NLA DIscussion: Literary Practitioners and Volunteers

[Julietmerr at aol.com]

Interesting how this issue of professionals versus volunteers keeps coming
up, and keeps generating heat.  A couple of observations that don't seem to
have been part of the conversation (or maybe I missed them):

'Professionals" -- the working conditions that ABE teachers experience is
more and more the norm for more and more working people, not only in the US
but elsewhere in the post-industrial world.  That is, part-time, temporary
work, with no benefits, no job security, no long-term career path, is exactly
what characterizes the 'contingent' workforce.  So perhaps it's the school
teachers who are the anomaly.  Here in Britain, ABE is based in further
education colleges whose main focus is on vocational training of school
leavers (somewhat like the community colleges in the US).  Increasingly, FE
teachers are hired through agencies, just like temps.  And the FE college
leaders argue that the unions who want to resist this are out of step with
the new world order.

'Volunteers" -- I think it is a common experience of volunteers that they
(the volunteers) gain as much or more from the process as the people they
help.  In an increasingly fragmented society, where the gap between rich and
poor is widening, should we not regard volunteering as a valuable activity in
its own right, because it is one of the few spaces where the haves and
have-nots come together and get to know one another as real people and not
stereotypes?

Neither observation is to suggest that the fight of organizing for better
working conditions is not worth making.  They do suggest that there's a
bigger picture that we need to think about, especially in terms of building
alliances.  The first suggests there is common cause with union and other
worker organizations that are fighting the growth in the contingent workforce
(for example, in Europe, new laws require that part-time staff receive all
the benefits to which full-time staff are entitled, pro-rated).  The second
suggests that incorporating middle class volunteers could be not a substitute
for trained teachers but a valuable social cohesion activity in itself.

Juliet Merrifield
Brighton, England