Dear TIME-Reader:

AS far as Peter Braestrup of our Chicago bureau is concerned, the teaching of reading has not changed in a generation. "When I visited the second grade at Lincolnwood School," he wrote, "pupils were reading, just as I did 19 years ago, William Nida's Fleet-foot the Caveboy. And just as I did, too, one small boy stumbled over the word rhinoceros." Peter was one of 51 TIME reporters who spent a good part of the past four weeks filing in and out of classrooms and talking to teachers, students and aroused parents about whether Johnny can or cannot read.

In New York, Researcher Marjorie Burns funneled their vast findings and volumes of book larnin' by the supermarket cartload (see cut) into Education Editor Bruce Barton Jr.'s office for this week's story on The First R. After his intensive cramming, Barton sent a revision of the first draft of his story to Senior Editor Hillis Mills with a note: "I have redoosed pages 3 to 7 to too pages. I hop you like it. Everything reads much quikker . . . Sory I cauzed all this troubel. I find that suddenly my abiloty to spel and right has desserted me ... Sinserly, Broose."

SENIOR Editor Joseph Purtell is rounding out the busiest of his ten years as editor of TIME'S BUSINESS section. After a heavy schedule of BUSINESS cover stories (six) in the magazine during the year, Joe finished the boom year 1955 with a doubleheader: Man of the Year Harlow Curtice of G.M.. followed by this week's Year-End Business Review.

Long before businessmen were accepted as fit heroes for novels, TIME and Editor Purtell, a Milwaukee and Detroit newsman before he joined us in 1942. knew that businessmen could be as exciting and interesting as even the most bohemian artists. Once, at a party for a group of artists and musicians, Joe found himself to be the center of attention. Later his wife asked: "What on earth did you talk about that interested them so much?" Purtell grinned:

"Business. It's the old story: artists like to talk about money, businessmen about art." Since Editor Purtell took over BUSINESS (he also edits PRESS), the section has doubled in size to match the public's growing interest in business, which TIME has helped to foster.

Cordially yours,

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