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Ms. Nancy Pyle
Associate Director
Harvard Institute for International Development
One Eliot Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
December 12, 1989
Dear Ms. Pyle:
Thank you for discussing with me Harvard’s commitment to include non—elite Mexicans within its international undergraduate outreach. At your suggestion, I gave Mary Schneider—Enriquez information about one very promising young individual in Mexico City who has a working class background. His name is Arturo Ruiz Aparicio.
I have come to know Arturo and hundreds of other non-elite Mexican youth while organizing student service projects in Mexico City these past four summers. These projects have brought together American students with their Mexican peers from working class and underprivileged backgrounds. Together, these young people have revitalized a neglected neighborhood, have sponsored a street-kid soccer team, have struggled through hundreds of hours of intensive English classes and have made numerous joint excursions in the capital and to nearby national parks. These projects have been sponsored by university centers of the Roman Catholic organization Opus Dei in Mexico and the United States.
Based upon my past experiences, I would like to suggest one way that Harvard might meet and cultivate prospective applicants in the public school system of Mexico. In general terms, the recruitment would best be done in a low—key fashion so as to preclude any negative political reactions, such as accusations of “brain drain” or “cradle robbers.” Inasmuch as the major Mexican teachers union is estranged from the Salinas Administration, it would be especially prudent to export an image of support rather than one of competition or supposed exploitation. I would also suggest targeting recruitment towards Mexican junior high school students, thereby allowing time for a thorough assessment and preparation process.
In specific terms, I would like to offer a plan which is both low in cost and high in yield. It could be organized within the existing university structure without compromising university standards. The plan would prove to be richly educational for all those in the Harvard community who would take part directly or vicariously, not to mention how much it would benefit the watching university world. Perhaps most importantly, the plan, if properly implemented, would provide a real service to thousands of young Mexicans who will never apply to the College, but who would be forever grateful to the College and the United States.
The proposal is to have a university organization like “WorldTeach” of Phillips Brooks House sponsor one or more summer day camps in Mexico for public school students there. The camps would be staffed by U.S. volunteers from Harvard and other schools. The camps would offer academic enrichment courses, English and sports. Through advertising in schools, neighborhoods, local soccer leagues, churches and the media, these camps would attract hundreds of the best and the brightest of Mexican youth. Some of those students, probably no more than a handful, would be able and willing to study at the College and in that way personally participate in the modernization of their homeland.
The only significant costs to the university would be program promotion in the U.S. and a small staff in Mexico. Since volunteers could be put up with Harvard alumni, their family and friends, the only costs to the volunteer would be travel and spending money. The small costs of running the actual camps could be covered by local donations and a reasonable tuition fee.
I know that this plan would work because I have seen it work. I have organized these kind of camps. I have found the American volunteers at Harvard, Yale, MIT, Northwestern and a dozen other schools. The camps have attracted hundreds of young people in Mexico City and in rural districts near Cuernavaca. Out of all those participants, we have come to know and befriend one or two exceptional young Mexicans with more drive and aptitude than their country's educational system can handle.
While I have here argued for this plan as an indirect means for non-elite recruitment, perhaps a stronger case could be made in terms of the educational opportunity for the volunteers and for the College. American students can learn a great deal from a working relationship with their allegedly “less— developed” neighbors, starting with real—life lessons on the priority of people over things and community interests over self. I have been happy to find that ordinary Mexicans tend to make this learning process as attractive and painless as possible. They have this remarkable amount of interest and affection towards American students, which seems odd given the lopsided and contentious history of U.S.-Mexico relations. To encounter human warmth from virtual strangers can be a new and vivifying
experience for many Americans. Images of the outside world begin to assume three—dimensional, flesh and blood form. Statistics and exponential growth rates become men, women and children.
As we approach the 5OOth anniversary of the discovery of the Americas, perhaps the time has come for a discovery of the Americans. Experts say that the abyss separating the “First World” from the “Third World” yawns larger with each passing year. The distance within the imagination of modern American youth may be even greater than we would fear to imagine.
I have become convinced that it is young people who must personally, physically bridge the gap. Tomorrow’s leaders need to have a personal stake in the lives of a few good friends in another “world,” which in the case of Mexico seems more like an orbiting moon. It is schools like Harvard that should lead the way to make such interplanetary travel possible.
I hope that these thoughts will be of some use to you in your planning. Please feel free to contact me if I can be of any further assistance.
Sincerely,
Theodore S. Wills
481 Hammond Street
Chestnut Hill, MA 02167
738—7348
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