From Peace Corps Wiki
The PC WIKI is an interesting idea so to start off for the Malaysian IA section here are some observations. The lead-up paragraph pertains to me and can be edited out at any time. The peculiarities of Group XIII need to be discussed: the PVC's recruited from the Job Corps,etc.
After three years as a semi effective PCV in late 1969, with the $500 go-home allowance in pocket and little else, I was pondering rest-of-my-life possibilities with the the madam in the old Tivoli Bar on Batu Rd in KL. Old Molly was sympathetic and steered me into a very well paying in-country job. Now, almost forty years later I am retired in Kota Bharu and although old Molly and the Tivoli are long gone I still see former students; great friends and great drinking buddies.
The PCV years were great but the following years were better and much more effective in a way that PC service could never be. The PC experience was too dissipated and transient: On the average a PCV taught ~200 pupils per year and probably had a lasting effect two or three or four, if any. The government's goal was universal secondary education for all, especially the economically disadvantaged rural Malays. PCV's were brought in to fill the staffing gap resulting from the aggressive expansion of Malay language secondary education and the building of hundreds of new secondary schools. Simultaneously the government teacher training system was cranked up turning out more teachers able to instruct in Malay. The Min. of Education needed bodies to fill in until they could catch up and staff the expanded Malay language education system.
The time spent working and interacting with co-teachers had no long term effect. PCV's were a curiosity, an amusement, an interloper who would go away and be replaced by a more acceptable local teacher who could teach in Malay. PCV's eased the transition and contributed to the phase out of English language instruction.
PCV's served a purpose: filled a gap, but as English medium IA teachers, they were extraneous to the government's vision of nation building: universal education in the national language. Realistically neither the PC directors nor the Malaysian government really expected the PC to leave footprints. Within five years all IA was taught in Malay in government schools.
Personally the post PCV in-country experience has been much more effective and rewarding simply because the money was available to focus on individual potential and need: Twenty dollars per month kept a bright kid in school; a hundred paid for university accommodation; a few thousand put someone through a two or three year diploma course; fifty capped broken front teeth. We have assisted many: twenty or thirty or forty, I do not know. The majority, not all, have seen a success that would have been impossible without our assistance.
To some the above might smell a bit like "white man's burden", that's fine, call it what you want, but the long term effect far surpassed anything accomplished as a $120/month PCV.
Perhaps, after a period of in-country orientation, today's PCV's should be given an assistance allowance and really have an effect.