The Delinquent Teachers

From boys and girls all over the U.S. the scrawled letters poured in, some peremptory, some urgent--all rather vague. "Dear Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce," wrote one boy from Reno. "We are reading about coal. Could you send some pamphlets and a piece of coal." A pupil in El Dorado, Ark. asked for "pictures and postcards." He did not say what sort of pictures or of what, but he did provide one pertinent bit of information: "I am in Mrs. Jackson's room." Said a brief note from Southwick, Mass.: "Will you send me all the information about your state."

"Information." To the Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce such requests are all in a day's work. But each year more and more of them have come in, until the chamber must now handle more than 1,000 a month. Indeed, this sort of letter writing has become something of a national habit--and it is causing many a business and Government executive to wonder just what U.S. teachers are up to.

In Boston Governor Herter's office averages up to ten letters a day from young information seekers. The pupils ask for samples of all Massachusetts minerals, lists of state judges and the names of all state wild flowers. The Boston Chamber of Commerce has received postcards with only the word "Information" on them. The young writers want samples of soil and biographies of the Founding Fathers. The Chicago Association of Commerce and Industry gets 5,000 letters a month. The Douglas Aircraft Co. in Los Angeles has received as many as 686 in a week.

"I Will Flop." Both chambers of commerce and corporations try conscientiously to answer the letters they get. Up to a point, they welcome and even encourage the letter-writing habit on the theory that today's pupils will be tomorrow's customers and tourists. But the whole thing is getting out of hand. Says William H. P. Smith of the Boston chamber: "We're just swamped with this mail from kids. Most of the information they ask for they could find in any World Almanac, sometimes even in a phone book." "Some of our teachers," says Executive Director Sherman Voorhees of the Pittsburgh chamber, "are delinquent." Instead of learning how to use the encyclopedia, "children are being taught the easy way out." Adds a Pittsburgh businessman: "If teachers insist that their students bother companies for information, why don't they have the courtesy to see that they do it right? If they'd tell the children how to write proper letters, we'd be happy."

For all the complaints, there seems to be no quick cure for the habit. By now too many children have apparently come to believe that Government and industry have a sort of duty to get them through school. As one California fifth-grader wrote: "Will you Please send me some pitures of Pennsylvania Because I'am study Pennsylvaina In school. I need pictues of Penn. very bad. So please send me some pictures. If I don't get some picturs I will flop in school."

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