...today's prom is serious business. And I do mean business: The credit-card company Visa reports that prom spending will reach an average of $1,139 per family this year, up 5 percent since 2012. Most of that spending is still done by girls, who post their dresses on Facebook in the hopes that no one else will purchase the same one.

Meanwhile, boys now compete to devise the most elaborate ways to ask girls to prom. Two years ago, a student who serenaded his intended date in class -- backed up by a cappella singers -- ended up on "Good Morning America." So-called "promposals" have since become ubiquitous on the Internet, generating millions of Youtube hits.
What's going on here?

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Education • Sexuality • Teens / Youth

There is a great graphic here and some comment there.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Health & Medicine • Middle Age • Teens / Youth • Young Adults • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Personal Finance • Taxes • The U.S. Government • Budget • Medicare • Social Security • The National Deficit • Politics in General • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Among the statistics cited are theses:

One in every four young people will experience a mental disorder in any 12 month period (most commonly substance abuse or dependency, depression or anxiety, or a combination of these).

Depression and anxiety are the most prevalent mental health issues experienced by young people, with around 30% of
adolescents experiencing a diagnosable depressive episode by the age of 18 years.

Mental disorders were the leading contributor to the burden of disease and injury (49%) among young Australians aged
15–24 years in 2003, with anxiety and depression being the leading specific cause for both males and females

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Anglican Church of Australia • * Culture-Watch • Children • Education • Marriage & Family • Psychology • Religion & Culture • Teens / Youth • * International News & Commentary • Australia / NZ

Gary Player writes:

I’ve seen a lot of great shots and great rounds at Augusta. In 1978, I closed in 30 and shot 64 to win the Masters by one. But that doesn’t compare to what Tianlang Guan is doing at the age of 14. Mark my words: We are witnessing the most historic moment golf has experienced in my lifetime. And giving him the slow-play penalty on Friday is one of the saddest things I’ve seen in golf. When I heard, I prayed that he would make the cut. I am thrilled he did, because having him play the weekend will do miracles for the game. Golf’s popularity is as low as it’s ever been. Fewer and fewer people are playing the game. This will encourage young boys and girls around the world to play the game. Imagine it! Everyone will benefit -- courses, manufacturers, some day even fans.

Now, you cannot criticize the rule. It’s in the book for a reason. I believe the officials when they say Guan broke it. But you’ve got to be consistent. If you had a stopwatch, you could time many players in the last 20 years who have been well over their time but have not been penalized. Slow-playing tournament leaders have not been penalized. If the rule is applied arbitrarily, it is meaningless. The tragedy is that this could cause a stir. Imagine what the Chinese are going to think?

I agree. Say it again with me, the rules were made for Golf, not Golf for the rules--KSH. Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Sports • Teens / Youth • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

The President of AYF, Wuse Archdeaconry Council, Barrister Isaac Harrison stated this during a workshop organised for youth, with the theme; “Empowered To Impact The World”, in Abuja.

According to him, “We cannot grant amnesty to people we do not know, we cannot also grant amnesty to people who had already made up their minds that whether there is dialogue or not, they will go on with whatever they are doing, If Boko Haram actually need peace, they will not be killing those that are moving towards that peace.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of Nigeria • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • Teens / Youth • Violence • * Economics, Politics • Terrorism

From here:

[SCOTT] SIMON: Did you grow up thinking you'd be a writer?

[RON] RASH: I didn't, but I think I showed all the symptoms. I was very comfortable being by myself. I spent a lot of time alone and particularly out in the natural world. I think I had a particular moment when I was 15 years old. I read "Crime and Punishment," and that book just, I think, more than any other book made me want to be a writer, 'cause it was the first time that I hadn't just entered a book, but a book had entered me. I can remember exactly where I was. I was in a biology class. I was supposed to be listening to the teacher but I was on the back row. And I can just remember so vividly just never having that kind of feeling, that kind of intensity from a book. And, obviously, at 15 I didn't understand exactly what was going on with Raskolnikov. But there was a particular scene early in that book where the pawnbroker was murdered that I will never forget. It's one of the most vivid memories in my life - not just my reading life (my emphasis)

. Read or, better, listen to the whole piece.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Books • Psychology • Teens / Youth • * Theology • Anthropology

(Note that last season Dickey played with the New York Mets and he will be with Toronto this season--KSH).

This is Kamathipura, the red light district of Mumbai, among the most notorious sex-trafficking locations in the world. I am here as a guest of Bombay Teen Challenge (BTC), a charity that has been fighting human trafficking for more than 20 years, one I joined forces with last year, when two friends and I climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro and raised $130,000 , much of it from generous and kind-hearted Mets fans. I have come with my two daughters, Gabriel, 11, and Lila, 9, to witness the fruits of our climb – the conversion of a former brothel to a health clinic. I want my daughters to share the experience not so much as a gratitude check, but to learn that each of us has a capacity to make a difference in this world, and to see that God’s grace makes that possible.

Read it all, noting please that its content may not be appropriate for some blog readers.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Globalization • Law & Legal Issues • Poverty • Religion & Culture • Sexuality • Sports • Teens / Youth • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Asia • India • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology • Pastoral Theology

We're about to comment on yet another interminable sex-related piece from The Atlantic, so let's start with some comic relief. The article's co-authors, Lisa Arnold and Christina Campbell, run a website called Onely.com. Its slogan is "Single and Happy...."

[The authors]...[are] aggrieved enough to resort to neology, denouncing what they term "institutionalized singlism, the discrimination of [sic] individuals based on marital status." What they mean is discrimination against individuals based on lack of marital status.

"More than 1,000 laws provide overt legal or financial benefits to married couples," they complain. "Marital privileging marginalizes the 50 percent of Americans who are single. . . . Marital privilege pervades nearly every facet of our lives." Income-tax liability is generally (though not always) higher for unmarried earners; married workers more or less automatically have access to spouses' health insurance; couples can share individual retirement accounts, and so forth.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Education • Marriage & Family • Psychology • Teens / Youth • Young Adults • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Most adolescents who plan or attempt suicide have already received at least some mental health treatment, raising questions about the effectiveness of current approaches to helping troubled youths, according to the largest in-depth analysis to date of suicidal behaviors in American teenagers.

The study, in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, found that 55 percent of suicidal teenagers had received some therapy before they thought about suicide, planned it or tried to kill themselves, contradicting the widely held belief that suicide is due in part to a lack of access to treatment.

The findings, based on interviews with a nationwide sample of more than 6,000 teenagers and at least one parent of each, linked suicidal behavior to complex combinations of mood disorders like depression and behavior problems like attention-deficit and eating disorders, as well as alcohol and drug abuse.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Health & Medicine • History • Psychology • Suicide • Science & Technology • Teens / Youth • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology • Pastoral Theology

Catholic parochial education is in crisis. More than a third of parochial schools in the United States closed between 1965 and 1990, and enrollment fell by more than half. After stabilizing in the 1990s, enrollment has plunged despite strong demand from students and families.

Closings of elementary and middle schools have become a yearly ritual in the Northeast and Midwest, home to two-thirds of the nation’s Catholic schools. Last year, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia closed one-fifth of its elementary schools. Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, the archbishop of New York, is expected to decide soon whether to shut 26 elementary schools and one high school, less than three years after the latest closings. Catholic high schools have held on, but their long-term future is in question.

This isn’t for want of students....

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Education • Religion & Culture • Teens / Youth • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic

Watch it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Health & Medicine • Marriage & Family • Sports • Teens / Youth

Caught this over the weekend, really worth the time. If you do not know the story, you need to--KSH.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Children • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Education • History • Marriage & Family • Men • Teens / Youth • Urban/City Life and Issues • Violence

We need to recognise the personal cost of crime. We need to recognise the damage, hurt and pain crime causes to victims and their families. And we need to recognise the cost to the wider society. But the harsh reality is that 75% of young offenders re-offend within 12 months - 3 out of 4 - this has to stop!...”

“Reflex prison Outreach workers and volunteer mentors provide positive role models and ‘father figures’. Their accredited education programmes provide creative opportunities for reflection and achievement, and their life skills help build ‘character’, encouraging young people to take responsibility for their actions as part of the community. With God's help, Reflex can place a worker in every Young Offenders Institution in the nation. We can turn the tide.”

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of York John Sentamu • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Marriage & Family • Men • Prison/Prison Ministry • Religion & Culture • Teens / Youth • Young Adults • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

John McKissick began at Summerville High School as football coach in 1952--what was his salary that year. No fair peaking or googling, etc.

Find the answer and all the other articles after you have made your guess there.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Education • History • Men • Sports • Teens / Youth • * South Carolina

“It feels good,” McKissick said. “It’s another win, and if it totals up to 600, that’s great. I feel good for the kids. I feel good for the boys. They can tell everyone they were part of the 600th. I think they will be proud of that.”

McKissick’s success is unmatched at any level. The all-time winningest college football coach is 86-year-old John Gagliardi of St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minn., who enters this weekend with 487 wins in 64 years.

Don Shula is the winningest coach in NFL history with 347.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Education • History • Sports • Teens / Youth • * South Carolina

“It is your Church, your home, ask for the best of your best of your pastors and teachers” with those words the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams concluded an extraordinary morning of welcome at the TelstraClear Pacific events Centre in Manukau, New Zealand. The response was to a question posed by a young person who was participating in a youth forum where questions were addressed to the Archbishop, Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori the presiding bishop of The Episcopal Church and Archbishop Thabo Makgoba the Primate of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa.

Dr Williams along with the Anglican Consultative Council delegation who are meeting in Auckland, New Zealand, had arrived at the centre for a powhiri - a Maori welcoming ceremony. A significant part of the morning event was a youth forum where questions ranged from Dr Williams' favorite biblical passage to church attitudes towards women, same sex marriage, what shoes God would wear, and whether it was fun to be Archbishop.

Check it out.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury • --Rowan Williams • Anglican Consultative Council • Anglican Primates • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • Teens / Youth • * International News & Commentary • Australia / NZ

The first thing the Archbishop of Canterbury will face at ...[today's] Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) opening ceremony will be a guttural challenge from the young people of this country.

On entering the Telstra Events Centre in Manukau, Dr Rowan Williams and ACC members will be greeted with a wero (challenge) from a young Maori Anglican brandishing a taiaha (spear).

Welcome to Aotearoa, Archbishop; we do things differently here.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury • --Rowan Williams • Anglican Consultative Council • Anglican Provinces • Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • Teens / Youth • * International News & Commentary • Australia / NZ

The idea that fathers play a significant role in the development of their kids' approach to sex has received some support in a new evidence review. Studies in the review suggest that adolescents have less sex if their fathers talk to them more about sexual matters.

There are caveats. The review only looked at a few studies because there's little research into the role of fathers -- as compared to mothers -- when it comes to the decisions that teens make about sex. And it's possible that some other factor could explain the apparent link between more fatherly communication and less sexual activity.

Still, the review suggests that "fathers do make a difference. It's not just about mothers," said lead author Vincent Guilamo-Ramos, a professor and co-director of New York University's Center for Latino Adolescent and Family Health.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Health & Medicine • Marriage & Family • Sexuality • Teens / Youth • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology • Pastoral Theology

He schooled himself to change—a long, slow transformation. Once, leading a [Youth for Christ] YFC camp in a remote Sri Lankan village, he decided that years of study had finally made him ready to lead music in the Sinhala language. Afterwards, he stumbled into an informal gathering of young YFC volunteers. As he entered, he overheard them laughing at his Sinhala singing and mimicking him.

He lived simply. YFC salaries were based on family size and experience, not on position. Fernando made no more than others, and he made sure his home and lifestyle were in no way intimidating to the most simple village people who might visit.

Not only did he change, his teaching changed. Considering the prevailing liberalism, he began to teach about the supremacy of Christ, a difficult and controversial message in a country where most religions are pluralistic. He was convinced that without belief in hell and the unique power of Jesus to save, Christians lost the urgency of witness. "I still preach about [those topics] in the West," he says, although the rise of Pentecostalism means that they are no longer pressing issues for the Asian church.

Read it all (emphasis mine).

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • Religion & Culture • Teens / Youth • Young Adults • * International News & Commentary • Asia • Sri Lanka • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Evangelicals • * Theology • Pastoral Theology • Seminary / Theological Education

Detective Doug Galluccio hadn’t finished unpacking his new desk when he got his first call from a school resource officer about a sexting incident.

A seventh-grader at C.E. Williams Middle School had taken nude photos of herself and sent them by cellphone to five male classmates. Those ended up posted online.

That was in 2010 when Galluccio became Charleston’s first full-time police officer dedicated to the Internet Crimes Against Children task force. It was his job to help investigate the incident....

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • --Social Networking • Children • Education • Marriage & Family • Sexuality • Teens / Youth • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology • Pastoral Theology

n a surprising move that promises to transform Mormon social and spiritual dynamics, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on Saturday (Oct. 6) announced that it is lowering the age of full-time missionary service to age 18 for men (down from 19) and 19 for women (down from 21).

“The Lord is hastening this work,” LDS apostle Jeffrey R. Holland said at a news conference, “and he needs more and more willing missionaries.”

The church is counting on this change to dramatically increase the ranks of its full-time missionaries, currently more than 58,000 worldwide.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Missions • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • Teens / Youth • Young Adults • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Mormons

...[this past Wednesday] evening saw the launch of an exhibition in Bradford Cathedral of fantastic photographs. The gallery includes black and white as well as colour pictures of scenes from the street in Durban, South Africa, and Burundi. They illustrate the reality of young lives blighted by homelessness, hopelessness and hunger – hunger for love, security and friendship. The are also examples of simple joy, playfulness and humour. So far, so good.

Then, as you hear the stories of those portrayed, you realise some of them are already dead.

Streetaction is a small charity working with slim resources to work with partners to offer some street children hope of a future.

Read it all and make sure to check out the Streetaction website. The Bradford Cathedral website includes this description:

Street Action Exhibition--An exhibition by professional photographers of children on the street of Burundi, South Africa and Kenya. Street Action works in partnership with local organisations to tackle the complex needs of children living on the streets with no parental or adult care.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • CoE Bishops • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Children • Poverty • Teens / Youth • * International News & Commentary • Africa • Burundi • Kenya • South Africa

Katie [Stagliano] said the most important things she learned at the CGI meeting were about other causes she did not know about and “how good we have it here in the U.S.”

To Katie, age is not something that should hinder youths from doing extraordinary things. “Follow your heart. If there are causes you believe in, you should work towards it no matter how old you are. You can make an impact,” she recommends to other youths interested in making a difference.

Katie’s mother agreed and said that parents cannot push their children to do these types of things — they should only provide support.

“I never would have imagined that this is where we’d be today. God led her down this path, and she has walked through with open arms,” Stagliano said. “Sometimes people underestimate the power of youth. When given the opportunity, they can do amazing things.”

Read it all (emphasis mine).

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Teens / Youth • Women • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • * South Carolina

The teenager was walking down the Wando High School hallway when someone grabbed his booksack strap and shoved him into the boys’ bathroom.

He tried to get away, but his classmate used both hands to force his head and neck down into a urinal. Desperate to break loose, he swung his leg backward into his aggressor’s crotch and fled the bathroom.

He’s the kind of kid who is picked on a lot, and it’s the kind of incident that schools and police take seriously.

Read it all from the front page of yesterday's local paper.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Education • Law & Legal Issues • Police/Fire • Psychology • Teens / Youth • * South Carolina

...while many Americans might think of sex trafficking as an international problem, it often starts in the United States. Prosecutor Lindsey Roberson has seen it happen.

One of her first cases involved a 17-year-old girl who met a guy at a downtown club. He wooed her, and then “took her out of town on a trip, and let her know what she would have to do to pay her way,” Roberson said.

“She had no ID, no cell phone; no way to contact her mother. And the guy ended up advertising her for sex on Backpage.com and trafficking her all the way out to California and back to Virginia.”

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Globalization • Law & Legal Issues • Police/Fire • Religion & Culture • Sexuality • Teens / Youth • Women • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Several hundred retired military leaders are raising red flags about childhood obesity in the USA and its impact on finding qualified recruits. They want junk food to be booted out of schools.

Mission: Readiness, a group of more than 300 retired generals and admirals, says in a report out today that the 40% of students who buy high-calorie, low-nutrient junk food from school vending machines and cafeteria a la carte lines consume an average of 130 calories a day from those types of foods (candy, chips, cookies, pastries). That's roughly 5% to 10% of the calories kids and teens should eat in a day.

Three-quarters of those ages 17 to 24, or about 26 million young people, cannot serve in the military, a quarter of them because they are overweight or obese, says retired Air Force lieutenant general Norman Seip, a spokesman for Mission: Readiness.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Dieting/Food/Nutrition • Health & Medicine • Teens / Youth • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life

Today...the church may look healthy on the outside, but it has swallowed the fatal pills. The evidence is stacking up: the church is dying and, for the most part, we are refusing the diagnosis.

What evidence? Take a gander at these two shocking items:

1. 20-30 year olds attend church at 1/2 the rate of their parents and ¼ the rate of their grandparents. Think about the implication for those of us in youth ministry: Thousands of us have invested our lives in reproducing faith in the next generation and the group we were tasked with reaching left the church when they left us.

2. 61% of churched high school students graduate and never go back! (Time Magazine, 2009) Even worse: 78% to 88% of those in youth programs today will leave church, most to never return. (Lifeway, 2010) Please read those last two statistics again. Ask yourself why attending a church with nothing seems to be more effective at retaining youth than our youth programs.

We look at our youth group now and we feel good. But the youth group of today is the church of tomorrow, and study after study after study suggests that what we are building for the future is…

…empty churches.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • * Christian Life / Church Life • Church History • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Ordained • Youth Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Psychology • Religion & Culture • Teens / Youth • Young Adults • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • * Theology • Ecclesiology • Pastoral Theology

Average national reading scores on the SAT college entrance exam fell to the lowest level in four decades and only 43 percent of 2012 high school seniors who took the test showed they were fully prepared for college, according to new data released on Monday.

College-bound seniors scored an average of 496 points in reading, down one point from 2011 and a 34-point drop since 1972, the College Board, which administers the SAT test, said in a report.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Education • History • Teens / Youth • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

Every motivated, high-potential young American deserves a similar opportunity. But the majority of very smart kids lack the wherewithal to enroll in rigorous private schools. They depend on public education to prepare them for life. Yet that system is failing to create enough opportunities for hundreds of thousands of these high-potential girls and boys.

Mostly, the system ignores them, with policies and budget priorities that concentrate on raising the floor under low-achieving students. A good and necessary thing to do, yes, but we’ve failed to raise the ceiling for those already well above the floor.

Public education’s neglect of high-ability students doesn’t just deny individuals opportunities they deserve. It also imperils the country’s future supply of scientists, inventors and entrepreneurs.

Read it all and you can learn more about the author there.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Education • Teens / Youth • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

Youth ministry researcher Chap Clark says, “I’m convinced that the single most important area where we’ve lost ground with kids is in our commitment and ability to ground them in God’s Word.”

As a result, Barry Shafer says, “The church today, including both the adult and teenage generations, is in an era of rampant biblical illiteracy.” Duffy Robbins takes this one step further when he says: “Our young people have become incapable of theological thinking because they don’t have any theology to think about. … And, as Paul warns us, this … leaves us as ‘infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching’ (Ephesians 4:14).”

At the conclusion of the National Study of Youth and Religion, lead researcher Christian Smith reported: “Even though most teens are very positive about religion and say it’s a good thing, the vast majority are incredibly inarticulate about religion. … It doesn’t seem to us that many teens are being very well-educated in their faith traditions.”

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Adult Education • Youth Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Religion & Culture • Teens / Youth • * Religion News & Commentary • Inter-Faith Relations • * Theology • Theology: Scripture

A black helicopter hovering overhead can lead those below to become worried, scared or suspicious. But when a large aircraft positioned itself over a Prince William County high school’s football field last Wednesday afternoon, students who had just been released for the day excitedly watched as a stuffed bulldog with a red-bandanna parachute emerged.

The big-eyed pup drifted to the turf, delivering a message from a junior boy to a senior girl: “Fall Fest?”

As students look to one-up their classmates for the most outrageous way to ask a girl on a date — in this case Patriot High School’s version of a homecoming dance — this boy’s approach might have set a new standard. The helicopter flew in low over the school’s grounds, stunning students and setting off a flurry of Twitter messages and photographs before its covert mission was complete....

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Education • Teens / Youth

It was a beautiful day, that’s what everyone remembers. So clear, so crisp, so bright. It sparkled as I walked my 14-year-old son out to go to the subway that would take him to his new high school, in Brooklyn. He was now a commuter: a walk to the 86th Street subway station and then the 4 or 5 train downtown near the towers and over the river. That was about 7:30 in the morning. It was beautiful at noon when I went to mass at St. Thomas More church on 89th Street. And between those two events, his departure and the mass, the world had changed, changed utterly. After mass, at the rise of 86th Street, the day was so clear you could see all the way downtown to the towering debris cloud.

But it was beautiful. That was one of the heartbreaking elements....

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • History • Marriage & Family • Teens / Youth • Urban/City Life and Issues • * Economics, Politics • Terrorism

When Stakwell Yurenimo, a Samburu in northern Kenya, did well on his eighthgrade exams, the Kenyan government informed him that he had qualified to go to a high school that they would choose. They also chose his roommate, a young man named Paul, who was a member of the enemy tribe, the Turkana. Stakwell determined in his mind that there was no way he would room with a Turkana. In fact, part of his culture demanded that in order to be respected as a man, he needed to kill a Turkana....

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Men • Religion & Culture • Sports • Teens / Youth • * International News & Commentary • Africa • Kenya • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology • Pastoral Theology

It’s the year 2020 and newlyweds Tom and Sara are expecting their first child. Along with selecting the latest high-tech stroller, picking out a crib, and decorating the nursery, they download the “NewBorn” application suite to their universal communicator; they’re using what we’ll call a SmartPhone 20.0. Before the due date, they take the phone on a tour of the house, letting the phone’s sensors and machine-learning algorithms create light and sound “fingerprints” for each room.

When they settle Tom Jr. down for his first nap at home, they place the SmartPhone 20.0 in his crib. Understanding that the crib is where the baby sleeps, the SmartPhone activates its sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) application and uses its built-in microphone, accelerometers, and other sensors to monitor little Tommy’s heartbeat and respiration. The “Baby Position” app analyzes the live video stream to ensure that Tommy does not flip over onto his stomach—a position that the medical journals still report contributes to SIDS. Of course, best practices in child rearing seem to change quickly, but Tom and Sara aren’t too worried about that because the NewBorn application suite updates itself with the latest medical findings. To lull Tommy to sleep, the SmartPhone 20.0 plays music, testing out a variety of selections and learning by observation which music is most soothing for this particular infant....

While this scenario is, of course, science fiction, many of the technologies I’m describing are here today in research labs or even in app stores. So the reality of a SmartPhone 20.0, along with its envisioned NewBorn suite, are not far off.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • History • Marriage & Family • Psychology • Science & Technology • Teens / Youth • * Theology • Anthropology

In... [British Columbia], if you blow .08 or beyond, you can avoid the justice system – and a criminal record – if you fit certain criteria. Conditions include not having killed or injured anyone or caused property damage as a result of your actions. If you qualify, you can opt for administrative sanctions over the courts.

If you choose this path, you have to go through a rehabilitation program, which could lead to treatment for alcohol abuse. When the person is given the right to drive again, it can only be in a car outfitted with an ignition interlock system, for a minimum of one year. The device prevents the car from starting if the driver’s blood alcohol level is above a certain limit.

“The focus is very much on rehabilitating the driver and not simply punishing him,” says Mr. Murie. “I don’t think just punishing drivers works.”

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Alcohol/Drinking • Law & Legal Issues • Teens / Youth • Travel • Young Adults • * International News & Commentary • Canada

There is bad news for boys in North America: They are being blown out of the water by girls in academic achievement; and psychologists say young men are becoming more socially awkward, making relationships with young women difficult.

Sidney Gale, a medical doctor and author of Unto the Breach, an outdoor adventures book for boys, is concerned..."We need to get boys out of their solitary bedrooms and into the sun," Gale says. "It's also a good idea to get them reading something other than tweets, texts and the like. They have intellect, and we should encourage them to use it."

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Youth Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Children • Education • Marriage & Family • Men • Psychology • Teens / Youth • Women • Young Adults

Violence, video games, and sex: what effect does it have on children and adolescents? The latest contribution to this debate comes in a book recently published in Australia....

John P. Murray, who has been researching children’s social development for almost 40 years in the United States in a number of academic position, looked into the matter of the effects of media violence.

Some decades ago studies clearly demonstrate that the viewing of violence and aggressive behaviour are clearly related, but they do not establish a cause and effect relationship.

More recent studies do, however, lead to the conclusion that viewing violence does affect the attitudes and behaviour of viewers, he said.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Books • Children • Movies & Television • Science & Technology • Teens / Youth • Violence • * International News & Commentary • Australia / NZ

Have teens? Then you’re likely used to seeing them lighted by a cellphone screen glow.

But a study says the hours kids spend tapping notes is killing their grammar skills with every LOL. With “the culture of mobile communication, quick back and forth, inevitably, there are compromises on traditional, cultural writing,” said S. Shyam Sundar of Pennsylvania State University’s Media Effects Research Lab, which did the study.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Education • Marriage & Family • Science & Technology • Teens / Youth

Our brains are superlatively evolved to adapt to our environment: a process known as neuroplasticity. The connections between our brain cells will be shaped, strengthened and refined by our individual experiences. It is this personalisation of the physical brain, driven by unique interactions with the external world, that arguably constitutes the biological basis of each mind, so what will happen to that mind if the external world changes in unprecedented ways, for example, with an all-pervasive digital technology?

A recent survey in the US showed that more than half of teenagers aged 13 to 17 spend more than 30 hours a week, outside school, using computers and other web-connected devices. If their environment is being transformed for so much of the time into a fast-paced and highly interactive two-dimensional space, the brain will adapt, for good or ill. Professor Michael Merzenich, of the University of California, San Francisco, gives a typical neuroscientific perspective[:]

''There is a massive and unprecedented difference in how [digital natives'] brains are plastically engaged in life compared with those of average individuals from earlier generations and there is little question that the operational characteristics of the average modern brain substantially differ,'' he says.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • --Social Networking • Psychology • Science & Technology • Teens / Youth • Young Adults

The media really does influence adolescents' behavior and early exposure to sexual content in the movies leads them to commence sexual activity at an earlier age and to take more risks.

This was the conclusion of a study just published in the journal Psychological Science, titled "Greater Exposure to Sexual Content in Popular Movies Predicts Earlier Sexual Debut and Increased Sexual Risk Taking."

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Movies & Television • Sexuality • Teens / Youth • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

...people...are concerned about a persistent gender gap in college degrees in science, technology, engineering and math -- STEM, for short. The notion that it might have to do with aptitude has long been dismissed. Yet research shows that girls who enjoy -- and excel at -- math and science in high school are less likely than boys to pursue a college major in those fields.

And even if they start college majoring in a STEM field, women are more likely than men to change majors, federal data show. Women make up 24% of STEM jobs, which offers some of the most lucrative careers, a Commerce Department report says. More than half of them have degrees in the physical and life sciences.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Education • Men • Science & Technology • Teens / Youth • Women • Young Adults

150 young people aged between 16 and 25 have joined the Bishop of Chelmsford, Rt Revd Stephen Cottrell, for ‘Time for Youth’, a conference about the future of the Church.

They discussed the kind of Church God wants, the themes of Transforming Presence – Strategic Priorities for the Diocese of Chelmsford and whether God is calling them into some sort of ministry in the Church.

Bishop Stephen told the young people: “The Church is you. If you find the Church difficult, make a difference to it yourself.”

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • CoE Bishops • * Culture-Watch • Teens / Youth • Young Adults

The NCAA’s 444-page manual contains no language directly addressing appopriate punishment for concealing information regarding child sexual abuse. But in light of the shameful conduct of Penn State’s leadership, revealed Thursday in the Freeh report, the NCAA must use its authority to do what’s needed now: Shut down the Nittany Lions football program.

If the Freeh report released Thursday is accurate in its assessment of the university’s role in the worst scandal in college sports history, then the engine that enabled longtime child sexual predator Jerry Sandusky must be switched off, at least temporarily.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Education • Men • Sports • Teens / Youth • Young Adults • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

An incomparable career narrative that spanned more than six decades now reads like one of the Greek tragedies the late Joe Paterno always loved: Paterno's legacy has been irreparably stained by findings that the iconic Penn State football coach concealed information for years that could have stopped a sexual predator.

The conclusions of former FBI director Louis Freeh, who drew on more than 400 interviews and 3 million documents over a nearly eight-month independent investigation of Penn State's sexual assault scandal as requested by the school, have complicated and sullied the image of major-college football's all-time winningest coach. Freeh found that Paterno was among five Penn State senior leaders who covered up information to avoid bad publicity after they became aware of sexual molestation allegations against Paterno's former longtime defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky, who was convicted last month of 45 counts of sexual abuse. Freeh said Paterno could have stopped the sexual abuses "if he wished."

"The facts are the facts," Freeh said of Paterno. "He was an integral part of the act to conceal."

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Education • Law & Legal Issues • Men • Sports • Teens / Youth • Young Adults • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Watch it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Education • Law & Legal Issues • Sports • Teens / Youth • Young Adults • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Louis J. Freeh, the former federal judge and director of the F.B.I. who spent the last seven months examining the Sandusky scandal at Penn State, issued a damning conclusion Thursday:

The most senior officials at Penn State had shown a “total and consistent disregard” for the welfare of children, had worked together to actively conceal Mr. Sandusky’s assaults, and had done so for one central reason: fear of bad publicity. That publicity, Mr. Freeh said Thursday, would have hurt the nationally ranked football program, Mr. Paterno’s reputation as a coach of high principles, the Penn State “brand” and the university’s ability to raise money as one of the most respected public institutions in the country.

The fallout from Mr. Freeh’s conclusions was swift, blunt and often emotional....

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Education • Law & Legal Issues • Sports • Teens / Youth • Young Adults • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

(Assiduous blog readers may remember we took a special interest in this case earlier this year).

A divided Supreme Court on Monday said states may not impose on juvenile murderers mandatory life sentences without the possibility of parole.

The 5 to 4 ruling said such mandatory sentences offend the constitution’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, and follow a trend at the court of treating even the worst juvenile offenders differently from adults....

“The court took a significant step forward by recognizing the fundamental unfairness of mandatory death-in-prison sentences that don’t allow sentencers to consider the unique status of children and their potential for change,” said EJI [Equal Justice Initiative]’s Bryan Stevenson. “The court has recognized that children need additional attention and protection in the criminal justice system.”

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Teens / Youth • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • State Government

One Simple Decision, created by Virtual Driver Interactive Inc. (VDI), one of the nation's largest driving simulator manufacturers, seeks to modify driver behavior by showing drivers what can happen if they have a crash while driving under the influence or texting while driving. It combines simulated driving and interactions with police, judges and emergency medical personnel in an intense, 20-minute experience featuring a real judge, actual sheriff's deputies and EMTs.

Harry Mochel, now 19, of Rye, N.Y., experienced One Simple Decison about a year ago at a private driver's education school in Rye. "I'd been driving for a little while already," he says. "My parents had heard about it and said you should try it."

He says he was "driving" along on the simulator. "It tells you to start texting, so I took out my phone and started texting," he says. "I ended up crashing into a stop sign and got into a head-on collision. It's crazy to see how easy it was."

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • --Social Networking • Psychology • Science & Technology • Teens / Youth • Travel

Carole Adlard began Healthy Visions as a counseling program for pregnant teens but quickly realized students needed more.

CAROLE ADLARD (Founder, Healthy Visions): One of the facts that broke my heart was seeing so many students who felt hopeless. They were in bad home situations, they were being bullied in schools, they had been sexually abused. You could see the lack of light in their eyes, and we wanted to offer them hope.

RUSSELL PROCTOR: Day 1 I talk about healthy self-image. With girls it’s much more about body image: Hey, listen, you don’t have to be a size 2. You’re a beautiful girl no matter what size you are, no matter how much make-up you wear. And then I try to teach the guys what it means to be a man, because our society kind of teaches, okay, men need to hook up with girls, men need to drink. Day 2 we talk about Facebook, technology, cell phones, how to be smart with that stuff. Day 3 we talk about sex, the physical side, how people are connected, how STDs spread, kind of the nuts and bolts of sex....

Read or watch it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • Sexuality • Teens / Youth

You are not special. You are not exceptional.

Contrary to what your u9 soccer trophy suggests, your glowing seventh grade report card, despite every assurance of a certain corpulent purple dinosaur, that nice Mister Rogers and your batty Aunt Sylvia, no matter how often your maternal caped crusader has swooped in to save you… you’re nothing special.

Yes, you’ve been pampered, cosseted, doted upon, helmeted, bubble-wrapped. Yes, capable adults with other things to do have held you, kissed you, fed you, wiped your mouth, wiped your bottom, trained you, taught you, tutored you, coached you, listened to you, counseled you, encouraged you, consoled you and encouraged you again. You’ve been nudged, cajoled, wheedled and implored. You’ve been feted and fawned over and called sweetie pie. Yes, you have. And, certainly, we’ve been to your games, your plays, your recitals, your science fairs. Absolutely, smiles ignite when you walk into a room, and hundreds gasp with delight at your every tweet. Why, maybe you’ve even had your picture in the Townsman! [Editor’s upgrade: Or The Swellesley Report!] And now you’ve conquered high school… and, indisputably, here we all have gathered for you, the pride and joy of this fine community, the first to emerge from that magnificent new building…

But do not get the idea you’re anything special. Because you’re not.

The empirical evidence is everywhere, numbers even an English teacher can’t ignore....

Read it all or you can watch it all on video there instead.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Education • Teens / Youth

The house lights go down. Spinning, multicolored lights sweep the auditorium. A rock band launches into a rousing opening song. "Ignore everyone else, this time is just about you and Jesus," proclaims the lead singer. The music changes to a slow dance tune, and the people sing about falling in love with Jesus. A guitarist sporting skinny jeans and a soul patch closes the worship set with a prayer, beginning, "Hey God …" The spotlight then falls on the speaker, who tells entertaining stories, cracks a few jokes, and assures everyone that "God is not mad at you. He loves you unconditionally."

After worship, some members of the church sign up for the next mission trip, while others decide to join a small group where they can receive support on their faith journey. If you ask the people here why they go to church or what they value about their faith, they'll say something like, "Having faith helps me deal with my problems."

Fifty or sixty years ago, these now-commonplace elements of American church life were regularly found in youth groups but rarely in worship services and adult activities. What happened? Beginning in the 1930s and '40s, Christian teenagers and youth leaders staged a quiet revolution in American church life that led to what can properly be called the juvenilization of American Christianity. Juvenilization is the process by which the religious beliefs, practices, and developmental characteristics of adolescents become accepted as appropriate for adults. It began with the praiseworthy goal of adapting the faith to appeal to the young, which in fact revitalized American Christianity. But it has sometimes ended with both youth and adults embracing immature versions of the faith. In any case, white evangelicals led the way.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Liturgy, Music, Worship • Parish Ministry • Adult Education • Ministry of the Laity • Ministry of the Ordained • Youth Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Psychology • Religion & Culture • Teens / Youth • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Evangelicals

Saying he was sending a message of deterrence to Massachusetts drivers, District Court Judge Stephen Abany today imposed maximum sentences on Haverhill teen Aaron Deveau for causing a fatal crash by texting while driving.

The judge sentenced Deveau, who was 17 at the time of the crash, to concurrent sentences of 2½-years on a charge of motor vehicle homicide and 2 years for a charge of negligent operation of a motor vehicle causing serious injury while texting.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Science & Technology • Teens / Youth • Travel • Urban/City Life and Issues

The PACHA resolution states that only programs with the best scientific information be funded, and that the government should uphold the rights of young people to have access to information in order to make healthy and responsible decisions about their sexual health.

The UCC officials issued objections in their Friday endorsement, however, specifically $5 million in abstinence-only-until-marriage programs.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Education • Health & Medicine • Sexuality • Teens / Youth • * Economics, Politics • Economy • The U.S. Government • Politics in General • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • United Church of Christ • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

What would it be like if you were 10 years old and composed a piece of music that was played by the New York Philharmonic? For a few New York City school kids, including one fifth-grader, it's a dream come true, thanks to the orchestra's Very Young Composers program.

Composer Jon Deak, who played bass with the New York Philharmonic for more than 40 years, says the idea for Very Young Composers came when he and conductor Marin Alsop visited an elementary school in Brooklyn several years ago.

"As we were going in, I saw all the children's art on the walls, which was so superior," Deak says. "I said, 'That's it, Marin! We've got to get kids to compose music on the level of this art right here, because look: Doesn't that look like a Picasso? Doesn't that look like a Paul Klee?'"

I caught this one yesterday morning running errands and it brought tears to my eyes. Read (or much better listen to) it all--KSH.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Education • Music • Teens / Youth • Urban/City Life and Issues

He wakes up in the middle of the night at this time of year — bothered, sleepless. Tom Didone has gone to dozens of traffic fatalities that involve teenagers, arriving at scenes of shattering wreckage and telltale skid lines.

He is always struck by the senselessness of what he sees....

“It only takes a second to take a life,” Didone told several hundred high school students in Burtonsville one day this month, hours before their prom.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Police/Fire • Teens / Youth

While most teenagers get ready to head to the beach or enjoy some other form of relaxation to celebrate Memorial Day, 13-year-old Colt Drew of Goose Creek has a heavier weight on his shoulders today.

He will put on his honor guard uniform, head to the James Island American Legion and play Taps at a Memorial Day service.

“He does an excellent job,” said David Coates Jr., a member of the honor guard based at the Goose Creek American Legion.

Coates recruited Colt because there’s a shortage of Taps players for military funerals and services, especially in the Lowcountry, with its heavy military population. Colt, who is home-schooled, is an accomplished trumpet player, and both his parents, Debbie and Mike Drew, were in the Navy.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Music • Teens / Youth • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • * South Carolina

....The Supreme Court is now expected to use the Miller case to determine whether states are required to consider giving juveniles a second chance, no matter what they did. And each side is giving up a little in this case. Alabama is not arguing that all juvenile murderers should be ineligible for parole, only those who commit the worst crimes—crimes that would bring a death sentence if the defendant were an adult.

Evan Miller is represented by the Equal Justice Initiative and its founder and executive director, Bryan Stevenson, and Stevenson isn’t asking anyone actually be given parole, only that when offenders are so young that at some point far down the road, they at least be allowed to demonstrate they are entitled to be set free.

BRYAN STEVENSON (Equal Justice Initiative): I think everyone is more than the worst thing they’ve ever done, and I think that policy makers can make decisions about how to punish them. But I think children are uniquely more than their worst act; they have quintessential qualities and characteristics that a decent society, a maturing society, an evolved society, we believe, is constitutionally obligated to recognize and protect.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • Teens / Youth • Violence • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • State Government • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

When Sally tells Jimmy that he’s going to hell for believing in a false religion, is that Sally exercising her First Amendment right to free expression, or is that Billy getting bullied?

A broad coalition of educators and religious groups – from the National Association of Evangelicals to the National School Boards Association – on Tuesday (May 22) endorsed a new pamphlet to help teachers tackle such thorny questions.

Authored chiefly by the American Jewish Committee, “Harassment, Bullying and Free Expression: Guidelines for Free and Safe Public Schools,” contains 11 pages of advice on balancing school safety and religious freedom.

Read it all and see what you make of the guidelines themselves.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Education • Law & Legal Issues • Psychology • Religion & Culture • Teens / Youth • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General

Heritage Keepers, an abstinence-based sex education curriculum offered by Heritage Community Services in Charleston, S.C., has been approved by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services after a study found it effective in delaying sexual initiation among youth.

The study involved 2,215 students in grades 7-9 and demonstrated that those receiving the Heritage Keepers curriculum were significantly less likely to become sexually active at the 12 month follow-up than those in a comparison group.

For those in the comparison group, sexual experience increased from 29.2 percent to 43.2 percent, compared to an increase from 29.1 percent to 33.7 percent among those who participated in Heritage Keepers.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Education • Sexuality • Teens / Youth • * South Carolina

Going to a U.S. high school and learning to learn like Americans are what increasing numbers of students in China are hoping to do in order to improve their chances of getting into an American college, CCHS says. As an evangelical private high school with experience teaching students from China, CCHS has been taking in more of these overseas students and is starting to refer others to like-minded Christian high schools in the U.S.

Foreign students like Mr. [Tom] Zhou now make up about a third of the 217-person student body at CCHS, the U.S.'s oldest accredited school founded by and catering to evangelical Christians from China, according to superintendent Robin Sun Hom. The school also has students from Taiwan and even one Mandarin speaker from Venezuela.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Education • Religion & Culture • Teens / Youth • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Asia • China

Last weekend, the ballyhooed documentary Bully opened in Dallas. A few weeks earlier, a less elaborate film on the same topic premiered in every third-period classroom at Richardson High School.

The school video tells a secret kept for 20 years — about a desperately unhappy teen and one night with a pistol. It’s a secret that has inspired some students to reach outside themselves in ways they might have never considered.

While experts say any one event is just a drop in the bucket in the effort to mold a school’s culture, there’s some evidence that this kind of video may be a larger drop.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Education • Psychology • Suicide • Teens / Youth • Violence

Teen births are at their lowest level in almost 70 years, federal data report today. Birthrates for ages 15-19 in all racial and ethnic groups are lower than ever reported.

"Young people are being more careful," says Sarah Brown, CEO of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. She attributes the declines to less sex and increased use of contraception.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • Sexuality • Teens / Youth • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

Archbishop Aspinall told gatherers at St John's Cathedral in central Brisbane that it "feels like darkness has engulfed the world", using social media as an example.

"It turns ingenious technology with amazing potential for good into a weapon for bullying, brutality and destruction," he said.

"Some of our young people are taking their own lives to escape the pain and others take a sinister delight in violence on YouTube grievously mistaking it for entertainment."

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Anglican Church of Australia • * Christian Life / Church Life • Church Year / Liturgical Seasons • Holy Week • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Ordained • Preaching / Homiletics • * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • --Social Networking • Science & Technology • Teens / Youth • Young Adults • * International News & Commentary • Australia / NZ

With five weeks’ passage, the fateful encounter between a black youth who wanted to go to college and a Hispanic man who wanted to be a judge has polarized the nation.

And, now this modest central Florida community finds its name being mentioned with Selma and Birmingham on a civil rights list held sacred in black American culture, while across the country, the parsing of the case has become cacophonic and political, punctuated by pleas for tolerance, words of hatred, and spins from the left and right.

Read it all and also note The Events Leading to the Shooting of Trayvon Martin.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Police/Fire • Media • Psychology • Race/Race Relations • Teens / Youth • Violence

In the late 1980s, Marcia Herman-Giddens, then a physician’s associate in the pediatric department of the Duke University Medical Center, started noticing that an awful lot of 8- and 9-year-olds in her clinic had sprouted pubic hair and breasts. The medical wisdom, at that time, based on a landmark 1960 study of institutionalized British children, was that puberty began, on average, for girls at age 11. But that was not what Herman-Giddens was seeing. So she started collecting data, eventually leading a study with the American Academy of Pediatrics that sampled 17,000 girls, finding that among white girls, the average age of breast budding was 9.96. Among black girls, it was 8.87.

When Herman-Giddens published these numbers, in 1997 in Pediatrics, she set off a social and endocrinological firestorm. “I had no idea it would be so huge,” Herman-Giddens told me recently....

Now most researchers seem to agree on one thing: Breast budding in girls is starting earlier. The debate has shifted to what this means. Puberty, in girls, involves three events: the growth of breasts, the growth of pubic hair and a first period. Typically the changes unfold in that order, and the proc­ess takes about two years. But the data show a confounding pattern. While studies have shown that the average age of breast budding has fallen significantly since the 1970s, the average age of first period, or menarche, has remained fairly constant, dropping to only 12.5 from 12.8 years. Why would puberty be starting earlier yet ending more or less at the same time?

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Health & Medicine • Marriage & Family • Psychology • Sexuality • Teens / Youth • Women • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

A new longitudinal study of 500 youth group graduates may provide some answers. Conducted by the Fuller Youth Institute at Fuller Theological Seminary, the study followed the graduates through their years in college or vocational school. The results are compiled in a book, "Sticky Faith: Everyday ideas to build lasting faith in your kids" (Zondervan).

Some of the suggestions aren't surprising (for instance, the level of church involvement by parents plays a key role in a teen maintaining their faith walk). Other suggestions, though, may surprise Christian leaders.

Baptist Press asked Sticky Faith co-author Kara E. Powell -- executive director of the Fuller Youth Institute -- about the research....

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Youth Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Religion & Culture • Teens / Youth • Young Adults

[Many of the frequent quotes on hears among Methodists these days] ...in some way, [are] responses to the question, “Can young people save the Church?”

Whether vocalized or not, this question permeates United Methodist dialogue about membership decline, denominational vitality and the state of young people in an ever-changing world. Many of our conversations about these topics are well-intentioned attempts to answer this question.

But the question of whether or not young people can save the Church is not effective, because it is based on inaccurate assumptions about young people and membership decline.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Evangelism and Church Growth • Ministry of the Laity • Ministry of the Ordained • Pastoral Care • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • Teens / Youth • Young Adults • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Methodist

Judges have convicted a Congolese warlord of snatching children from the street and turning them into killers.

The ruling is the International Criminal Court's first judgment 10 years after it was established in The Hague as the world's first permanent war crimes tribunal.

Thomas Lubanga did not react as presiding Judge Adrian Fulford read out the verdicts Wednesday. He now faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment....

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • Law & Legal Issues • Teens / Youth • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • * International News & Commentary • Africa • Republic of Congo • Europe • The Netherlands

Bishop Samuel Aquila of Fargo said he is delighted to have first-hand papal approval for changing the order by which children in his diocese receive the sacraments.

“I was very surprised in what the Pope said to me, in terms of how happy he was that the sacraments of initiation have been restored to their proper order of baptism, confirmation then first Eucharist,” said Bishop Aquila, after meeting Pope Benedict on March 8.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Children • Teens / Youth • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • * Theology • Sacramental Theology

[The] Greece youth unemployment rate has risen to 51.1%. It was 39% in 2010, 28.9% in 2009, 26.3% in 2008, 24.5% in 2007

--Alberto Nardelli as cited in this morning's Telegraph.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Teens / Youth • Young Adults • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Greece

Two adults died in a shooting at a high school in Jacksonville, Florida, a fire department official said on Tuesday.

The shooting occurred at the Episcopal High School shortly after 1 p.m., said Tom Francis, a spokesman for the Jacksonville Fire Department.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Education • Teens / Youth • Violence

Girls and women in their teens and 20s deserve credit for pioneering vocal trends and popular slang, they say, adding that young women use these embellishments in much more sophisticated ways than people tend to realize.

“A lot of these really flamboyant things you hear are cute, and girls are supposed to be cute,” said Penny Eckert, a professor of linguistics at Stanford University. “But they’re not just using them because they’re girls. They’re using them to achieve some kind of interactional and stylistic end.”

The latest linguistic curiosity to emerge from the petri dish of girl culture gained a burst of public recognition in December, when researchers from Long Island University published a paper about it in The Journal of Voice. Working with what they acknowledged was a very small sample — recorded speech from 34 women ages 18 to 25 — the professors said they had found evidence of a new trend among female college students: a guttural fluttering of the vocal cords they called “vocal fry.”

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Psychology • Science & Technology • Teens / Youth • Women • Young Adults

The law recognises the emotional and physical dangers of under-age sex (which is why it has drawn the line of consent in the sand) and often upholds it, although the circumstances in which it takes action are unpredictable, and vary in different parts of Britain. The health services recognise, equally, that teenagers will often ignore the law, and provide practical help and advice to prevent them from the worst consequences of their choices, such as pregnancy or disease. Of course, the coexistence of these two approaches involves some element of doublethink, but sometimes a little of this is necessary to minimise damage.

There is a point, however, at which doublethink actually becomes so extreme as to become part of the problem: that is where we are now, as the state colludes in pumping young teenagers full of hormones while keeping their parents in ignorance of the fact. When the Conservative MP Nadine Dorries proposed running compulsory abstinence lessons for 13- to 16-year-old girls, in tandem with practical sex education – which would suggest that, in line with the law, it would be good to hold off for a bit – she was howled down and caricatured as a religious reactionary. Should a 13-year-old who is having consensual sex with her 18-year-old boyfriend seek a contraceptive implant, she can be piously congratulated for taking “adult decisions on her sexuality” – in preparation for an act deemed so potentially damaging to her that it could land him in jail. Confused? I am. Is it any wonder they are?

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • Law & Legal Issues • Science & Technology • Sexuality • Teens / Youth • * International News & Commentary • England / UK

Pubescent girls, it seems, are manifestly more likely to exhibit extreme and bizarre psychological symptoms than are teenage boys....

Female adolescence is — universally — an emotionally and psychologically intense period. It is during this time that girls become aware of the emergence of womanhood, with both the great joy and promise that come with it, and also the threat of danger. Much on their minds is their new potential for childbearing, an event that for most of human history has been fraught with physical peril. Furthermore, their emergence as sexual creatures brings with it heady excitement and increased physical vulnerability. They are also sharply aware that soon they will have to leave home forever, and at the very moment when they are most keenly desirous of its comforts and protections.

What girls need during this time is a stable and supportive space in which to work out all of this drama. In many respects a teenage girl’s home is more important to her than at any time since she was a small child. She also needs emotional support and protection from the most corrosive cultural forces that seek to exploit her when she is least able to resist....

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Psychology • Sexuality • Teens / Youth • Women

...a tragedy in Lewis' life -- the death of his mother from cancer while he was still a teenager -- spurred a period of introspection, what Lewis called "the dark nights of my soul."

After reading many books on religion -- "Mere Christianity" by C.S. Lewis being a particular influence -- talking with friends and studying Bible Scripture to find the true meaning behind the words, Lewis had what he called "an intense conversion experience in college."

"Even though I thought Scripture was dumb, it started compelling me more and more as I read," he said. "Faith didn't emerge until I began to take my life seriously."

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • * Culture-Watch • Education • Teens / Youth

(Please note the content of this post is unlikely to be suited to some blog readers--KSH).

Gemma Barker, from Middlesex, wore boy's clothes and gave herself three false identities so she could have sexual encounters with her 15- and 16-year-old friends, the Daily Mail reported.
Prosecutor Ruby Selva told Guildford Crown Court Barker set up Facebook profiles for her different personas and had individual dress styles for them.
She completely fooled her friends and their families by posing as Aaron Lampard, Connor McCormack and Luke Jones, the court heard.

Read it all and you can you can find the Daily Mail article there.

I will take comments on this submitted by email only to at KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • Law & Legal Issues • Psychology • Sexuality • Teens / Youth • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Everything's going digital these days — including cheating....

"There's an epidemic of cheating," says Robert Bramucci, vice chancellor for technology and learning services at South Orange Community College District in Mission Viejo, Calif. "We're not catching them. We're not even sure it's going on."

Several security-related companies, such as Spycheatstuff.com, will even overnight-mail a kit that turns a cellphone or iPod into a hands-free personal cheating device, featuring tiny wireless earbuds, that allows a test-taker to discreetly "phone a friend" during a test and get answers remotely without putting down the pencil.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • --Social Networking • Education • Science & Technology • Teens / Youth • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Girls are starting sex at ever younger ages – but boys, it seems, are not.

The trend, revealed in the annual Health Survey for England 2010, published yesterday, triggered claims about the "pornification" of British culture.

The survey found more than one in four women (27 per cent) aged 16 to 24 said they'd had sex before the age of 16 – the legal age for consent – compared with just over one in five men (22 per cent).

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Sexuality • Teens / Youth • Women • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Nearly one in nine high school seniors have gotten high in the past year on synthetic drugs, such as "K2" or "Spice," second only to the number of teens who have used marijuana, a new survey shows.

"Monitoring the Future," the nation's most comprehensive survey of teenage drug use, found 11.4% of the high school seniors had used the synthetic substances, often packed as potpourri or herbal incense and sold in convenience stores, which mimic the effects of marijuana.

"It is astounding," said Rep. Tom Latham, R-Iowa. "I don't think they have any idea how dangerous these synthetic drugs are."

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Education • Health & Medicine • Teens / Youth • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

"We knew that when states pass good laws, lives are saved and a lot of money is saved. We'd just never done the analysis," says John Ulczycki of the National Safety Council, which researched the issue for the Allstate Foundation.

The report comes as Congress prepares to consider a multiyear highway and transit-spending bill. Advocates of graduated driver licensing (GDL) laws are pushing to include funding for about $25 million a year in incentives for states to strengthen GDL programs.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Teens / Youth • Travel

We are pleased that the Presiding Bishop and Bishop Dan Edwards of Nevada have issued further statements on Bede Parry. In light of these statements, however, two further clarifications are needed.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori • TEC Polity & Canons • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Ordained • * Culture-Watch • Children • Law & Legal Issues • Teens / Youth • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology • Pastoral Theology

But when a Christian tattoos a Bible verse or a faith-phrase upon her body, she makes her body into a text. She reverses the incarnation of Christ; in her de-incarnation she is making the body, what is prone to messiness and effluvia and decay, into a true and eternal Word. They are turning themselves into the Bible, or a part thereof.

There’s something laudable in this: stating that these truths are the ultimate and unchanging truths of who I am. Yet I also wonder if they represent a running away from our carnality, a running away from the things that Christ affirmed in the incarnation. I wonder too whether tattoos like these — and all tattoos — might sometimes work like frosting upon a store window — presenting a surface that seeks not to externalize but to conceal what lies within. Does the person who stamps “God’s Son” upon his skin really believe it?

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Teens / Youth • Young Adults • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • * Theology • Anthropology

The Roman Catholic Church should give up control of schools if it wants to ensure that pupils will be protected from paedophile priests, an investigation into one of Britain’s worst clerical abuse scandals has concluded.

A report into decades of child abuse at Ealing Abbey made clear that there were nationwide consequences for the Church, Catholic education and, in particular, two of the country’s most famous independent schools, Downside and Ampleforth.

The inquiry, prompted by revelations in The Times, said the fact that St Benedict’s school in West London was under the total control of the Benedictine monks at Ealing was a major cause of the failure to detect, investigate and stop the sexual and physical abuse of pupils.

Read it all (requires subscription).

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Education • Religion & Culture • Teens / Youth • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic

A major child sex abuse cover-up case – that does not involve the Catholic Church.

When the case unfolding at Penn State blew up last week, I have to admit the first people I thought I would hear from those in the Catholic Church who believe their faith gets unfairly tarred on this subject. As so many high-level cases around the world have unfolded in the past decade, these Catholics often ask, rightly: What is the rate of sex abuse in other institutions?

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • Sexuality • Sports • Teens / Youth

Some Boston parents might be in for a rude awakening: 13 percent of area high school students say they've received "sext" messages and one in 10 has either forwarded, sent or posted sexually suggestive, explicit or nude photos or videos of people they know by cellphone or online.

So found a study of more than 23,000 students, with the results scheduled to be presented Wednesday at the American Public Health Association's annual meeting in Washington, D.C.

Sexting can include overtones of bullying and coercion, and teens who are involved were more likely to report being psychologically distressed, depressed or even suicidal, according to the 2010 survey of 24 (of 26) high schools in Boston's metro-west region.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • --Social Networking • Children • Education • Law & Legal Issues • Marriage & Family • Science & Technology • Sexuality • Teens / Youth

Watch it all--tremendous stuff.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Rural/Town Life • Sports • Teens / Youth • * General Interest • Natural Disasters: Earthquakes, Tornadoes, Hurricanes, etc.

A Muslim organization is working to counter radicalization by providing the work of progressive Islam scholars online in simple, youth-friendly language.

Muslims for Progressive Values (MPV), a nonprofit group that has established liberal Muslim communities in the U.S. and Canada, created the “Literary Zikr” website to provide an alternative to the fundamentalist versions of Islam that pervade the Internet.

“We take the scholarship and present it to the people,” said Yarehk Hernandez, a board member of MPV.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • --Social Networking • Media • Religion & Culture • Science & Technology • Teens / Youth • Young Adults • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Islam

Here's a pop quiz: What foods are best to eat before a high-stakes test? When is the best time to review the toughest material? A growing body of research on the best study techniques offers some answers.

Chiefly, testing yourself repeatedly before an exam teaches the brain to retrieve and apply knowledge from memory. The method is more effective than re-reading a textbook, says Jeffrey Karpicke, an assistant professor of psychological sciences at Purdue University. If you are facing a test on the digestive system, he says, practice explaining how it works from start to finish, rather than studying a list of its parts....

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Education • Health & Medicine • Psychology • Teens / Youth • Young Adults

We are witnessing the emergence of something profound: Humans, historically divided by geography, culture and creed, are beginning to connect and collaborate on a scale never seen before. The driving force behind this creative wave are digital tools and networks that allow new forms of collaboration and knowledge creation.

What starts out as social networking is evolving into social production. We’ve witnessed how self-organizing groups, leveraging social media such as Twitter, Facebook and Wikipedia, have launched revolutions throughout the Arab world and created the most important reference work in the English language in less than 10 years.

In spite of all the potential to innovate surrounding blogs, forums, wikis and social networks, there are legions of detractors. And no institution is more skeptical about the benefits of social media than education. But there are also few institutions that have more to gain from social media.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • --Social Networking • Children • Education • Teens / Youth

Kevin Schombert, a student with Down Syndrome, was crowned homecoming king this weekend at Urbana High School in Frederick County.

Schombert is a manager for the school’s basketball team and a huge sports fan.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Education • Teens / Youth

Why do young Christians leave the church?

New research by the Barna Group finds they view churches as judgmental, overprotective, exclusive and unfriendly towards doubters. They also consider congregations antagonistic to science and say their Christian experience has been shallow.

The findings, the result of a five-year study, are featured in You Lost Me: Why Young Christians are Leaving Church and Rethinking Faith, a new book by Barna president David Kinnaman. The project included a study of 1,296 young adults who were current or former churchgoers.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Youth Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • Teens / Youth • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

L’Osservatore Romano (English, September 21) reprinted an essay, “God in Madrid,” by the Peruvian novelist and Nobel Prize winner, Mario Vargas Llosa, from the Spanish paper El País about the meaning of the papal visit....

[In the essay Llosa says that] contemporary culture is rather vapid, a kind of “light entertainment.” Within it is a “cabal of incomprehensible and arrogant experts, who have taken refuge in unintelligible jargon, light years from common mortals.” Culture has not replaced religion, particularly that religion originating in revelation....

Most human beings suspect that the answers need a “higher order” of existence to locate the center of their lives. Atheism’s self-satisfied defenders no longer stand on the solid ground they once assumed. Science itself is looking like it has to admit that the origin of the universe lies in some transcendent, extra-cosmic, intelligent source even to explain science....

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Poetry & Literature • Religion & Culture • Teens / Youth • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Spain • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • Pope Benedict XVI • Other Faiths • Secularism

Understanding the need for the continued support of young people in the Anglican Communion, and aligning with the Archbishop of Canterbury’s statement that a good educational system in a healthy society is one that builds character and virtue, the IAYN seeks to urge provinces to commit themselves to the further development of youth ministries through:

a) Developing opportunities and programs for youth leadership
b) Continuing to educate young people on what it means to be a Christian in the Anglican tradition
c) Appointing a committed and engaged youth officer to participate in the International Anglican Youth Network, and
d) Contributing financially to the work of the International Anglican Youth Network

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • * Culture-Watch • Teens / Youth • * International News & Commentary • Asia

Author Bret Lott says his book "The Hunt Club" is a story about a 15-year-old figuring out who he is in the most specific and universal sense.

Wando High School parent James Pasley says the book uses foul language, degrades women and people of color, and isn't appropriate to be on a recommended reading list for high school students....

"I don't know what motivates this kind of reaction except a kind of Victorian sensibility, and I say that as a believing Christian and Sunday school teacher," Lott said. "How do you shield children from racism? Virtue is not virtue unless it is made vulnerable and put to the test in confronting these things."

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Books • Children • Education • Marriage & Family • Religion & Culture • Teens / Youth • * South Carolina

Christina Gustavsson says she loves school. But her teachers have had a tough time educating her.

In her freshman year at Kennett High School, 15-year-old Christina racked up five months' worth of absences and never completed a full day of school. Sometimes, she had difficulty remembering assignments, completing homework or even waking up in time for school. Other times, she didn't.

Christina has chronic fatigue syndrome, a condition whose symptoms have long confounded many medical professionals and now pose peculiar challenges for educators as more adolescents are diagnosed with it. In a time of tight budgets, public schools must consider how far to go to accommodate students with CFS and a range of so-called hidden disabilities that are difficult to observe, evaluate or understand.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Health & Medicine • Teens / Youth • * Economics, Politics • Economy • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • Politics in General • City Government • State Government

When asked to describe a moral dilemma they had faced, two-thirds of the young people either couldn’t answer the question or described problems that are not moral at all, like whether they could afford to rent a certain apartment or whether they had enough quarters to feed the meter at a parking spot.

“Not many of them have previously given much or any thought to many of the kinds of questions about morality that we asked,” Smith and his co-authors write. When asked about wrong or evil, they could generally agree that rape and murder are wrong. But, aside from these extreme cases, moral thinking didn’t enter the picture, even when considering things like drunken driving, cheating in school or cheating on a partner. “I don’t really deal with right and wrong that often,” is how one interviewee put it.

The default position, which most of them came back to again and again, is that moral choices are just a matter of individual taste. “It’s personal,” the respondents typically said. “It’s up to the individual. Who am I to say?”

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Psychology • Religion & Culture • Teens / Youth • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

On Friday, about 2,000 students, school staff members and dignitaries assembled on the football field of Todd Beamer’s namesake school.

“They’re never going to forget all the people who died,” said senior Nathan Ceney, who attended Lakeland Elementary School on Sept. 11, 2001. “I thought it was a movie or something on TV. Who in their right minds would crash into two magnificent towers?”

Federal Way Mayor Skip Priest encouraged the students to not live their lives in fear. He quoted President Franklin D. Roosevelt: “‘The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.’ The power to resist fear, however, is in each one of you.”

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Education • History • Teens / Youth • * Economics, Politics • Terrorism

While many pastors and parents have heard horror stories about children straying into dark corners online, few are aware of just how common these problems have become — even in their sanctuaries and homes.

This is the kind of danger and sin that religious leaders often fear discussing, precisely because these realities have not remained bottled up in the secular world. Thus, Heil urged his listeners to ponder the following statistics in his presentation, drawn from mainstream research in the past year:

• Two-thirds of Americans under the age of 18 have reported some kind of negative experience while online. Only 45 percent of their parents are aware of this.

• Forty-one percent of children say they have been approached online by some kind of stranger, possibly an older predator.

Read it all, another from the long line of should-have-already-been-posted material.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Youth Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • --Social Networking • Children • Religion & Culture • Science & Technology • Teens / Youth

“Evangelical Catholicism” is a term being used to capture the Catholic version of a 21st century politics of identity, reflecting the long-term historical transition in the West from Christianity as a culture-shaping majority to Christianity as a subculture, albeit a large and influential one. I define Evangelical Catholicism in terms of three pillars:

--A strong defense of traditional Catholic identity, meaning attachment to classic markers of Catholic thought (doctrinal orthodoxy) and Catholic practice (liturgical tradition, devotional life, and authority).
--Robust public proclamation of Catholic teaching, with the accent on Catholicism’s mission ad extra, transforming the culture in light of the Gospel, rather than ad intra, on internal church reform.
--Faith seen as a matter of personal choice rather than cultural inheritance, which among other things implies that in a highly secular culture, Catholic identity can never be taken for granted. It always has to be proven, defended, and made manifest.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Evangelism and Church Growth • * Culture-Watch • Teens / Youth • Young Adults • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Spain • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • Pope Benedict XVI

Binge drinking among teenage girls has become a serious public health problem for the UK and a source of public disorder, a report compiled by the Centre for Public Health at Liverpool John Moores University has concluded. It warned that Britain’s alcohol culture was spawning a violent and promiscuous generation with 30 per cent of teenagers bingeing at least weekly.

The study of over 11,000 15 and 16-year-old teenagers in the North West found that 88 per cent of teen girls had consumed alcohol, as compared to 80 per cent of boys. “Compared to European neighbours, 15 and 16-year-olds [British teens] are far more likely to drink alcohol and do so more frequently,” the report found.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Alcohol/Drinking • Teens / Youth • * International News & Commentary • England / UK