by Julia Sommer
Some years ago several elite schools in New Delhi added a community service
component to their graduation requirements. The deal went like this: If a
high school student taught one illiterate Indian to read and write by
springtime of the final year, he or she could graduate and go on to
college. This forced act of good Samaritanism was supposed to prove that
the student was a socially responsible young adult.
In April, throughout the city, herds of 17-year-olds appeared at
school with street children or their domestic help in tow, each of
whom would sit down to a rudimentary reading and writing
exam. With heavy irony, the students' fates lay in the hands of
their newly literate servants. Supposedly newly literate: Many
students prided themselves on having beaten the system by
bringing in servants who had long been literate, even if only
barely. Among themselves, these wealthy teen-agers sneered at
the minority of goody-goodys who actually bothered to educate
someone less fortunate than themselves.
