As I write this, I’m tentatively scheduled to leave for Peace Corps training in Africa in June of 2021, a year later than originally planned because of COVID-19. But what will happen with the virus is anybody’s guess, so I won’t be surprised if there’s another delay or if the Peace Corps decides to reassign me to another part of the world.
But it’s also possible that the Peace Corps won’t exist next year. All volunteers worldwide were evacuated back in March. A significant number of members of Congress would like to abolish the Peace Corps because they’re philosophically opposed to doing anything to help other countries. And I just read this about a group of returned Peace Corps volunteers who think the agency is doing more harm than good and want to abolish it because they think it’s a type of colonialism.
I have no doubt that the people in this group have legitimate concerns that deserve to be addressed; I’m not convinced that abolishing the Peace Corps is the right way to address them.
The article notes that 66% of Peace Corps volunteers are white and most volunteer sites are dealing with local populations of other races. That’s a legitimate concern, but it’s worth noting that 76% of Americans are white.
I’m a lot more concerned about things like Peace Corps health volunteers being mistaken for doctors and nurses and the allegations that the Peace Corps staff encouraged locals to think this by having them dress like doctors and nurses. And I certainly think it’s a good idea to have host country nationals as country directors.
However, I’m a lot less concerned about the assignment I accepted, which is to be a teacher trainer in The Gambia. There are teachers’ colleges there, but not enough to provide teachers for all the elementary schools. So, for lack of a better option, they’re taking people right out of high school and putting them in elementary school classrooms. What’s more, they usually had similarly badly prepared teachers when they were in elementary school — if you put me in charge of an elementary school classroom when I was right out of high school, at least I would have had the benefit of remembering what my highly educated elementary school teachers did.
They picked me for this not because of any background in education, but rather because of character traits I’d shown such as tenacity. (Most of their volunteers are young people; many have never held down a job for a year, which is perfectly normal in your early 20s. It’s hard to tell which ones will freak out after a few months and have to be talked out of resigning. By the time I’d applied, I’d started a business from scratch and ran it through seven years of hard times before selling it and agreeing to work three years for the new owner. It’s pretty clear that I can stick with something difficult.)
With three months of training, I should learn enough about classroom management, effective use of a school library, etc., that I can be really useful to a teacher who had no training at all besides a high school education.
Yes, it would be better if there were more teachers’ colleges in western Africa, which would make this Peace Corps assignment unnecessary. And it would be a good thing if we did work our way out of this. I’d like to see the Peace Corps shut down a lot of programs because they conclude they’re no longer needed. But as long as there aren’t enough graduates of teachers’ colleges to fill all the openings in elementary schools, it’s a lot better that teachers get some training from a Peace Corps volunteer than none at all.
And I think there’s a real benefit to the cultural exchange. Most people worldwide have some idea about the United States from the movies and TV shows we export. Those of us who live in the United States realize that this is entertainment; for the most part, we realize from our day-to-day lives that most people aren’t as wealthy as the fictional characters they see and don’t have all sorts of dramatic or funny things happening in their lives. But for many people worldwide, movies and TV are their only exposure to life in the United States. Meeting Americans face to face and learning that they have things in common is really helpful to combating anti-American sentiment in the rest of the world.
So I hope that Congress won’t eliminate the Peace Corps. But I can’t rule out the possibility that the folks who think the Peace Corps is a tool of colonialism will form an alliance of convenience with the folks who don’t care about the developing world at all. It’s entirely possible that an oddball coalition like that would succeed in eliminating the Peace Corps altogether.
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UPDATE (March 3, 2021): Since I wrote the above, the Peace Corps told me in December 2020 that I won’t go to The Gambia in June of 2021 after all due to COVID-19 and asked me to consider doing something completely different in another country. In February 2021, they said I’d need a COVID-19 vaccine, but that the Peace Corps wouldn’t make arrangements for it and urged me to contact my state health department.
At this point, I’m not expecting Peace Corps service to happen, though I’ll be pleasantly surprised if it does. I’m working on other plans.
Also, here is an op-ed urging the retention of the Peace Corps. It makes sense to me.