Conversations By and About Kids
Sir / In "A Child's Christmas in America" [Dec. 24], you stated your information. Now I'll state mine. I'm 14, in ninth grade and president of our junior high. These are some of the conversations I hear: "Why should we do good? Just as long as we got money, we got power, and in this society that's what counts." "The way I figure it, you're born in an offbeat society or the rat-race one. If you want to follow the rat race, you've got to get ahead of the fools and work your rear end off to do well. I mean, look at Agnew, one of the biggest rip-offs of all time, and we get busted for lifting a candy bar."
I just thought I'd let you know how folks here feel.
ALEX GORDON MYERS
Bonita, Calif.
Sir / Your story on children leaves me mixed with happiness and sadness. Happy as a husband and father; sad because the content of your story is another indicator of the decline of the U.S. Fifteen years from now I can show my grown children this article as a good example of some of the mechanics of our decline.
JEROME A. YOUNG
San Carlos, Calif.
Sir / Re Dr. Pomeranz's statement negating the ill effects of day-care centers on children: perhaps we can see the children's lowered resistance to colds as a warning—emotional deprivation manifested physically?
An excuse to stay home with mother?
STEPHANIE CALMENSON
Brooklyn
Sir / I turned to your story with anticipation and finished it with sadness and malaise. Then I realized what was wrong. Never have I seen a Christmas story in which Christ was so totally forgotten. It's like having a birthday party on nobody's birthday.
MRS. H.J. JENKINS
Wayland, Mass.
Sir / Kids have had enough mechanized input. What they need today is a little bit of the human touch, human love, human care. Your pictures of children with the Yamahas, telephones, the god-awful car-bed and kitschy dolls that do absolutely everything but fornicate frightened and shamed me.
RUTH MARQUARDT
Oneonta, N.Y.
Sir / I am a 13-year-old girl. It sounds very much to me as if adults have just awakened to the fact that we have minds and can express ideas coherently and make at least as much sense as they do. We are fully capable of being concerned about our environment and various crises with which you have left us. What is so extraordinary about a "child's" knowing something besides the name of Dick and Jane's dog? Get on the ball! Maybe if adults had listened to kids in the beginning, it wouldn't come as a shock to learn that we can think.
PATSY PIGOTT
Kensington, Conn.
Seduced and Blamed
Sir / Like the virtuous woman who is seduced and then is blamed for her weakness, I, the consumer, am now being blamed for the energy crisis because I drive a big car [Dec. 31] that guzzles too much gas and use too many energy-consuming conveniences that I have been subtly conned into buying. Being blamed, no less, by my Government, which is charged with planning ahead, averting crises, and regulating the whole economy. Man, am I ever getting an education in politics and economics!
THOMAS J. MINTER
Sylvania, Ohio