Literacy Plan Aids Harvard Students

During his State of the Union address last week, President Clinton announced that the United States would allocate $51 billion of the fiscal year 1998 budget to improving the literacy of its citizens. Clinton's primary goal for America is complete literacy: "Every8-year-old must be able to read," he said.

As part of the president's initiative, Phillips Brooks House Association (PBHA) volunteers in the Federal Work Study Program will be paid to tutor children in reading. Students who are eligible will be paid $7.50 per hour for tutoring children; they will also receive additional training in literacy education.

While we endorse this new program and are pleased to see federal monies going to a worthwhile enterprise, we feel that the matter is not cut-and-dry.

Clinton's goal for America is that everyone be able to read, which is why only the literacy programs offered by PBHA and the House and Neighborhood Development (HAND) program will be paid. But the new program's immediate benefit, i.e. money, goes to Harvard students. In a trickle-down process, we seem to be hoping that by encouraging the participation of students on work-study who might not be able to afford volunteering, more elementary school-aged children will learn to read. This is not very realistic; we don't think the program will lead to a massive influx of new volunteers because neither PBHA nor HAND is currently able to handle such an expansion.

So the real benefit of paying would-be volunteers to work is to provide fair opportunity to all Harvard students. In and of itself, this is a strong argument for the program. But it is an altogether separate issue from a program meant as a "literacy initiative."

We are not recommending or suggesting that Harvard begin paying students for extracurricular activities. We would like to point out, however, that the joy over paying students to perform community service may have been elicited for the wrong reasons. Who are we happy for? Harvard students or the illiterate children of Cambridge?

PBHA will continue to run its programs whether or not its participants are paid, so if the number of tutored students is not significantly increased by the Federal Work Study Program, then we question whether singling out community service is a good idea.

If the College encourages "volunteering" for monetary compensation, it is not encouraging volunteering at all. Tutoring a child on a $7.50 per hour basis sounds like a job to us.