Education: Old French Custom

Last week Lawrence Augustus Wilkins, director of foreign language study in New York City’s public high schools, announced that 5,000 New York schoolboys and schoolgirls soon would begin to exchange letters with an equal number of French youngsters. The U. S. children will write in French, the French in English, each will correct the other. But the French Correspondance Scolaire Internationale, sponsor of this friendly and educational gesture, insisted on one restriction which Mr. Wilkins could explain only as an old French custom: French boys may write to U.S. girls, but U. S. boys may not write to French girls.