In both areas, according to Curle, poverty, though still basic, has ceased to be the explosive problem. The immediate cause of unrest is the rise and frustration of aspiration--the product, incidentally, of an awareness generated in no small measure by men like Curle. What the telegraph and telephone have done for African blacks, the work of community organizers and OEO personnel had done for American Negroes. Education--in school and out--has driven home the growing gap between the rich and the poor, holding forth a promise of improvement on which society is daily reneging.

In Nigeria, Curle points out, theree quarters of a million students left school last year to fill 140,000 new jobs. The rest are dry tinder, milling in the country's bloated cities. As Curle sees it, the summer sparks in U.S. ghettoes and what he refers to as the "incredible volume of violence in the underdeveloped world" are only hints of the cataclysm brewing in slums and vilages around the globe.

Curle knows he is partly responsible for this. His commitment to education grew originally out of an uncritical faith in the power of schooling to raise the standard of living in underdeveloped nations. In much of its work, he admits, the Center has not given adequate consideration to the effects of its efforts on the expectations of the poor.

But he also points out that this is in part due to inexperience. The whole idea of developing human--as opposed to just natural--resources is very new, both in the U.S. and abroad. Just one facet of this new approach to underdevelopment, educational development on a mass scale, is still in its infancy and will remain immature for some time to come.

Curle remains convinced, however, that education can provide answers to the problems of rising expectation. He will be on sabbatical next semester and hopes to use the time to straighten out his thoughts on how schooling can prepare black children, particularly in the States, for the rude awakening graduation provides. In April, Merril Jackson of Michigan State University's Center for Conflict Resolution is coming to Harvard to work with Curle.

Surprisingly, Curle sees black power in its more moderate forms as another key component of any formula for averting ghetto violence. "I'm in favor of it as I would interpret the term," he suggests. "The black communities are separate communities, and we might as well recognize the fact, and we might as well hope that they would become complete communities as say, Cambridge is." Curle would favor blacks taking over essential community services such as garbage collection or mail delivery--things which whites now do but do poorly. The ultimate goal would be to foster a pride and independence which would permit blacks to negotiate with whites as equals. Though generally pessimistic about the prospects for integration, Curle sees such a greater sense of black identity and confidence as a prerequisite. In support, he again points to the underdeveloped world, this time to Kenya. There, in the late 1950's bitter racial fighting preceded independence. But Kenya's new national dignity permitted the reconciliation of the British and their former colonials. And Jomo Kenyata, at first bitterly condemned by the British for leading the notorious Mau-Maus, now sports a white cabinet minister and has turned into one of Africa's elder statesmen.

Curle's intense involvement has not engendered false optimism. Asked if there is really any way to avoid conflict during modernization's trauma, he replies sadly, "One would hope so but I'm not so sure." But until he knows for certain, he continues, he's going to keep working at "taking the violence out of it."