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To the Editor.
—Some physicians who regard themselves as men of good will can only be dismayed by the polemic and collectivist tone of part of the January Symposium on Social Issues and Medicine (Arch Intern Med127:49-110, 1971). Statements about the plight of the nation like "... health and education have an exceedingly low priority...." (Dr. Skyler, page 50), and "... concentration of wealth is increased in a smaller and smaller percentage of the population..." (Dr. Holloman, page 51), are not likely to encourage reasoned discourse.I think a good case has been made (eg, by Prof Milton Friedman) for the view that many of our problems in education are precisely the result of too much system—too much planning, too much administration—and that what we need first is to divest ourselves of most of it, to give more scope to imagination and innovation. Centralized large scale planning does not work