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

Half-Baked Bill?

Sir / Your article about a measure for public financing of presidential campaigns [Dec. 17] sponsored by Senators Kennedy and Mondale portrays Senator James Allen as a villain because of his efforts to scuttle this bill--a bill opposed even by Senators Ervin and Weicker. You can't seem to recognize a piece of hurriedly prepared, half-baked legislation sneakily attached to an important bill that was assured of President Nixon's signature. I believe that Senator Allen deserves a lot of credit for his efforts.

F.A. GEHRET

Norristown, Pa.

Sir / The defeat of the financing plan for presidential elections is yet another thorn to prick the moral indignation of millions of Americans. The nation now has cause to wonder why the Senate should shy away from a bill that would eliminate illegal corporate contributions, political extortions, and the type of rank criminality that stemmed from a $60 million campaign fund in 1972. The congressional record stands at 0-1 on attempts made to ensure against future Watergates.

CHARLES AGEE ATKINS

Ashland, Ky.

Analysis and Analogy

Sir / TIME contends that gunboat diplomacy is anachronistic [Dec. 24]. You cite Viet Nam and the resulting catastrophe of intervention in that civil war as proof of your thesis. It was our mistaken use of "We don't want another Munich" that led us to catastrophe in Viet Nam. It could be that the cry "We don't want another Viet Nam" will lead us to further, more serious mistakes. Our foreign policy should be governed by careful analysis, not careless analogy.

BILL BAHNKE

Monticello, Ill

Ancient Wisdom

Sir / Your Essay "Patients' Rights and the Quality of Medical Care" [Dec. 17] brings to mind an ancient Chinese custom. The Chinese, it is said, used to hire a doctor on a retainer and made regular payments to him as long as they remained well. When they became ill, they were guaranteed treatment, but the payments stopped until health was restored.

We might be considered a backward society for not devising a better system than giving our doctors a handsome vested interest in our prolonged ailments rather than our good health.

DEWEY YODER

Lewisburg, Pa.

Sir / The article ignores the millions of people in this country who have been indoctrinated by television programs and magazine articles to demand useless procedures and excess surgery. A corps of highly ethical and conservative physicians could not begin to satisfy their wants. As I lie down to sleep every night, it is with the contented knowledge that those people who demand more drama and reassurance in their lives than I can give them can find it in the clinics and flamboyant physicians in the vicinity.

CHRIS L. MENGIS, M.D.

Santa Fe, N. Mex.

Sir / The Professional Standard Review Organization, as mandated by federal law, is a serious intrusion into the patient-doctor relationship. With peer review as the norm, some of the less expert medical practitioners may be selected out. But more important, the creative, humanistic, unorthodox physician will be selected out. For years, unofficial peer consensus militated against legalized abortion, home delivery, natural childbirth and the husband's presence in the delivery room.

JANICE CASEY, R.N.

La Jolla, Calif.

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