MAKING ALL THE MISTAKES

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

The rebuttal article written by Russell Schwartz, Director of the Peace Corps for Botswana, has an uncomfortably familiar ring to me. I heard it all before when I and my colleague, Elaine Derso ('64) resigned from the Peace Corps in Chile in January, 1965. There is little point to an extensive discussion of our reasons for resigning as Volunteers, since our action came in response to a situation in Chile strikingly similar to the one Paul Cowan has already described in his article as existing in Ecuador. Suffice it to say, in response to Russell Schwartz's allegation that "Paul Cowan [and by implication all those who resigned] resigned when his world went bad," that one does not resign when the world goes bad; one resigns when the Peace Corps Administration in one's country of assignment is doing its utmost to make the world go bad-or at least to keep it that way. We had expected that the Peace Corps Administration would respect our opinions, but what we got when we suggested that we had been poorly assigned and that we knew a place where our talents could be better used, was an anxious mother-hen visit from the Assistant Peace Corps Director in Chile whose reaction to our situation was, "Maybe you aren't trying hard enough."

By far the most frustrating (and damning) characteristic of Schwartz's article is that he himself clearly believes every word of it. He really thinks that "it is ironic that one on who has departed from the scene [i.e., a resigned Volunteer] should presume title to the very themes of ... [the Peace Corps] endeavor," and that the "role of those Americans [who are overseas] has changed--not to a point of perfection, certainly, but to a point where perfection is a less impossible goal." This is exactly the attitude Elaine and I found in the Chilean Peace Corps Administration: an incredibly naive self-image and a messianic zeal untempered by intelligent skepticism. What can one say to an organization that admits an occasional failure and states with pride, "We have probably made by now all the mistakes that can be made in programming?" Is that good? More to the point, is it necessary? I would claim not. I would suggest that intelligence and a highly developed self-critical faculty can very often avoid the necessity for learning by making all the mistakes that can be made. Louis J. Cutrona, Jr. '64