent training and hold equivalent positions.

Above all, he should not feel called upon to sacrifice all his most deeply imbedded cultural tastes and traits in the name of intercultural good will. After all, nobody has suggested that the Peace Corps member, in an effort to cement intercultural relations, should enter into negotiations for the sale of his sister. No one could expect him to violate in this way his deepest values and beliefs. For the same reason, nobody should suggest that he be required beyond the limits of necessity to give up the habits and tastes of a lifetime of eating, drinking, working and playing. Tact, sensitivity, and consideration are certainly needed. Every Corps member will encounter situations in which he must be flexible and perhaps willing to go more than halfway in giving up his own preferences. But generally he will find that others are willing to make concessions too. He will be most effective if he is able to be himself. All our experience shows that one can reach across cultural boundaries most successfully if he is standing on the solid ground of self-knowledge and self-respect. The man who stands on the shaky and uncertain ground of self-rejection and martyrdom, the man who is not a fish and yet is trying desperately not to be a fowl, has no footing from which to reach across any boundaries.

Finally, in the area of policy, the Peace Corps may be in serious error in its announced policy of complete American financial responsibility for all Peace Corps operations. It is necessary and desirable that host governments should have the major authority for assignment, since most volunteers would have to be integrated into national planning and development programs. It would be wise to accompany this authority with a certain amount of financial responsibility, since authority without investment is the surest way to ineffectiveness and irresponsible behavior. An incompetent local administrator, or one who wishes for his own purposes to embarrass the United States overseas program (and there are plenty of these, in some areas) is far less likely to be overruled or replaced if his incompetence or malevolence does not cost his own government any money. system of United States payment and foreign control may possibly create a situation in which Peace Corps volunteers are assigned and just as carelessly dismissed if they do not success.

A sharing of financial responsibility would probably ensure a effective use of Peace Corps members, and in most cases it would not involve any unduly large expense for the host government. West African government were to pay the salaries of a hundred secondary-school teachers, for example, the total cost would to something like $300,000 a year, surely a drop in the bucket as budgets, even in Africa, are going these days. The United States would quite properly assume the cost of selection, transportation, and all expenses which would not be incurred by host government in hiring teachers from its own nationals.

The Peace Corps is going to confront some of these facts goes into operation. It is going to have to deal with them, to adjustments and changes. It will no doubt encounter other which no one can foresee at this time. No one should suggest this any grounds for abandoning the program, for there is a massive to be done and the Peace Corps should be able to do it. The this point is the creation of what might be called an "institute ideology" which will make the job more difficult. Some hard, thinking is urgently needed, and it would be nice to hear some realistic talk out of Washington in the near future

Peace Corps is, of course, an experiment. Nothing quite like been attempted before. It is now in its most preliminary no team is in the field, no concrete or measurable implementation of the proposal is available for observation. Naturally it is to Criticize an institution that has as yet no definite shape Yet there is an increasing danger that the potentialities Peace Corps may be dissipated by misuse and misinformation. of the Corps that is presently being disseminated through official and unofficial channels is full of impressions that may dangerous and misleading both for Americans and for citizens nations. In several specific areas, an attempt should be immediately to correct those impressions, if necessary even any concrete steps are taken to implement the Peace Corps

Technical level on which the Peace Corps will operate has been obscured in the mass of favorable and critical publicity which has received. A recent CBS-TV broadcast presented as a of the Peace Corps films of a team of American students sledge-hammers on a Guinean hillside. Magazine articles newspaper stories about voluntary work-camp projects have blurred the public conception of the Peace Corps and its The image presented in these articles-and the recent Wash- Conference did little to correct it--is of a sort of international with a college diploma. Sooner or later, the Peace Corps will against the inescapable reality that manual labor is not its that it cannot succeed on the model of exchange work-camp like the American Friends Service Committee camps or on Crossroads-Africa.

Peace Corps must be prepared to do a job that cannot be done citizens, and it must be prepared to do it well. Its whole on must be different from that of the short-term work-camp There is no shortage of labor in the underdeveloped world, is a shortage of technical and professional skills, on top and levels. It is these skills which will be requested by foreign and the Peace Corps must address itself to Americans them. A mere desire to serve is sufficient for participants -camp, where good-will is the primary component and the essentially a channel to intercultural contact.

Corps members will be working for the most part in technical fields, where their duties will be more or less the same as these of professionals anywhere in the world. A science teacher in Nigeria or the Philippines does not swing a pick any more than a science teacher in the United States. He follows a classroom-plus-preparation routine just as any teacher. The physical hardships of a Peace Corps job lie in the realm of adjusting to a different climate and different physical surroundings. These adjustments depend on good health, not on good muscles. The spectacle of a Peace Corps "boot camp" in Puerto Rico supervised by an athletic director, of all people, is nothing short of ludicrous. Nor is the imposing list of athletic skills listed on the Peace Corps application blank. If the purpose of the Puerto Rico camp is merely to acquaint the recruit with the sights, sounds, and smells of a tropical climate, why not begin the process of acclimation in the country to which he is assigned? The expense incurred by shipping back those individuals who cannot adjust to the physical environment cannot possibly equal that of operating a permanent camp in Puerto Rico.

What has been obscured in these shenanigans is the basic fact that physical adjustment is the least of the problems confronting the Peace Corps. In almost all areas to which Peace Corps members may be sent, Europeans have been living for many decades. They have arrived at ways and means of living in a tropical area. With a little education and a little common sense, the risk of disease or debilitation need not be any greater for the Peace Corps member than they would be in this country. The emotional adjustment is by far the more important and the more worrisome problem. To a greater or lesser degree, every Peace Corps member will experience what is called "culture shock," "cultural isolation," or a loss of cultural cuts and supports. An adequate physical examination should suffice for the selection board to determine who can or cannot tolerate changes in climate. No one has as yet developed an examination to determine who can survive with the least damage the inevitable period of loneliness, frustration, and psychological uprootedness which will accompany any prolonged overseas experience.

Mr. Shriver and other have repeated endlessly the principle that Peace Corps members will live on the same level as the local peasant, that he will live in the same kind of housing, that he will try in every way to become a member of the community in which he is working. To a limited extent, of course, this is both necessary and desirable. The Corps member should obviously be flexible and open to new experience. He should realize, however, that a simple-minded attempt to become an African or an Asian peasant by adopting the outward forms of their life will not accomplish any constructive purpose. No matter what he does, he is not an African; he will remain an American, and no mortification of the flesh will change that fact. Leaving aside for the moment considerations of health and nutrition, it is certain that any American who tries to live in a grass hut and subsist on yams and termites will soon find himself ostracized by his colleagues at his own professional level, who will invariably live on a standard inconceivably higher than that of the peasant and who will in most cases be quite jealous of their own status and position. He will also find that the villagers, instead of living him, will quite rightly dismiss him as a lunatic.

Implicit in the hair-shirt approach is a curiously inverted or disguised condescension. It assumes that the peasant has no tolerance, no appreciation of differences, no standards of hospitality. It assumes that the villager would demand complete conformity to his own mores before he would accept the Peace Corps member as an individual. Both these assumptions are sheer nonsense. The peasant may be illerate, but he is not stupid, and he is as keenly aware as any anthropologist of the social divisions in his own world. He will expect the American teacher to live as a teacher, not as a peasant. The proper and desirable course of action for the Peace Corps mem- bers is for him to live on approximately the same level as citizens of the host country who have equivalent training and hold equivalent positions.

Above all, he should not feel called upon to sacrifice all his most deeply imbedded cultural tastes and traits in the name of intercultural good will. After all, nobody has suggested that the Peace Corps member, in an effort to cement intercultural relations, should enter into negotiations for the sale of his sister. No one could expect him to violate in this way his deepest values and beliefs. For the same reason, nobody should suggest that he be required beyond the limits of necessity to give up the habits and tastes of a lifetime of eating, drinking, working and playing. Tact, sensitivity, and consideration are certainly needed. Every Corps member will encounter situations in which he must be flexible and perhaps willing to go more than halfway in giving up his own preferences. But generally he will find that others are willing to make concessions too. He will be most effective if he is able to be himself. All our experience shows that one can reach across cultural boundaries most successfully if he is standing on the solid ground of self-knowledge and self-respect. The man who stands on the shaky and uncertain ground of self-rejection and martyrdom, the man who is not a fish and yet is trying desperately not to be a fowl, has no footing from which to reach across any boundaries.

Finally, in the area of policy, the Peace Corps may be in serious error in its announced policy of complete American financial responsibility for all Peace Corps operations. It is necessary and desirable that host governments should have the major authority for assignment, since most volunteers would have to be integrated into national planning and development programs. It would be wise to accompany this authority with a certain amount of financial responsibility, since authority without investment is the surest way to ineffectiveness and irresponsible behavior. An incompetent local administrator, or one who wishes for his own purposes to embarrass the United States overseas program (and there are plenty of these, in some areas) is far less likely to be overruled or replaced if his incompetence or malevolence does not cost his own government any money. system of United States payment and foreign control may possibly create a situation in which Peace Corps volunteers are assigned and just as carelessly dismissed if they do not success.

A sharing of financial responsibility would probably ensure a effective use of Peace Corps members, and in most cases it would not involve any unduly large expense for the host government. West African government were to pay the salaries of a hundred secondary-school teachers, for example, the total cost would to something like $300,000 a year, surely a drop in the bucket as budgets, even in Africa, are going these days. The United States would quite properly assume the cost of selection, transportation, and all expenses which would not be incurred by host government in hiring teachers from its own nationals.

The Peace Corps is going to confront some of these facts goes into operation. It is going to have to deal with them, to adjustments and changes. It will no doubt encounter other which no one can foresee at this time. No one should suggest this any grounds for abandoning the program, for there is a massive to be done and the Peace Corps should be able to do it. The this point is the creation of what might be called an "institute ideology" which will make the job more difficult. Some hard, thinking is urgently needed, and it would be nice to hear some realistic talk out of Washington in the near future

Technical level on which the Peace Corps will operate has been obscured in the mass of favorable and critical publicity which has received. A recent CBS-TV broadcast presented as a of the Peace Corps films of a team of American students sledge-hammers on a Guinean hillside. Magazine articles newspaper stories about voluntary work-camp projects have blurred the public conception of the Peace Corps and its The image presented in these articles-and the recent Wash- Conference did little to correct it--is of a sort of international with a college diploma. Sooner or later, the Peace Corps will against the inescapable reality that manual labor is not its that it cannot succeed on the model of exchange work-camp like the American Friends Service Committee camps or on Crossroads-Africa.

Peace Corps must be prepared to do a job that cannot be done citizens, and it must be prepared to do it well. Its whole on must be different from that of the short-term work-camp There is no shortage of labor in the underdeveloped world, is a shortage of technical and professional skills, on top and levels. It is these skills which will be requested by foreign and the Peace Corps must address itself to Americans them. A mere desire to serve is sufficient for participants -camp, where good-will is the primary component and the essentially a channel to intercultural contact.

Corps members will be working for the most part in technical fields, where their duties will be more or less the same as these of professionals anywhere in the world. A science teacher in Nigeria or the Philippines does not swing a pick any more than a science teacher in the United States. He follows a classroom-plus-preparation routine just as any teacher. The physical hardships of a Peace Corps job lie in the realm of adjusting to a different climate and different physical surroundings. These adjustments depend on good health, not on good muscles. The spectacle of a Peace Corps "boot camp" in Puerto Rico supervised by an athletic director, of all people, is nothing short of ludicrous. Nor is the imposing list of athletic skills listed on the Peace Corps application blank. If the purpose of the Puerto Rico camp is merely to acquaint the recruit with the sights, sounds, and smells of a tropical climate, why not begin the process of acclimation in the country to which he is assigned? The expense incurred by shipping back those individuals who cannot adjust to the physical environment cannot possibly equal that of operating a permanent camp in Puerto Rico.

What has been obscured in these shenanigans is the basic fact that physical adjustment is the least of the problems confronting the Peace Corps. In almost all areas to which Peace Corps members may be sent, Europeans have been living for many decades. They have arrived at ways and means of living in a tropical area. With a little education and a little common sense, the risk of disease or debilitation need not be any greater for the Peace Corps member than they would be in this country. The emotional adjustment is by far the more important and the more worrisome problem. To a greater or lesser degree, every Peace Corps member will experience what is called "culture shock," "cultural isolation," or a loss of cultural cuts and supports. An adequate physical examination should suffice for the selection board to determine who can or cannot tolerate changes in climate. No one has as yet developed an examination to determine who can survive with the least damage the inevitable period of loneliness, frustration, and psychological uprootedness which will accompany any prolonged overseas experience.

Mr. Shriver and other have repeated endlessly the principle that Peace Corps members will live on the same level as the local peasant, that he will live in the same kind of housing, that he will try in every way to become a member of the community in which he is working. To a limited extent, of course, this is both necessary and desirable. The Corps member should obviously be flexible and open to new experience. He should realize, however, that a simple-minded attempt to become an African or an Asian peasant by adopting the outward forms of their life will not accomplish any constructive purpose. No matter what he does, he is not an African; he will remain an American, and no mortification of the flesh will change that fact. Leaving aside for the moment considerations of health and nutrition, it is certain that any American who tries to live in a grass hut and subsist on yams and termites will soon find himself ostracized by his colleagues at his own professional level, who will invariably live on a standard inconceivably higher than that of the peasant and who will in most cases be quite jealous of their own status and position. He will also find that the villagers, instead of living him, will quite rightly dismiss him as a lunatic.

Implicit in the hair-shirt approach is a curiously inverted or disguised condescension. It assumes that the peasant has no tolerance, no appreciation of differences, no standards of hospitality. It assumes that the villager would demand complete conformity to his own mores before he would accept the Peace Corps member as an individual. Both these assumptions are sheer nonsense. The peasant may be illerate, but he is not stupid, and he is as keenly aware as any anthropologist of the social divisions in his own world. He will expect the American teacher to live as a teacher, not as a peasant. The proper and desirable course of action for the Peace Corps mem- bers is for him to live on approximately the same level as citizens of the host country who have equivalent training and hold equivalent positions.

Above all, he should not feel called upon to sacrifice all his most deeply imbedded cultural tastes and traits in the name of intercultural good will. After all, nobody has suggested that the Peace Corps member, in an effort to cement intercultural relations, should enter into negotiations for the sale of his sister. No one could expect him to violate in this way his deepest values and beliefs. For the same reason, nobody should suggest that he be required beyond the limits of necessity to give up the habits and tastes of a lifetime of eating, drinking, working and playing. Tact, sensitivity, and consideration are certainly needed. Every Corps member will encounter situations in which he must be flexible and perhaps willing to go more than halfway in giving up his own preferences. But generally he will find that others are willing to make concessions too. He will be most effective if he is able to be himself. All our experience shows that one can reach across cultural boundaries most successfully if he is standing on the solid ground of self-knowledge and self-respect. The man who stands on the shaky and uncertain ground of self-rejection and martyrdom, the man who is not a fish and yet is trying desperately not to be a fowl, has no footing from which to reach across any boundaries.

Finally, in the area of policy, the Peace Corps may be in serious error in its announced policy of complete American financial responsibility for all Peace Corps operations. It is necessary and desirable that host governments should have the major authority for assignment, since most volunteers would have to be integrated into national planning and development programs. It would be wise to accompany this authority with a certain amount of financial responsibility, since authority without investment is the surest way to ineffectiveness and irresponsible behavior. An incompetent local administrator, or one who wishes for his own purposes to embarrass the United States overseas program (and there are plenty of these, in some areas) is far less likely to be overruled or replaced if his incompetence or malevolence does not cost his own government any money. system of United States payment and foreign control may possibly create a situation in which Peace Corps volunteers are assigned and just as carelessly dismissed if they do not success.

A sharing of financial responsibility would probably ensure a effective use of Peace Corps members, and in most cases it would not involve any unduly large expense for the host government. West African government were to pay the salaries of a hundred secondary-school teachers, for example, the total cost would to something like $300,000 a year, surely a drop in the bucket as budgets, even in Africa, are going these days. The United States would quite properly assume the cost of selection, transportation, and all expenses which would not be incurred by host government in hiring teachers from its own nationals.

The Peace Corps is going to confront some of these facts goes into operation. It is going to have to deal with them, to adjustments and changes. It will no doubt encounter other which no one can foresee at this time. No one should suggest this any grounds for abandoning the program, for there is a massive to be done and the Peace Corps should be able to do it. The this point is the creation of what might be called an "institute ideology" which will make the job more difficult. Some hard, thinking is urgently needed, and it would be nice to hear some realistic talk out of Washington in the near future

Peace Corps must be prepared to do a job that cannot be done citizens, and it must be prepared to do it well. Its whole on must be different from that of the short-term work-camp There is no shortage of labor in the underdeveloped world, is a shortage of technical and professional skills, on top and levels. It is these skills which will be requested by foreign and the Peace Corps must address itself to Americans them. A mere desire to serve is sufficient for participants -camp, where good-will is the primary component and the essentially a channel to intercultural contact.

Corps members will be working for the most part in technical fields, where their duties will be more or less the same as these of professionals anywhere in the world. A science teacher in Nigeria or the Philippines does not swing a pick any more than a science teacher in the United States. He follows a classroom-plus-preparation routine just as any teacher. The physical hardships of a Peace Corps job lie in the realm of adjusting to a different climate and different physical surroundings. These adjustments depend on good health, not on good muscles. The spectacle of a Peace Corps "boot camp" in Puerto Rico supervised by an athletic director, of all people, is nothing short of ludicrous. Nor is the imposing list of athletic skills listed on the Peace Corps application blank. If the purpose of the Puerto Rico camp is merely to acquaint the recruit with the sights, sounds, and smells of a tropical climate, why not begin the process of acclimation in the country to which he is assigned? The expense incurred by shipping back those individuals who cannot adjust to the physical environment cannot possibly equal that of operating a permanent camp in Puerto Rico.

What has been obscured in these shenanigans is the basic fact that physical adjustment is the least of the problems confronting the Peace Corps. In almost all areas to which Peace Corps members may be sent, Europeans have been living for many decades. They have arrived at ways and means of living in a tropical area. With a little education and a little common sense, the risk of disease or debilitation need not be any greater for the Peace Corps member than they would be in this country. The emotional adjustment is by far the more important and the more worrisome problem. To a greater or lesser degree, every Peace Corps member will experience what is called "culture shock," "cultural isolation," or a loss of cultural cuts and supports. An adequate physical examination should suffice for the selection board to determine who can or cannot tolerate changes in climate. No one has as yet developed an examination to determine who can survive with the least damage the inevitable period of loneliness, frustration, and psychological uprootedness which will accompany any prolonged overseas experience.

Mr. Shriver and other have repeated endlessly the principle that Peace Corps members will live on the same level as the local peasant, that he will live in the same kind of housing, that he will try in every way to become a member of the community in which he is working. To a limited extent, of course, this is both necessary and desirable. The Corps member should obviously be flexible and open to new experience. He should realize, however, that a simple-minded attempt to become an African or an Asian peasant by adopting the outward forms of their life will not accomplish any constructive purpose. No matter what he does, he is not an African; he will remain an American, and no mortification of the flesh will change that fact. Leaving aside for the moment considerations of health and nutrition, it is certain that any American who tries to live in a grass hut and subsist on yams and termites will soon find himself ostracized by his colleagues at his own professional level, who will invariably live on a standard inconceivably higher than that of the peasant and who will in most cases be quite jealous of their own status and position. He will also find that the villagers, instead of living him, will quite rightly dismiss him as a lunatic.

Implicit in the hair-shirt approach is a curiously inverted or disguised condescension. It assumes that the peasant has no tolerance, no appreciation of differences, no standards of hospitality. It assumes that the villager would demand complete conformity to his own mores before he would accept the Peace Corps member as an individual. Both these assumptions are sheer nonsense. The peasant may be illerate, but he is not stupid, and he is as keenly aware as any anthropologist of the social divisions in his own world. He will expect the American teacher to live as a teacher, not as a peasant. The proper and desirable course of action for the Peace Corps mem- bers is for him to live on approximately the same level as citizens of the host country who have equivalent training and hold equivalent positions.

Above all, he should not feel called upon to sacrifice all his most deeply imbedded cultural tastes and traits in the name of intercultural good will. After all, nobody has suggested that the Peace Corps member, in an effort to cement intercultural relations, should enter into negotiations for the sale of his sister. No one could expect him to violate in this way his deepest values and beliefs. For the same reason, nobody should suggest that he be required beyond the limits of necessity to give up the habits and tastes of a lifetime of eating, drinking, working and playing. Tact, sensitivity, and consideration are certainly needed. Every Corps member will encounter situations in which he must be flexible and perhaps willing to go more than halfway in giving up his own preferences. But generally he will find that others are willing to make concessions too. He will be most effective if he is able to be himself. All our experience shows that one can reach across cultural boundaries most successfully if he is standing on the solid ground of self-knowledge and self-respect. The man who stands on the shaky and uncertain ground of self-rejection and martyrdom, the man who is not a fish and yet is trying desperately not to be a fowl, has no footing from which to reach across any boundaries.

Finally, in the area of policy, the Peace Corps may be in serious error in its announced policy of complete American financial responsibility for all Peace Corps operations. It is necessary and desirable that host governments should have the major authority for assignment, since most volunteers would have to be integrated into national planning and development programs. It would be wise to accompany this authority with a certain amount of financial responsibility, since authority without investment is the surest way to ineffectiveness and irresponsible behavior. An incompetent local administrator, or one who wishes for his own purposes to embarrass the United States overseas program (and there are plenty of these, in some areas) is far less likely to be overruled or replaced if his incompetence or malevolence does not cost his own government any money. system of United States payment and foreign control may possibly create a situation in which Peace Corps volunteers are assigned and just as carelessly dismissed if they do not success.

A sharing of financial responsibility would probably ensure a effective use of Peace Corps members, and in most cases it would not involve any unduly large expense for the host government. West African government were to pay the salaries of a hundred secondary-school teachers, for example, the total cost would to something like $300,000 a year, surely a drop in the bucket as budgets, even in Africa, are going these days. The United States would quite properly assume the cost of selection, transportation, and all expenses which would not be incurred by host government in hiring teachers from its own nationals.

The Peace Corps is going to confront some of these facts goes into operation. It is going to have to deal with them, to adjustments and changes. It will no doubt encounter other which no one can foresee at this time. No one should suggest this any grounds for abandoning the program, for there is a massive to be done and the Peace Corps should be able to do it. The this point is the creation of what might be called an "institute ideology" which will make the job more difficult. Some hard, thinking is urgently needed, and it would be nice to hear some realistic talk out of Washington in the near future

Corps members will be working for the most part in technical fields, where their duties will be more or less the same as these of professionals anywhere in the world. A science teacher in Nigeria or the Philippines does not swing a pick any more than a science teacher in the United States. He follows a classroom-plus-preparation routine just as any teacher. The physical hardships of a Peace Corps job lie in the realm of adjusting to a different climate and different physical surroundings. These adjustments depend on good health, not on good muscles. The spectacle of a Peace Corps "boot camp" in Puerto Rico supervised by an athletic director, of all people, is nothing short of ludicrous. Nor is the imposing list of athletic skills listed on the Peace Corps application blank. If the purpose of the Puerto Rico camp is merely to acquaint the recruit with the sights, sounds, and smells of a tropical climate, why not begin the process of acclimation in the country to which he is assigned? The expense incurred by shipping back those individuals who cannot adjust to the physical environment cannot possibly equal that of operating a permanent camp in Puerto Rico.

What has been obscured in these shenanigans is the basic fact that physical adjustment is the least of the problems confronting the Peace Corps. In almost all areas to which Peace Corps members may be sent, Europeans have been living for many decades. They have arrived at ways and means of living in a tropical area. With a little education and a little common sense, the risk of disease or debilitation need not be any greater for the Peace Corps member than they would be in this country. The emotional adjustment is by far the more important and the more worrisome problem. To a greater or lesser degree, every Peace Corps member will experience what is called "culture shock," "cultural isolation," or a loss of cultural cuts and supports. An adequate physical examination should suffice for the selection board to determine who can or cannot tolerate changes in climate. No one has as yet developed an examination to determine who can survive with the least damage the inevitable period of loneliness, frustration, and psychological uprootedness which will accompany any prolonged overseas experience.

Mr. Shriver and other have repeated endlessly the principle that Peace Corps members will live on the same level as the local peasant, that he will live in the same kind of housing, that he will try in every way to become a member of the community in which he is working. To a limited extent, of course, this is both necessary and desirable. The Corps member should obviously be flexible and open to new experience. He should realize, however, that a simple-minded attempt to become an African or an Asian peasant by adopting the outward forms of their life will not accomplish any constructive purpose. No matter what he does, he is not an African; he will remain an American, and no mortification of the flesh will change that fact. Leaving aside for the moment considerations of health and nutrition, it is certain that any American who tries to live in a grass hut and subsist on yams and termites will soon find himself ostracized by his colleagues at his own professional level, who will invariably live on a standard inconceivably higher than that of the peasant and who will in most cases be quite jealous of their own status and position. He will also find that the villagers, instead of living him, will quite rightly dismiss him as a lunatic.

Implicit in the hair-shirt approach is a curiously inverted or disguised condescension. It assumes that the peasant has no tolerance, no appreciation of differences, no standards of hospitality. It assumes that the villager would demand complete conformity to his own mores before he would accept the Peace Corps member as an individual. Both these assumptions are sheer nonsense. The peasant may be illerate, but he is not stupid, and he is as keenly aware as any anthropologist of the social divisions in his own world. He will expect the American teacher to live as a teacher, not as a peasant. The proper and desirable course of action for the Peace Corps mem- bers is for him to live on approximately the same level as citizens of the host country who have equivalent training and hold equivalent positions.

Above all, he should not feel called upon to sacrifice all his most deeply imbedded cultural tastes and traits in the name of intercultural good will. After all, nobody has suggested that the Peace Corps member, in an effort to cement intercultural relations, should enter into negotiations for the sale of his sister. No one could expect him to violate in this way his deepest values and beliefs. For the same reason, nobody should suggest that he be required beyond the limits of necessity to give up the habits and tastes of a lifetime of eating, drinking, working and playing. Tact, sensitivity, and consideration are certainly needed. Every Corps member will encounter situations in which he must be flexible and perhaps willing to go more than halfway in giving up his own preferences. But generally he will find that others are willing to make concessions too. He will be most effective if he is able to be himself. All our experience shows that one can reach across cultural boundaries most successfully if he is standing on the solid ground of self-knowledge and self-respect. The man who stands on the shaky and uncertain ground of self-rejection and martyrdom, the man who is not a fish and yet is trying desperately not to be a fowl, has no footing from which to reach across any boundaries.

Finally, in the area of policy, the Peace Corps may be in serious error in its announced policy of complete American financial responsibility for all Peace Corps operations. It is necessary and desirable that host governments should have the major authority for assignment, since most volunteers would have to be integrated into national planning and development programs. It would be wise to accompany this authority with a certain amount of financial responsibility, since authority without investment is the surest way to ineffectiveness and irresponsible behavior. An incompetent local administrator, or one who wishes for his own purposes to embarrass the United States overseas program (and there are plenty of these, in some areas) is far less likely to be overruled or replaced if his incompetence or malevolence does not cost his own government any money. system of United States payment and foreign control may possibly create a situation in which Peace Corps volunteers are assigned and just as carelessly dismissed if they do not success.

A sharing of financial responsibility would probably ensure a effective use of Peace Corps members, and in most cases it would not involve any unduly large expense for the host government. West African government were to pay the salaries of a hundred secondary-school teachers, for example, the total cost would to something like $300,000 a year, surely a drop in the bucket as budgets, even in Africa, are going these days. The United States would quite properly assume the cost of selection, transportation, and all expenses which would not be incurred by host government in hiring teachers from its own nationals.

The Peace Corps is going to confront some of these facts goes into operation. It is going to have to deal with them, to adjustments and changes. It will no doubt encounter other which no one can foresee at this time. No one should suggest this any grounds for abandoning the program, for there is a massive to be done and the Peace Corps should be able to do it. The this point is the creation of what might be called an "institute ideology" which will make the job more difficult. Some hard, thinking is urgently needed, and it would be nice to hear some realistic talk out of Washington in the near future

What has been obscured in these shenanigans is the basic fact that physical adjustment is the least of the problems confronting the Peace Corps. In almost all areas to which Peace Corps members may be sent, Europeans have been living for many decades. They have arrived at ways and means of living in a tropical area. With a little education and a little common sense, the risk of disease or debilitation need not be any greater for the Peace Corps member than they would be in this country. The emotional adjustment is by far the more important and the more worrisome problem. To a greater or lesser degree, every Peace Corps member will experience what is called "culture shock," "cultural isolation," or a loss of cultural cuts and supports. An adequate physical examination should suffice for the selection board to determine who can or cannot tolerate changes in climate. No one has as yet developed an examination to determine who can survive with the least damage the inevitable period of loneliness, frustration, and psychological uprootedness which will accompany any prolonged overseas experience.

Mr. Shriver and other have repeated endlessly the principle that Peace Corps members will live on the same level as the local peasant, that he will live in the same kind of housing, that he will try in every way to become a member of the community in which he is working. To a limited extent, of course, this is both necessary and desirable. The Corps member should obviously be flexible and open to new experience. He should realize, however, that a simple-minded attempt to become an African or an Asian peasant by adopting the outward forms of their life will not accomplish any constructive purpose. No matter what he does, he is not an African; he will remain an American, and no mortification of the flesh will change that fact. Leaving aside for the moment considerations of health and nutrition, it is certain that any American who tries to live in a grass hut and subsist on yams and termites will soon find himself ostracized by his colleagues at his own professional level, who will invariably live on a standard inconceivably higher than that of the peasant and who will in most cases be quite jealous of their own status and position. He will also find that the villagers, instead of living him, will quite rightly dismiss him as a lunatic.

Implicit in the hair-shirt approach is a curiously inverted or disguised condescension. It assumes that the peasant has no tolerance, no appreciation of differences, no standards of hospitality. It assumes that the villager would demand complete conformity to his own mores before he would accept the Peace Corps member as an individual. Both these assumptions are sheer nonsense. The peasant may be illerate, but he is not stupid, and he is as keenly aware as any anthropologist of the social divisions in his own world. He will expect the American teacher to live as a teacher, not as a peasant. The proper and desirable course of action for the Peace Corps mem- bers is for him to live on approximately the same level as citizens of the host country who have equivalent training and hold equivalent positions.

Above all, he should not feel called upon to sacrifice all his most deeply imbedded cultural tastes and traits in the name of intercultural good will. After all, nobody has suggested that the Peace Corps member, in an effort to cement intercultural relations, should enter into negotiations for the sale of his sister. No one could expect him to violate in this way his deepest values and beliefs. For the same reason, nobody should suggest that he be required beyond the limits of necessity to give up the habits and tastes of a lifetime of eating, drinking, working and playing. Tact, sensitivity, and consideration are certainly needed. Every Corps member will encounter situations in which he must be flexible and perhaps willing to go more than halfway in giving up his own preferences. But generally he will find that others are willing to make concessions too. He will be most effective if he is able to be himself. All our experience shows that one can reach across cultural boundaries most successfully if he is standing on the solid ground of self-knowledge and self-respect. The man who stands on the shaky and uncertain ground of self-rejection and martyrdom, the man who is not a fish and yet is trying desperately not to be a fowl, has no footing from which to reach across any boundaries.

Finally, in the area of policy, the Peace Corps may be in serious error in its announced policy of complete American financial responsibility for all Peace Corps operations. It is necessary and desirable that host governments should have the major authority for assignment, since most volunteers would have to be integrated into national planning and development programs. It would be wise to accompany this authority with a certain amount of financial responsibility, since authority without investment is the surest way to ineffectiveness and irresponsible behavior. An incompetent local administrator, or one who wishes for his own purposes to embarrass the United States overseas program (and there are plenty of these, in some areas) is far less likely to be overruled or replaced if his incompetence or malevolence does not cost his own government any money. system of United States payment and foreign control may possibly create a situation in which Peace Corps volunteers are assigned and just as carelessly dismissed if they do not success.

A sharing of financial responsibility would probably ensure a effective use of Peace Corps members, and in most cases it would not involve any unduly large expense for the host government. West African government were to pay the salaries of a hundred secondary-school teachers, for example, the total cost would to something like $300,000 a year, surely a drop in the bucket as budgets, even in Africa, are going these days. The United States would quite properly assume the cost of selection, transportation, and all expenses which would not be incurred by host government in hiring teachers from its own nationals.

The Peace Corps is going to confront some of these facts goes into operation. It is going to have to deal with them, to adjustments and changes. It will no doubt encounter other which no one can foresee at this time. No one should suggest this any grounds for abandoning the program, for there is a massive to be done and the Peace Corps should be able to do it. The this point is the creation of what might be called an "institute ideology" which will make the job more difficult. Some hard, thinking is urgently needed, and it would be nice to hear some realistic talk out of Washington in the near future

A sharing of financial responsibility would probably ensure a effective use of Peace Corps members, and in most cases it would not involve any unduly large expense for the host government. West African government were to pay the salaries of a hundred secondary-school teachers, for example, the total cost would to something like $300,000 a year, surely a drop in the bucket as budgets, even in Africa, are going these days. The United States would quite properly assume the cost of selection, transportation, and all expenses which would not be incurred by host government in hiring teachers from its own nationals.

The Peace Corps is going to confront some of these facts goes into operation. It is going to have to deal with them, to adjustments and changes. It will no doubt encounter other which no one can foresee at this time. No one should suggest this any grounds for abandoning the program, for there is a massive to be done and the Peace Corps should be able to do it. The this point is the creation of what might be called an "institute ideology" which will make the job more difficult. Some hard, thinking is urgently needed, and it would be nice to hear some realistic talk out of Washington in the near future

The Peace Corps is going to confront some of these facts goes into operation. It is going to have to deal with them, to adjustments and changes. It will no doubt encounter other which no one can foresee at this time. No one should suggest this any grounds for abandoning the program, for there is a massive to be done and the Peace Corps should be able to do it. The this point is the creation of what might be called an "institute ideology" which will make the job more difficult. Some hard, thinking is urgently needed, and it would be nice to hear some realistic talk out of Washington in the near future