In this issue:

• Infoglut responses
• Workers as owners and managers
• Apology to my Colleagues (poem)
• Conferences
• Chinese Education
• What Next for the Peace Corps?
• In the woods with Participatory Research
• Research in Progress

INFOGLUT RESPONSES

"Your INFOGLUT article (Dec. 1982 ST) is timely and should provoke some interesting discussion," wrote the editors of the new book Networking (Doubleday), Jessica Lipnack and Jeffrey Stamps. Indeed, the article on the pervasive problem of information overload and fragmentation especially as it applies to meetings and publications, drew five times more replies than any previous one - 35 letters from 15 states, Canada, and Africa - and elicited a variety of perspectives from which to view INFOGLUT:

Is It a Problem? A Challenge? An Opportunity?

Malcolm S. Knowles, Professor Emeritus, NC State University: "I think that INFOGLUT is an important issue, and the article in the Dec. issue did a good job of spelling out the dangers. I think that this is an irreversible phenomenon of our times, though, and that we need to find better ways of dealing with it."

Barbara Conroy, Educational Consultant, Tabernash, CO: "Being in the information business as a producer, disseminator, creator, and user, I have been very concerned about INFOGLUT and agree about the dimensions of the problem. With the proliferating of computers in business and home settings I anticipate that it will become an even more crucial issue. It will also open up another avenue for keeping in touch with one another, with new ways of networking for awareness and action. But it will add the number of voices producing information. Certainly the essential issues often get lost in such diarrheal circumstances."

Philip E. Johnson, Consultation & Training, Tucson, AZ: "Indeed the enormous wealth of data in this Information Age has become a major problem. It is clearly related to the idea of the dramatic increase in the rate of change of technology. Technical information available to human-kind now doubles every seven years. Clearly exponential! The unfortunate implication of all this amazing increase (and thus INFOGLUT) has been, as we all know, Mandatory Continuing Education (MCE) and a variety of other inappropriate content-oriented techniques to provide even more information to people faster and in a more confusing fashion."

Helen Baker, Attorney, Elmhurst, IL: "If INFOGLUT is an inevitable function of technology, how can we, as individuals, regulate our own participation? The printing press may have made the Renaissance Man possible, but the Xerox machine made him/her impossible. I doubt very much if we can, in group formation, decide what to do. There are no rules for coping with INFOGLUT which can be universally applied. I think it's dangerous to spend too much time reading books and going to conferences because it diminishes one's time to develop one's own work. 'A CONFERENCE,' Fred Allen once said, 'IS A GATHERING OF IMPORTANT PEOPLE WHO SINGLY CAN DO NOTHING, BUT TOGETHER CAN DECIDE THAT NOTHING CAN BE DONE.'"

Roger Collis, Lorian Association, PO Box 147, Middleton, WI 53562: "Information is no good unless it can be utilized. Many of us become like sponges soaking up information and once soaked up, squeezed dry by some part of us that realizes that information has subtly become an elixir - the opium of the post-industrial society. I put all this to lack of self-understanding and integration – the search for something 'out there' rather than discovering one's own strength, resourcefulness, and ability to be a 'change agent.' Information cannot do this, in fact it can take us away from ourselves into a heady land that disempowers our immediate responsibilities of family and community."

Bill Griffith, Head, Dept of Adult Ed, University of British Columbia, Canada: "The biggest problem I face as I ruminate about the purposes and challenges of adult ed is the same old one that has plagued human beings since the beginning of conscious thought: How can every person learn to enjoy and to exercise maximum freedom while at the same time performing as a contributing member of a larger society whose demands at times certainly seem at odds with those of the individual? We speak of INFOGLUT while at the same time contributing to it. We decry the emergence of new newsletters and journals and yet we endorse the idea that each person who wants to issue one is free and should even be encouraged to do it. Who is responsible for engineering a humane consensus? Why is our writing so caught up with negativism? Have we figured out why we want to empower people? Which people? Are there no values that are important to the society as a whole? Is sincerity to be the only test of the validity of an individual's beliefs? Who will accept the responsibility to build, rather than analyze, often with a clear bias, and to make some positive improvements? Jerry Apps (see p. 8 Dec. ST) certainly hit an important point with the emphasis he placed on trust. How can we, as adult educators, begin to exemplify trust, if our favorite posture is that of cynic?"

Leon Levitt, Professor of Business Administration, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA: "I really can't wax very enthusiastic about INFOGLUT as a cause. So what else is new? We also have a glut of educated people, a glut of humanity, and a glut of products and services. My own notion is that the world is a gigantic WPA (Works Progress Administration), and it is our responsibility to allow people the opportunity to grow and to do that which they feel contributes to the meaning of their lives. If an INFOGLUT is the consequence, so what? It is the way of human progress. The return to Walden is a snare and a delusion - even Thoreau was a fraud."

Jayne Blankenship, Rocky Mountain Women's Institute: "INFOGLUT passed immediately into my daily vocabulary! Thought for the day: DUMP ENCUMBRANCES."

What to do? How do we Respond?

Harry Boyte, author of The Backyard Revolution, (Temple Univ. Press): "INFOGLUT is an interesting piece, but it skirts the basic question, it seems to me: Why do we need 'information'? Information is never an end in itself. Education occurs in some kind of communal context, informed by values and purposes. What are one's values, objectives (political, social, and otherwise), ends? Reflecting on all this, 'centering' on basic objectives helps sort out what one needs to subscribe to (or attend), and what to pay attention to in whatever one does get. As you might gather, I'm struggling mightily to take such advice to heart, with mixed success."

Author and speaker Robert Theobald was probably the first person to point to the INFOGLUT problem 10 or 15 years ago. Bob just wrote us: "We must find ways to get the right information to the person at the time it is needed. We have the technologies to achieve this. But it will require a fundamental change in both our motivations and our knowledge systems. We know a great deal about the form of knowledge system that would be required: such innovations as the problem/possibility focuser and community quality of life indices are two starting points for the new directions." For info on Bob's work with these and other new directions write him at PO Box 2240, Wickenburg, AZ 85358.

Philip E. Johnson: "Perhaps the answer to INFOGLUT is not simply providing more answers to more people, nor even using appropriate selection, which also gets to be impossible, but rather a whole new procedure for schools. Perhaps schools ought to move in the direction of helping people organize and process information; how to make use of data, how to become one's own theoretician. INFOGLUT, for that matter, might be the final straw that helps our schools move in the direction of helping people be learn ers, not merely learn ed! If this can happen, even the question of MCE and other important issues in education will become moot and transcended. Maybe we can get into a really appropriate function for schooling."

In his Feb. Newsletter to Soulmates, psychologist Marshall Rosenberg (3229 Bordeaux, Sherman, TX 75090) writes: "ST asks scary questions of people like me who write newsletters and organize meetings, learning opportunities, and conferences: 'Who needs this product or outcome? What purposes do they serve?' I appreciate this invitation to evaluate whether what I'm doing is what I want to continue doing." Contact Rosenberg for his answer to these questions and for info on his work "providing opportunities for parents, teachers, managers, social activists, and others to strengthen communication skills that enable people to exchange resources and resolve differences nonviolently."

Lee Hoinacki, Hill Farm, RR 2, Box 79B, Cobden, IL 62920: "It has been my experience that the people to whom the INFOGLUT article refers and the people who go to meetings, write/read periodicals, are interested in change - generally in changing others. That is, they do not put themselves in the position of risk - they do nothing to risk their own self-images and dreams. Such people also tend to believe that behavior will follow insight - if one can construct the 'right' presentation, or make the telling argument, the other will 'get it' and alter his/her behavior (See almost all of contemporary education, formal and otherwise; the popularity of diet books, sex manuals, et al.).

"I've just been reading the sayings of the Fathers of the Desert - those who went to live in the 'inhospitable' areas of Egypt and Palestine in the 4th and 5th centuries. And they confirm something I've come to suspect. First, one must act - then insight follows. All this conceptualization, argumentation, publication, meeting, etc., may be good as expressive or symbolic behavior - but, as such, its principal (only?) beneficiary is the thinker/speaker him/herself.

"Basically, many of us are infected by a strange species of Cartesianism. We divide body and spirit, and then expect the latter to push both around on command. I don't think it will wash. So, I don't see the matter as too many words, ideas, conversations. Rather, what we may need is 'The Recovery of Asceticism' (title of an interesting article, more or less on this subject, in Commonweal, Jan. 28, 1983, by Margaret R. Miles) – the discipline of ascetical action as the prelude to and condition for clear thinking.

"I suppose this is why, over four years ago, we took our children out of school and radically altered our mode of life. The ascesis of building a more self-sufficient household has opened the eyes of all of us. What I see our children learning is truly amazing to witness. And they are not 'taught' by me. Their immersion in this way of life enlightens me. I read a lot - for example, much poetry and theology recently - and I am deeply moved by what I read. But only because this movement results from where I am, from how I live each day. Such books made little or no impression on me six years ago - as a meta-physician would say, I now live in a new mode of being.

And the course I taught at Southern IL University last semester was altogether different – in its effect on both the students and me – from what happened in the classroom when I taught as a regular salaried professor (the university didn't pay me for this one). This was the best teaching experience I had ever known. And although the course was structured around a careful textual analysis of Illich's writings, my presence there was not as someone who understood the arguments, but as one who lived in a certain way."

Drawing on a more contemporary religious tradition Ed Beers, Madison Campus Ministry, comments: "The Brothers of the ecumenical community of Taize purposely dispose of many of their documents, try always to communicate with people in a personal way rather than en-masse (e.g. personal letters and at their retreats they shun orienting people by scads of paper). At the end of the year they get rid of their money! Start each year afresh."

Meetings, Conferences, Gatherings

John McFadden, Professor of Education, CA State University, Sacramento: "My thought on the conference glut is that one learns after a time that one can go 'actively' (to politic, to spend a day with a friend-colleague, to go to a workshop one really needs). Going 'passively' has always been a waste for me (attendance to 'see what people are thinking,' 'see if one will get stimulated,' etc.). As to adult ed, I think the need is to continue to foment meetings of people who are dangerous to the system and believe in at least a little of Freire's politics (anti-capitalist, pro-democratic, and not afraid of being allied with Angola, Nicaragua, etc.). 'Let's dialogue' Freireans are great, but they prevent the 'dangerous' group from getting anything done."

John Hurst, Professor of Education, University of CA, Berkeley: "Unless a gathering is directed toward generating concrete action with respect to shared concerns, I rarely bother. And gatherings that have action as their goal are rarely called conferences. If we wish to educate for democracy, and educate democratically we need to continually think and rethink what that means in practice - including 'in practice' with respect to phenomena called conferences. My suspicion is that they might change their character in rather fundamental ways, that is, they'd pretty much cease to exist as such. Why must the left so often replicate the forms of the status quo and not put our creative imagination into thinking through like we might? P.S. I don't go to 'left' conferences either."

Jessica Lipnack and Jeffrey Stamps: "We agree that the standard conference format has pretty much run its course and has little to offer most people beyond a few days away from home and an overdose of rancid coffee. Still we do believe that there remains some promise in finding ways for strangers to meet in large numbers, create a temporary community, and learn and grow."

Bill Kemsley, VT Governor's Advisory Council on Adult Education: "We must remember that informational conferences are often essential, especially in our rule-ridden society."

Don Adams, Neighborhood Arts Programs National Organizing Committee, Baltimore, MD: "We too attend and cover a great many conferences – and wish too often that they had never been held. But as an unreformed cultural democrat, I cannot wish for fewer meetings among people. We need to be much clearer about their function and how to go about them, to be sure. It's also important to realize the extent to which our problems spring from the absence of opportunities to discuss ideas and principles which underlie our work and our lives. In consulting with people who are involved in community-based cultural work around the U.S., we frequently find a reluctance to take time out from pressing day-to-day business for reflection/discussion. How to introduce such opportunities and encourage such dialogue is the central challenge of the organizers of community work of all kinds."

Sydney Grant, Professor of Education, FL State University, Tallahassee: "On Conferences: Yes, we are used by the big hotels. You see, they don't care who uses the facility as long as they pay. So, we talk and they rake it in. A good idea: Run the conferences in the YWCA, YMCA, parks, or hostels and break out of the big bucks circles."

Our response to this article included several letters from readers saying that they are now, or are about to be, unemployed. Mike Heus, a Professor of Social Work at the University of WI, whose contract is being terminated at the end of 1983, reflects on his decision to live and work full-time in rural areas: "You can be sure that INFOGLUT has a strong connection to my status at the university. For me it is not so much a turning away from something as a turning toward something else. It made sense to me that I should quietly begin working directly toward the world of my vision (no matter how small it might be) to better utilize the energy I dissipated in continual battle with the owners of the world I could not tolerate. I find that I am so consumed with my work here in the rural area that I do not have to spend much time choosing which conference or workshop to attend. My politics are decentralist and my ideology requires individual and local self-reliance. Or is it that my need to create, to build, to learn, to be diverse in life skills leads to my embracing such beliefs? No matter - we are more and more able to capture the complexity of simplicity. If only my body holds out long enough for the experimentation I look forward to. Am sending along one of my small contributions for ST. Next year it may be moonshine, or beaver pelts, or eggs, or..."

Publications, Books, Articles

Jessica Lipnack and Jeffrey Stamps: "As for all those trees being turned into profits for the copying companies, paper manufacturers, and the post office, we would draw some (albeit squiggly) lines. In our research we have seen the publications of close to 2000 groups who in some way identify with the concept of networking. Amazingly, even after three years, we are still fascinated by the original work that people are creating. The possibilities of human communication are only beginning to be tapped and we don't feel that the proliferation of junk mail should deter anyone with a heart and something to say."

Pat Wagner, Network Resources, PO Box 18666, Denver, CO 80218: "Our simple-minded approach to handling INFOGLUT:

1. Unless we can think of someone who would like the literature in hand - be it magazine, essay, or postcard - we throw it out. Once we answer an inquiry or piece of correspondence, unless there is a very good reason for keeping it on hand, we treat it the same way. 'Filing' parties once a year clear the files - the information is again either disseminated or trashed.
2. We try to answer our mail as quickly as possible and encourage our friends and clients to send us postcards when a quick response is needed.
3. We do not have a home phone.
4. We find friends and professionals who have the time and inclination to keep track of certain kinds of information and use them. If we need to 'look it up" we call them. We also try to reward them in some way so they can afford to do this....
5. On a regular basis, we try to put aside some time to dip into an area we know nothing about, perhaps even feel hostility towards. This includes reading THEIR publications, whoever THEM is, so our filters do not cause us to become smug and stupid.
6. We estimate one hour of scheming and information exchange can lead to a minimum of 20 hours of hard, often boring work. Since we love scheming and networking, we try to set realistic goals for ourselves. Our most valuable tool: the phrase NO THANK YOU."

Is ST Part of the Problem?

Nancy Karlovich-Smith, Adult Ed Doctoral Student, FL State University: "If ST contributes to INFOGLUT, glut me anytime. Your voice for choice is much appreciated. Had Sudie Hofmann not introduced me to ST, I would have had Third, Fourth, and Fifth Thoughts about me and adult education."

Paul E. Wilson, Colonel, U.S. Marine Corps, Retired, Longwood, FL: "I have tried to figure out your angle. I get the feeling that you are on the side of the 'Againsters.' If it is an official governmental policy/decision, you will think it's wrong. What would you do if you were given full control of education? Would we be a non-school sort of Illich society? ST seems to indicate that you have to react to things, and I would prefer to be the First Thoughts type who was daring enough and incisive enough to start things. How about it? Is this all just playing the old tunes with a new brass section? If so, then you are indeed part of the INFOGLUT."

Christian Bay, Professor of Political Science, University of Toronto, Canada: "There is a vital need for people like yourselves. ST serves as a creative and morally (= politically) task-oriented intermediary between worthwhile theory and healthy common sense."

In this selection of comments we have tried to do justice to the range of response to the issues raised in the INFOGLUT article. We want to thank all who wrote us, which besides those quoted above includes Scott Anderson, Art Ellison, Anne Fitzgerald, Ken Freed, Al Griffiths, Jane Mansbridge, Michael Marien, Ed Nagel, Hayden Roberts, Paul Rux, and Robert Verner. We welcome your views and encourage you to keep them coming. The resulting dialogue continually clarifies our own understandings and commitments as we hope it does yours.

APOLOGY TO MY COLLEAGUES

There was a meeting last night
To overthrow the world
And I missed it.
I missed it even though I always
Overthrowthegovernment
Every Tuesday and Thursday night
And redefinereality
As - I - know it
Every Wednesday afternoon.

I missed it and instead
Spent the day with my six year old friend
We had a tea party with Pooh and Piglet
And saved our rag doll from the Monsters.
We built a ship on the stairs
And crossed the Atlantic.
We made ice cream out of summer clouds
And served it to the animals.
We overthrew the world
And redefined reality
As - I - had - known it.

(Christina Wagner - 1974)

WORKERS AS OWNERS & MANAGERS

Wes Hare and Frank Adams of the Twin Streams Educational Center, Chapel Hill, N.C., have for several years been variously involved in efforts at worker ownership and management of businesses, especially in the educational aspects of such enterprises.

This activity led the two of them to Paris this past October where they attended the International Council for Adult Education (ICAE) conference. (For our own Basic Choices' "special report" on this conference see below.)

At the conference, with Ted Jackson of Trent College, in Peterborough, Ontario, they convened a special session on "Economic Development, Self-Management and the Role of Adult Education," attended by 16 men and women from 6 countries. Case studies from Canada, the U.S., and Spain were examined in detail, with similar work in Great Britain, Haiti, Tunisia, and Sri Lanka also referred to. Among the critical questions identified was that of how to overcome the hopelessness and sense of powerlessness experienced especially by marginal and unorganized workers. Also, how can workers develop the technical skills required for effective ownership and decision-making? How can workers master management without being coopted and how can a worker-managed business keep the priorities of capital from dominating the business?

Among the recommendations made by the participants to the ICAE was that an international network of persons interested in the connection between adult education, self-management, and worker-ownership be established, with Twin Streams serving as the initial contact and clearinghouse.

Prior to attending the ICAE Conference, Wes and Frank traveled to Mondragon, Spain for a firsthand look at that vigorous center of a 25-year experiment in worker ownership. Mondragon is a Basque community with a network of more than 80 cooperatives-including factories, banks, and technical schools-whose 18,000 members participate democratically in the election of boards, selection of managers, and the work of the various enterprises.

Wes is arranging a Midwest trip in March and April to share their experiences and learnings. Any person or groups interested in hearing about the ICAE conference and/or Mondragon, adult education and worker ownership/management can contact Wes at Twin Streams, 243 Flemington St, Chapel Hill, N.C.27514 (919-929-3316).

CONFERENCES

From our Roving Reporter

Basic Choices may be small and its resources limited but we think big. We recruited our own roving reporter, Anne Fitzgerald, to cover the ICAE Conference in Paris (see above), held this last October around the theme "Towards an Authentic Development: The Role of Adult Education." Our press pass got Anne into UNESCO'S "heavily guarded" building, the press briefing and the address by President Mitterand - where she sat among reporters from Le Monde and other prestigious papers!

In fact Anne's schedule precluded her from attending anything but the opening session. From somewhere in Africa, between Kenya and Zimbabwe, we received the following report: The Director General of UNESCO called on the community to help fulfill individuals, to assist them in gaining capabilities to find their own solutions and to do away with a hierarchy which promotes exploitation through the school system. This theme of seeing traditional education and its vehicle, the school system, as villain was repeated by several speakers. Andre Henry, a French educational minister, said "Popular education, which is what we are concerned with here, has been marginalized, stifled and sterilized for decades. In spite of some progress, we are still dealing with a society characterized by inequalities and elitism. It is, therefore time for each person to consider himself responsible, cease to be an object submitting to decisions in which he or she has not participated and fully to take on the dignity occurring to the free and conscious citizen." This is seen as the mandate and vocation of socialism. This guy also uses terms like "recurrent training" to cope with the "knowledge explosion," political transformations and career changes. Sounds like life-long schooling to me. However I didn't hear any talk of credentialing

Another recurring theme called for the development of new structures which allow for the broadest citizen participation possible. For example a Mexican representative called for a new world order defined by the working people not the Superpowers. Adult ed must separate itself from the Superpowers' agenda by addressing real problems of existence, such as world peace. Literacy, he suggested, is important and an appropriate function of adult ed but not just to read and write in the traditional sense. "We need to read about our realities and write our own history." Further, he suggested that the conference should redefine adult ed, developing bold new policies which emphasize a critical analysis of reality, strengthen the multi-cultural dimension and promote solidarity and creativity among the people.

Generally, it was exciting to hear adult educators and others express commitment to the consumers of adult ed, particularly their empowerment, versus the self-serving rhetoric about the adult educator's future usually put forth at AEA.

Women Making History

Sue Davenport writes us that she and others at the Women's Studies Program, University of Illinois at Chicago, have organized a two-day conference on using women's history for secondary and post-secondary teachers and activists in community and labor organizations. "Women Making History: Women's Work, Women's Culture" will be held on April 15-16. "Women Making

History" is the Midwestern conference in a series of eight regional conferences funded by the Organization of Historians (OAH) and the Fund for the Improvement of Post Secondary Education (FIPSE) to disseminate teaching packets on women's history developed by the OAH.

Workshops will focus on women in American, European and Third World history; use of the OAH teaching packets; current research trends and methods; and popular uses of women's history, including oral history interviews to document women's struggles in the labor and civil rights movements. A more detailed conference flyer is available through the Women's Studies Program, 4075C BSB, University of Illinois at Chicago, Box 4348, Chicago, IL 60680.

In the Woods with Participatory Research

Fifteen people went to the Oregon, IL woods January 21-23 for an NIU course taught by Tom Heaney exploring participatory research as a stance for adult educators (see ST, Dec., 1982). We shared several case studies ranging from the Appalachian land use study coordinated by Highlander, a local video project done to arouse community action, to mislabeled participant-observer studies in which social scientists or adult educators did not use the participatory research approach. In the Appalachian land use study activists and citizens' groups in a six-state area around Tennessee worked to determine who owned the rich land and minerals of the region. The study revealed a higher concentration of (absentee) land ownership than in many Latin American countries.

As formulated by Budd Hall, Lynda Yanz and others in the Participatory Research Group in Toronto in the 1970's, participatory research has many parallels with Paulo Freire's analysis of the process consclentizacao, the development of critical consciousness. Both begin with the generation of questions and issues for investigation by and with people about their oppression and lack of power; this leads to action taken together on the basis of the investigation; at the last point, reflection on the action, the cycle begins again. Participatory research is meant to be a democratic shared process of dialogue.

We were frequently confused in our discussions during the weekend about the differences between social action, organizing and participatory research. Does the participatory language and theory mystify the idea of educators taking social action with their students? Is it an argument important only to academics? Is working for small changes within an institution significant social change? Must participatory research be done outside bureaucratic institutions? How much documentation is necessary to make something qualify as participatory research? Are we having a root difficulty in accepting "permanent struggle" as a condition of every aspect of our lives?

Some ideas for participatory research that people in the group are pursuing include forming a graduate student union, developing a short-range curriculum for nursing home nurses, training volunteers in a community organization, and making a film on illiteracy and education for empowerment in Chicago. The class has five additional sessions to look further into the questions raised and to share our projects and efforts.

Sue Davenport

Career Education & the New Physics

David Tiedeman, President of the National Institute For the Advancement of Career Education, would like you to know about an upcoming conference which focuses on how principles in the new physics (e.g. in Capra's book The Turning Point) relate to human careers. The first Advance of Career Assembly will convene May 31st at the University of Southern California. For further info write NIACE AT USC, University Park MC-0031, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0031.

CHINESE EDUCATION

Mary Aim (3410 N. Council Rd., Bethany, OK 73008) recently returned from a study trip to the Chinese Peoples Republic. Mary writes:

"China is an alien experience, but not alienating. Can you imagine a bureaucracy which supervises the job placement of every college graduate, much less one which 'personally' oversees the employment of every adult in a population of one billion!?"

If you'd like to see for yourself you might want to join Professor Roger Axford on his guided tour for adult educators of China,

Japan, and Hong Kong. For info contact Roger at the Higher & Ad Ed Dept., AZ State Univ., Tempo, AZ 85281. Or call (602) 956-3643.

WHAT NEXT FOR THE PEACE CORPS?

For those who have completed the two year Peace Corps contract, intense and memorable experience etches personal loyalties and humbling difficulties which significantly alter one's perceptions of the world. Consequently, returning stateside offers an embarrassment of riches and distractions which can not mean the same things as they did formerly. Both the U.S. and Third World are seen through new eyes.

An Associated Press release, published in the Dec. 13, 1982 Wisconsin State Journal ("Peace Corps marching to a different drummer") reveals, however, significant shifts in the Reagan Administration's view of what that experience should be. The article characterized the Peace Corps as a "hotbed of idealistic liberal arts graduates out to save the world ...Today's Peace Corps pitches career opportunities, personal growth and U.S. trade interests in addition to altruism. It teaches anti-communism along with languages."

The Madison chapter of Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs) - some 60 persons, ranging in age from 24-50 years, responded with its own news release for the new Peace Corps Director Loret Ruppe, significant chunks of which follow: "Peace Corps and similar Western volunteer organizations are unique among Third World development programs in that Peace Corps volunteers usually immerse themselves in local culture, learn and constantly use local languages, eat local food, and as much as possible, live the lifestyle of the ordinary people of the villages, towns, and cities where they live. This experience is significantly different from that of people who work for USAID, the US embassy or private corporations; these latter development workers almost invariably earn large salaries, eat imported Western foods, socialize among themselves and generally isolate themselves from the life of the host country. Our experiences of adapting to and becoming part of these very different cultures, have changed us in subtle yet profound ways. It has opened us to new, totally different experiences, and has there-by broadened our awareness of ourselves and the world. It has allowed us to make friends of people who at first seem alien, and to make exotic environments our own. These are the benefits we hold most dear.

We strongly object to the emphasis of Peace Corps as a means of developing new markets for US business. After we have lived and worked intimately with our various host country nationals, we cannot objectify them into markets. We also reject in the strongest way Reagan's dichotomous view of the world as reflected in the new anti-communist training of PCVs. Communist subversion is not responsible for most of the problems of the Third World countries. These problems are much more the result of colonial domination and exploitation which politically and economically reorganized these countries for the benefit of the colonial powers. These power relationships have been maintained in the neo-colonial period and often prevent real development from occurring.

Lastly, we wonder what is wrong with having an avowedly idealistic development agency. You seem to assume that idealism and realism are direct opposites. We reject this assumption. Very few of us could have finished two years without becoming realists. Many of us retain our idealism. Certainly the events of the past twenty years should make us reconsider our place in the world, but we do not feel we should cynically abandon our idealism."

Tim Turner (RPCV)

ILLICH MARCHES ON

With the current interest in Gandhi because of the Academy Award winning film, readers may want to take a look at a recent article "De-Schoolers and Gandhi" in the August 1982 issue of Gandhi Marg, the Journal of the Gandhi Peace Foundation. S.C. Nandwani explores the similarities and differences between the views of Illich and Gandhi in this seven page essay.

Send us a dollar and we'll mail it to you along with a copy of the only halfway decent review we've seen so far of Illich's new book Gender (New York: Pantheon, 1982). The review was in the Toronto Globe & Mail (Feb. 26, 1983) and concludes that Gender "scrapes the rust off your mind." Thanks to John Minnis at Athabasca University in Edmonton, Canada for calling this review to our attention.

And as part of this limited one-time only offer, we'll throw in without extra charge a copy of the only interview Ivan has given in years. It appeared in the University of California student newspaper. The Daily Californian (Sept. 30, 1982) and in it Ivan characterizes himself as a "teaching rabbi." What do you think of them apples?

John Ohliger

CORRECTION

Helen Modra writes that in our last issue we gave her wrong address and institution (see "What's Up Down Under," p. 11). It should be Riverina College of Advanced Education, School of Library & Information Science, PO Box 588, Wagga Wagga, NSW 2650, Australia. In turn we would like to correct a common misconception which appears at the bottom of the College letterhead as a motto attributed to Robert Kennedy: "Some men see things as they are and say Why? Others dream things that never were and say Why not?" Actually Kennedy never claimed to originate that statement. He always gave its proper source - George Bernard Shaw, who in turn put the words in the mouth of The Serpent in the Garden of Eden in his play Back to Methuselah.

SECOND THOUGHTS is a newsletter designed to raise fundamental questions about the meaning of education. How can education: Enhance human freedom and participation? Expand the frontiers of individual and collective research and action on matters of substance: Contribute to a more just and democratic society?

SECOND THOUGHTS serves a network of persons raising basic questions about mandatory continuing education (MCE), professionalization and other issues related to social control.

It is published by Basic Choices, Inc., a Midwest Center for Clarifying Political and Social Options, 1121 University Ave., Madison, WI 53715, (608)256-1946. It is also a project in values-clarification of Madison Campus Ministry. Members of the group are John Hill, Vincent Kavaloski, David Lisman, Art and Sue Lloyd, Mark McFadden, John Ohliger, Vern Visick, and Chris Wagner.

This issue is mainly due to the efforts of Beth Horning (Newsletter Press), Art Lloyd, John Ohliger, Faye Pietrokowsky, and Tim Turner. Thanks for last minute help on the December issue to Tom Heaney, John Hoffman, Phil Kaveny, and Gary Wetzel.

For SECOND THOUGHTS to continue we need your suggestions, criticisms, articles, subscriptions ($13 for individuals, $18 for institutions), and tax-deductible gifts.

RESEARCH IN PROGRESS (RIP)

-Basic Choices is the current subject of an ethnographic study for a MA thesis in the department of Continuing and Vocational Education of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

-Roger Boshier will be presenting a paper at the Adult Education research Conference in April, 1983 which describes "a model and instrument designed to facilitate one's ability to understand, and form policies pertaining to, the purposes of adult Education."

- Bill Spielberger is working with Ed Marciniak at the Institute of Urban Life in Chicago on a "theology of work," including research on industrial cooperatives such as the Mondragon Experiment in Spain.

-Theresa Grant, a graduate student at the University of Oregon's School of Education, is working on "a maternal nutrition project with poverty-line women" as part of her PHD work.

-Philip E. Johnson of Pima Community College in Tucson, Arizona is joining many others in efforts to develop new models of teaching which help people become learners of life within a context of "transformational education."

-Graduate student Eleanor Craig, a member of the Sisters of Loretto, is half-way through her 15 month observation period of Fair Share in Boston -- part of a statewide citizen action group.

-Ana Gobbledale is hoping to design her dissertation on a phenomenological model and look at the concept of "willingness," particularly as it is understood in Overeaters Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous.

PUBLICATIONS

"Peacemaking: a peacemaker's resource directory", with references to peace-related books, magazines, directories, newsletters, tapes, filmstrips, and organizations throughout the country has been compiled in May, 1982 by Lida L. Larsen. For more info she may be reached at: Berwyn Presbyterian Church, 6301 Greenbelt Rd, College Park, MD 20740.