Teach-In

To the Editors of The Summer News:

Your recent coverage of the summer teach-in and Donald Riegle's letter of June 19th both reveal significant issues clouding the future impact of such events. One cannot help but believe that if the recent Norman Mailer performance is typical the teach-in movement has ceased to be constructive and has become instead just a particularly well-organized adolescent rebellion against the harsh realities of one phase of adult life.

It is intriguing that the teach-ins have rarely featured speakers with a responsible stake in the administration of any policy, much less that of our government in Vietnam. When such speakers have appeared, attendance has fallen and the remaining audience has subjected them to the cat-calls of night-long bedlam. Rarely have the teach-in speakers considered rational alternatives to the blunt, pressing problems of dealing with an implacable, illusive enemy who refuses either to yield or to negotiate. Rarely have alternative action proposals been examined in the light of their complex consequences for our friends, our enemies, or for the remainder of the world.

Raucous meetings of people convened by sound truck to listen only to the generalizations they wish to hear can never become the calm, deliberate gatherings of responsible scholars -- or responsible policy-makers. They are at best adolescent: at worst, popular demagogy. RICHARD F. TOZER