The Peace Corps: A New Learning Situation

Abstract

THE Peace Corps prides itself on its voluntary character. This extends beyond the himself, and permeates all aspects of the enterprise. For example, countries volunteer to accept Peace Corps projects-we do not go into a country unless we are invited. Similarly, universities volunteer to undertake the training of volunteers-we do not go to a university that has not expressed a desire to participate. I think it can be said that neither the himself, nor the country that invites him, nor the university that trains him can fully foresee what they are getting involved in. Yet, whatever their respective initial motivations may be, they are soon caught up in an enterprise with much broader implications than they mayhave imagined. There is no question but what the himself is changed in many obvious and subtle ways by his Peace Corps service; it is also hoped that his service in a host nation has made some mark, no matter how small. Less obvious is the fact that the presence of a Peace Corps project on a university campus can have a considerable impact on that campus. This impact may, in fact, be broader than we realize, and may be particularly relevant to a variety of current educational developments. The Peace Corps may be looked upon as a vast new educational experiment. Certainly for the volunteers themselves, their two years of service constitute a formidable learning experience. These two years begin with at least three months of specially designed training by a university and are frequently followed by some form of continuing education and professional support throughout the service. Beyond this, the service itself surely constitutes education in a wholly new setting for learning. It occurs in remote village classrooms in Ghana, hospitals in Malaya and Tanganyika, the rural valleys of Nepal, or the barrios of the Philippines. The Peace Corps was not formally designed as an educational experiment. Its most publicized objective was simply to provide middlelevel manpower for developing countries which requested it. Less well-known were the second and third objectives stated in the Peace Corps Act. These specified that the Peace Corps should provide an opportunity for Americans to learn about other people, and for other people to learn about Americans. These objectives identify Peace Corps service as reciprocal learning experience, and make it a legitimate concern of American educators. The design and conduct of training programs for over 200 different jobs in 45 remote countries have necessitated an unprecedented effort on the part of American education. It is not at all surprising that this effort should yield lessons of broad significance to education. The most notable immediate characteristic