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It is very important that children learn good manners at an early age [EDUCATION, Sept. 29]. Some people think it is a waste of schooltime to teach children to be polite, but politeness is more important than your IQ. It is better to be a B-average student with great manners than an A+ student who is a big wise guy. If all second-graders learned politeness and kindness just as they learn math and science, America would be a much more civilized society in 25 years. CHRISTINE DEVLIN, age 11 Brookline, Mass.
STILL WAITING FOR JUSTICE
Your excellent article "The Search for the Unicorn" [AMERICAN SCENE, Sept. 29] told the public what the infamous hippie Ira Einhorn did to my sister Holly and how he has been on the run since 1981, hiding and laughing at the rest of us. Our father parachuted into Normandy on June 6, 1944, and was one of the first Americans to help liberate France from Nazi tyranny. Our mother was stationed in France with the Red Cross. Do the French now repay these real debts by releasing my sister's murderer? The spirits of Holly and my parents cry out for justice. If a convicted murderer like Einhorn is allowed once more to slip through some chink in the system, will we or anyone else ever have justice or be safe? If Einhorn is to be released, why don't we just turn loose all the lifers? JOHN MADDUX Alvarado, Texas
ALL IN THE FAMILY
I felt a bit implicated by your assertion that Deepak Chopra, my dad, has "little familiarity with family life as most Americans live it" [FAMILY, Sept. 22]. I was not aware that drinking from the toilet, balloon animals spawned from condoms, and tongue studs constitute the American family experience. More to the point, despite having passed through my own phases of growing pains, tattoos and flunking two college courses, I have, at 22, managed to graduate from Columbia University, publish a novel, embark on my own adult journey and find some time to feel grateful to both my parents for teaching me the tools to find happiness through it all. In other words, I feel remarkably well adjusted for having been the product of Chopra's idealized "warm bubble bath of self." GAUTAMA CHOPRA New York City