Letters: Jul. 5, 1968

(3 of 3)

Sir: Your article, "Opening Eyes in the Ghettos" [June 21], was very interesting and one can heartily applaud these new and daring programs. The St. Louis public schools have used the City Art Museum extensively as a cultural resource. Ten years ago, only 2,000 children attended classes there; 39,000 attended in the '67-'68 school year and paid their own bus fares. The St. Louis City Art Museum is located in Forest Park in the center of the city. Barefoot ghetto children who fish in the many lakes in the park now leave their fishing poles in the bushes outside the museum while they slip in for the daily 2:30 p.m. lecture.

Recently, two so-called disadvantaged ten-year-olds were in a heated argument in school, where they were seated across the table from each other, drawing each other's portrait. One boy had drawn the other with an extremely long neck. When the art teacher inquired about the trouble, the irate youngster asked, "Who in the hell does he think he is, Modigliani?" MARIE L. LARKIN Supervisor of Art Board of Education St. Louis

It's a Bird

Sir: Reader T. Steven Lale [June 21] objected to the "bearded, psychedelic 'freak out' " on your cover, representing the class of '68 [June 7]. I have met many people like Reader Lale. And behind their defense of faceless conformity lies a paralyzing fear. Fear of change. Fear of humor. And fear of disturbing their comfortable, fuzzy thinking. I, too, deplore the self-indulgent hedonism and head-in-the-sand anarchy gaining ground among youth today. But an ostrich is an ostrich, whether a soft-brained young anarchist or a soft-living non-think suburbanite. These birds may look different. They may even fight each other. But they are different only like male and female. And together they will breed destruction.

COLEMAN L. COATES Wheaton, Ill.

Girls Are 3-D

Sir: That fellow who said, "No one is interested in the sides of a woman, for which, as far as I know, there is very little use [June 21]," doesn't understand what holds my left front to my left back and my right front to my right back. It's the sides, sir.

SUE SHAFFER TIHANSKY Tampa, Fla.

Sir: The bathing suits are much too suggestive—off with them!

MORGAN L. BALCH

Oswego. N.Y.