Moving On: PBS and The Peace Corps

The fiscal crisis is going to change America, whether we like it of not – and probably within the next couple of months.

Two great programs from the 1960s, programs we all love like twenty-something children still living at home, need to move out and be on their own.  PBS is one child – a great success story - and the other is the Peace Corps.  PBS is a no-brainer, it can support itself, and as every parent knows a child this age ought to.  For the Peace Corps – the child we unabashedly love more – it will be an agonizing decision.  Telling them to go is not really about money, but more about, well, just growing up.  America needs to grow up.  The world has changed, we have changed, and these programs ought to change, too.

Not only have I worked with many former Peace Corps volunteers in Saudi and count them as friends, but my own daughter just finished two years of teaching English in The Philippines.  As I said this is an agonizing decision.

When my daughter joined the Peace Corps I told her that the Peace Corps was no longer in Thailand because Thailand’s standard of living disqualified the country from Peace Corps help.  Thailand, after all, has a cheaper (and possibly better) Internet and phone system than in the US, it gives every first grader a tablet computer, and its major cities rival cities in the US.  But later I found out that the Peace Corps is still here.  I know of two Peace Corps people teaching English in the area.  This is something I do for free, so I wrote to the Peace Corps asking if I could help. Their response was: You have to go to a country we pick.  What the heck?

Teaching English (ESL) may be the exception that proves the rule because there has been a furor about the Peace Corps teaching English in China.  We borrow money from China to pay travel and living expenses to Peace Corps people to go and teach English (in universities) there.  Not only should China be able to pay for their own teachers (so can Thailand and other countries), but at a time when report after report says American education is in the toilet, does it make sense to export “our brightest and best” to teach the rest of the world?  Again, I say, what the heck? 

The Peace Corps, in part, is a voyage of self-discovery and probably worth the small amount of money we spend on it – to the individual Peace Corps voluteers. The Peace Corps, of course, doesn’t forgive student loans or even pay them while the volunteer is in the Peace Corps so even these individuals may be putting off the inevitable by volunteering for the Peace Corps.  But the question remains: Is it worth it to the American taxpayer, to mom and dad? 

China is spending serious money to build-out the infrastructure of some African countries where they hope to exploit natural resources.  America, on the other hand, sends Peace Corps people who cast around looking to do some good, or we send military equipment and expertise.*  The Peace Corps people probably do do some good, but to a foreign country doing a cost/benefit analysis, it’s not hard to guess who they think their real friends are.

In e-mailing my daughter who is now sending out resumes, I said now that you’ve worked overseas, you might consider looking for a job in Asia.  Unfortunately, I think this is the all too likely career path for ex-Peace Corps job seekers.  Certainly, no employer stateside ever took my tenure in Saudi as being anything like real work, so back to KSA I went, and went.  I’m not saying this is a bad thing, but as long as I wasn’t working for an American employer, I paid no income taxes.  Again, the question is: Is the Peace Corps worth it to the American taxpayer?  Long ago and far away when your mother and I were young it certainly was, today I don’t think it is.  We both love you more than words can say, but it’s time to go.

*  Never forget that when we make an arms sale to a foreign country, most of that money is spent on jobs in the US.  It’s a business plan from the cold war we need to look at.