PERHAPS the touchiest and most taboo-ridden major problem facing big-city governments in the U.S. is the high crime rate among Negroes. Probing into the subject, TIME correspondents found city politicians evasive, police officials wary, Negro leaders defensive. But as the facts piled up, it was plain that the curtain of evasion conceals a social illness of disturbing scope. For a report on the problem and its causes, see NATIONAL AFFAIRS, The Negro Crime Rate: A Failure in Integration.

EVERY businessman has his pet phrase for the slump--the "saucer recession," the "polkadot recession," etc., etc. It is also the recession where more statistics get more microscopic study than ever before, as every economist--amateur or professional--searches to discover whether the U.S. economy is going up, down or sideways. The only trouble is that statistics, like dry martinis, should be handled with care. For a prime example of how befuddling statistics can be, see BUSINESS, Unemployment Figures.

MANY TIME readers will remember '"' the moving picture of Negro Student Dorothy Counts outside Charlotte's Harding High School on the first day of school integration in North Carolina. The picture (TIME, Sept. 16) was taken by Photographer T. Douglas Martin for the Charlotte News and wirephotoed around the world by the Associated Press. Last week it won top honors (out of 743 entries from 20 countries) in The Netherlands Newspaper Publisher Association's annual photo contest. For Photographer Martin, who now works on the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, the honor was doubly welcome. Reason: the Charlotte News, which downplayed the integration story, never used his award-winning shot.

NOWHERE in the Communist world do Western correspondents roam so freely, or officials admit their problems and shortcomings so frankly as in Poland. At the Zeran auto works near Warsaw, General Director Julian Dyia told TIME Correspondent Edward Hughes: "Certainly this is not a very efficient establishment. One reason is that we have almost no workers with background or skill in this field; they do very poor work." For news of this Communist country, see FOREIGN NEWS, The Communist Unemployed.

STUNG by criticism, progressive educationists defended their belief in teaching according to "life purposes," and blasted back at their critics. Two questioned the teaching of foreign languages, another insisted that "adjustment" is more important than "rote learning." A letter from the National Association of Secondary-School Principals called its 16,500 members to arms and, among other things, asked them to consider discontinuing school subscriptions to TIME and LIFE. See EDUCATION, Back Talk and The Best Defense.

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