Who is the Peace Corps for?

A few articles I have read recently have me asking this question: one is by a returned Peace Corps volunteer who reflects on the impact her service had on her host community and the impact it had on her as a person (and from where I stole the name for this posting), and the other is about a Republican congressman from Colorado who wants funding for Peace Corps China revoked.

The Peace Corps has three simple stated goals, which we spent part of our pre-service training studying and memorizing:

1. Helping the people of interested countries meet their needs for trained men and women.
2. Helping promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.
3. Helping promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.

As you can see, 2/3 of our role as Peace Corps volunteers in China is simply to promote better cross-cultural understandings between Americans and Chinese people. Only 1/3 of my job is actually providing China with a trained English teacher. Ironically, it's my students studying English who enforce my role as a cultural ambassador the most. Studying English, for many of them, is not something they chose to do and for many of them don't see how it will improve their future prospects much (although, to be fair, even American students rarely understand the importance of the subjects they study until they get out into the "real world"). Although the study of the English language generally seems incredibly boring to them, one highlight is that it gives them a window into the exotic realm of Western culture. If given half a chance, my students would spend hours of class time asking me about the meaning of lyrics from Lady Gaga and Britney Spears songs, whether Americans really do buy used cars (unthinkable for a middle class Chinese person), and why foreigners don't like to have their picture taken or talk about their age and salaries. This can be frustrating, since when I joined the Peace Corps, I didn't think I would spend so much of my time discussing such banal topics as the meaning of Britney Spears lyrics. It becomes even more frustrating when I read stories in the news about the dismal state of food safety in China or when a middle aged middle school English teacher (a smoker) tells me he had never before heard that smoking causes cancer. It makes me wonder whether teaching English to college students is really making a difference that matters in China. It's on those days that I become a cynic and think, maybe that Republican congressman is right, and I am just wasting my time here.

But then, I can look at it all from a different perspective. Education is one of those fields where the benefits rarely make themselves clear in the short term. Whether or not my students end up using their improved English skills to find a better job in the future (it is worth noting that the vast majority of my students are first generation college students from farming families in the countryside), I'd like to think that my simple presence in their lives expands their worldview in significant ways. I have blown students' minds by telling them such simple truths as "most Americans do not eat hamburgers everyday," "not all Americans are Christian," and that despite the fact that Americans generally prefer more open communication styles than Chinese people, we usually really don't like to be open about our personal lives. I know from my background in education that discussing these counterpoints to previously held beliefs and encouraging students to engage in genuine dialogue can help to improve critical thinking skills. Traditionally, Chinese education depends on rote memorization from lectures and textbooks, and unquestioningly accepting as fact anything that a teacher says is true. These learned behaviors also seem to translate to social and political life in China. My hope is that my students' development of critical thinking skills will help them to deal with the significant issues of corruption, food safety, public health, and environmental degradation facing China. I hope that by teaching them to question assumptions about Americans, it will also teach them to question assumptions in other areas of their lives.

There is also the thought of my future students, or if I am not lucky enough to find a job in teaching the future, my future friends and colleagues in the US who might someday ask me about my experiences in China. Goal three of the Peace Corps is to teach Americans about the people we met during our service. In addition to my Chinese language skills, I hope to be able to pass on a deeper and more respectful understanding of China. We seem to hear a lot about China in America, and truly the economic and political destinies of our two countries right now seem deeply intertwined. There is a lot of misunderstanding and mystery about China in the West and I hope to be able to shed some light on it when I return home, although that phase seems a little intangible to me right now. This blog could be considered an example of a "goal 3 activity."

Finally, there is the question of how the Peace Corps has changed me personally. I know I have become more resourceful and pragmatic. I have learned how to actively manage my health and well-being in a sometimes hostile environment. I have become tougher, more mature and less sensitive to social and physical discomforts. I have developed leadership skills and learned how to build community in difficult situations. I have learned basic oral and written communication skills in a second language. More personal benefits will likely become clear to me when we return home next summer, after I deal with the significant hurdle of "re-entry shock." Whatever the case, I am sure these skills will be invaluable in whatever the next stage of my life or career turns out to be. There is no doubt that compared to any one of my students, I have gained the most by being here. But is that what the Peace Corps is for? Is that why American taxpayer money supports the Peace Corps? Those are difficult questions to answer, but I guess I can be thankful for what it has done for me, and spend of the rest of my time here working as hard as I can trying to make a difference in the lives of the people I come in contact with, and try to spend the rest of my life sharing with others the lessons I have learned.

~ Katie