Precept Corps

When a boy from Berkeley joins the Peace Corps to teach young Ghanaians, that's idealism with a touch of glamour; when he signs up to teach in Harlem, that's plain idealism. When a Kansas nurse helps Pakistani psychotics, that's useful and also exotic; when she helps Navajo neurotics, that's just useful. Last week the Kennedy Administration approved the blueprint for a project abundantly idealistic and daringly short of glamour: the domestic Peace Corps, probably to be known by the undramatic title of National Service Corps.*

The Administration expects hot objections, typified by Ohio Senator Frank Lausche's recent blast that ''we have legions of Peace Corps workers already in our country"--he mentioned ministers, parents, teachers, social workers, the police, and parole officers. The Administration argues that thousands of idealistic students and others need a Government agency (probably under the Health, Education and Welfare Department) to organize, pay and steer them into good works. "We need to offer visible avenues of service to these people," says a White House study group.

The goal is to alleviate some conditions uncomfortably similar to those of countries where the Peace Corps works. The White House is concerned about:

>An estimated 30% of youths entering the U.S. labor force in the 1960s will not have finished high school. Some 23% of all nonwhite adults in the U.S. are "functional illiterates"--unable to read even want ads.

> Most children of the nation's 500,000 migrant workers (average annual wage: $911) receive little or no schooling. The same goes for the nation's 285,000 reservation-bound American Indians. U.S. jails, prisons and reformatories hold thousands of people "desperately in need of basic education and training."

> More than 165,000 new Cuban refugees include 13.000 children without parents. An estimated 35% of all mothers in big cities cannot afford prenatal care.

NSC alone cannot possibly produce solutions. As currently planned, its function is to be a kind of "Precept Corps"--sending small groups of trained volunteers into troubled areas at the request of local people and working under their orders. By example, the volunteers are supposed to spur greater local action--soon working themselves out of a job and moving on to another trouble spot.

Harvesting Idealism. NSC aims to start small with 500 volunteers by midsummer, probably hit peak strength in three years with 3,000 to 5,000 members. It will cost then about $10 million a year (one-sixth of this year's Peace Corps budget). For recruits, it will rely heavily on students and retired people, demanding slightly lower physical standards than the overseas Peace Corps. Domestic corpsmen need not be college graduates, but will have to be U.S. citizens aged at least 18 (no top limit), with warm, steady characters and almost any useful skill. They will get four to six weeks' training at colleges and universities, serve for one year without pay, get mustering-out pay of about $900. Though draft-deferred, they will not be exempt from later military service. As Interior Secretary Stewart Udall recently put it: "We seek a new harvest of idealism that we have let lie fallow here at home."

In Darkest America. Will such high-caliber volunteers come forward? Quiet polls at 70 campuses have shown high enthusiasm. A growing trend among collegians to tutor slum kids and help the aged is additional evidence. Next month the U.S. National Student Association will sponsor a conference to spur NSC.

NSC volunteers can be sure of at least one thing: their work in parts of darkest America may be harder than if they went to darkest Africa. "We don't want softies." says one Administration planner. "National Service Corps work won't be a picnic in Central Park nor an outing at Coney Island. In some places, it will be tougher than serving in the Peace Corps overseas."

*And no kin to the Administration's proposed Youth Conservation Corps for putting jobless youngsters to work.

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