The Nation - News from April 23, 1987

A proposal to give college students academic credit for tutoring children and illiterate adults could have as much impact as the Peace Corps, retired Chief Justice Warren E. Burger said. “It is imperative in a democratic society that there be no substantial number of people who are not literate,” Burger, chairman of the Commission on the Bicentennial of the Constitution, said at a Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee hearing. Committee Chairman Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) has introduced a bill to establish a “literacy corps” of college students who would earn credits by tutoring in reading and math for six hours a week in public schools, jails and other institutions.