Education: Playback

A slight, silver-haired spinster boarded a plane for Africa last week on a strange errand. Esther Cummings was off to visit Egypt, Ethiopia, the Sudan and the Belgian Congo, to put in practice a phonetic language-learning system she had been taught by her missionary father. With it, she thought she could get the hang of any native tongue in three or four days. Her mission (sponsored by the United and Southern Presbyterian Boards): to teach the natives how to teach their own languages to the missionaries.