Free Republic

WASHINGTON - The languorous dog days of August were shattered this week by the tragic, shooting death of an unarmed black teenager in a little town in Missouri. Hundreds of youths are shot and killed each year in our country. More than 100 were gunned down in gangland or drive-by shootings in Chicago alone in just one year. But the death of Michael Brown, who just graduated from high school and hoped to pursue higher education, has seized the nation's attention like no other. The still-murky shooting episode by a Ferguson, Mo. police officer, which raised more questions than answers,...

Teens in the United States are only average when it comes to financial literacy; crushed by Chinese teenagers’ remarkable performance on the Programme for International Student Assessment’s (PISA) first-ever financial literacy assessment. pisa study chart PISA typically surveys an average of 65 countries and economies focusing on mathematics with additional reading, science and problem-solving areas of assessment. On July 9, 2014 PISA released the results of a new financial literacy assessment evaluating 15-year-olds from 18 countries and economies. Among those countries the United States ranked somewhere between 8 and 12; China, 1. But that’s not all, while the U.S. struggles...

Score another one for Chinese teenagers, who leave U.S. kids in their dust when it comes to knowing how to handle money. That's the latest anxiety-producing statistic (for American parents, anyway) to emerge out of a newly released international study of the financial habits of roughly 29,000 teens from countries as far flung as Australia, China, Colombia, France, Israel, Russia, Spain, and the U.S. The goal of this first-ever international study of financial literacy, conducted by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, was to gauge the financial know-how of 15-year-olds worldwide. Many of the teenagers have reached or are...

There was a time not so long ago when the young seemed destined to be liberal forever. Americans in their teens and 20s were to the left of their elders on social issues. They worried more about poverty. They voted strongly Democratic.In retrospect, we refer to this period as the 1960s, and it didn’t last long, let alone forever. Less than a generation after young people were marching for civil rights and against the Vietnam War, they voted overwhelmingly for Ronald Reagan.Today, of course, the young are liberal again, and it seems as if they will be forever. They favor...

The United States on Wednesday called on both Israel and the Palestinian Arabs to "show restraint" as Israel tightened their grip on Hamas hunting for three kidnapped teenagers, AFP reports. "We recognize this is an incredibly sensitive and difficult circumstance on the ground, and we feel all sides should exercise restraint," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters. Israeli troops have pressed their biggest arrest operation in years, imposing a tight lockdown on huge swathes of Judea and Samaria in the hunt for the three boys kidnapped six days ago. So far, there has been no claim of responsibility for...

Most Americans love to reminisce about their first paying job, whether it was scooping ice cream, babysitting, or working behind a retail counter. It was rarely glamorous, but earning that first paycheck was a point of pride and marked a milestone in a teenager's life. By the time Andrew Sum entered his teenage years, he'd already held a job delivering newspapers. Now as an economist, one of his chief concerns is the state of the labor market for today's teenagers. The employment rates for teenagers, ages 16 to 19, plummeted from 45 percent in 2000 to just 26 percent in...

Two Detroit teenagers were arrested Saturday in an attack on a suburban man who was brutally beaten by a mob after accidentally striking a boy with his pickup truck. Steve Utash remained in critical condition Saturday. Utash is white; Detroit is more than 80 percent black.

Ho-hum, a mob of 200 teenagers rampages through the downtown of an American city, assaulting and hospitalizing people and robbing stores. The mayor calls for calm. And nobody outside that local media market, where it cannot be ignored, hears a thing about it. Now why would that be? Could it possibly be because surveillance video from a convenience store that was robbed shows all the miscreants were black? The Right Scoop brings us news of the insurrection which gripped Louisville over the weekend:

A New Jersey teenager claiming that her mother and father tossed her out of their home and cut her off financially is suing them for immediate support, current private-school fees and future college tuition. The parents, meanwhile, say that daughter Rachel Canning, 18, moved out voluntarily after refusing to abide by their rules. “We love our child and miss her. This is terrible. It’s killing me and my wife,” Rachel's father, Sean Canning, a town administrator and retired police officer, tells the Daily Record. “We have a child we want home. We’re not Draconian and now we’re getting hauled into...

**SNIP** Many of the teenagers surveyed said they were suffering from irritability or angriness (40 percent), nervousness or anxiety (36 percent) or depression and sadness (33 percent) because of their stress. Sturgill told USA Today she sometimes skips meals because of high levels of stress. “Our study this year gives us a window in looking at how early these patterns might begin," clinical psychologist Norman Anderson, the APA’s CEO told USA Today. "The patterns of stress we see in adults seem to be occurring as early as the adolescent years — stress-related behaviors such as lack of sleep, lack of...

Brazil's Teenage Flashmobs Are A Lot More Serious Than They Sound The Wire Brian Feldman, The Wire Jan. 20, 2014, 7:43 AM Over the past week, flashmobs have been occurring all over Brazil as a form of protest, drawing thousands of participants and sometimes turning violent. The rolezhinos—"gatherings of predominantly poor, black youths who party in malls usually occupied by mostly wealthy, white consumers"—have been so effective in garnering attention that even the country's president is paying attention. The protests, according to The New York Times, "involve large numbers of dark-skinned teenagers" and cast an eye on public space in...

At a time when sexually transmitted diseases are infecting millions of teenagers it has been reported that doctors don’t bother asking them about their sex life. If a doctor does not bring it up during a physical examination neither does the teenager.

I was asked by the Young Adult group in my parish to address some ads on our local buses and subway trains here in Washington. The members of the Young adult group found the ads offensive and troubling, especially since they were aimed at kids. The ads are posted by the American “Humanist” Association (AHA) and are indeed aimed at kids and teenagers. The focus of the message is “Kids without God: You’re not the only one.” I have altered the ad at the upper right of this post to avoid listing its website but as you can see God...

Five teenagers were arrested when a 600-person brawl broke out in a Florida movie theater's parking lot on Christmas night. Described by police as a "melee," the fight occurred around 8:30 p.m. on Wednesday outside the Hollywood River City 14 movie theater in Jacksonville when a group tried to storm the theater's doors without purchasing tickets, police said. Several had rushed an off-duty police officer working as a security guard. The officer "administered pepper spray to disperse the group, locked the doors and called for backup, following protocol," said Lauri-Ellen Smith, a spokeswoman for the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office. Soon after...

The employment rate among teenagers is incredibly dismal. I know this firsthand, since I have teens at home and teenage nieces and nephews who cannot find work. There’s an irritating theme that runs through family conversations about our unemployed teens, and the words I hear most often are “lazy” and “entitled.” “I had a paper route when I was their age,” one of the older members of the family will tell me every time we get together. “They need to get out and hustle. Walk the neighborhood, mow lawns, weed gardens. There’s lots of jobs out there for teens.” “They...

The "knockout game" -- and the media underreporting of it -- combines the breakdown of the family with the media's condescending determination to serve as a public relations bureau for blacks. The "game" is a dare in which a young man -- all the perps appear to be male people of color, mostly blacks -- tries to literally knock out an innocent bystander with one blow. Both National Public Radio and The New York Times say these reports of the "knockout game" being widespread are overblown and do not represent a trend. Really? According to Colin Flaherty, author of "White...

A McDonald's outlet in Australia has begun playing classical musical and opera late at night to deter young people from loitering around the restaurant. Fed up with their outlet's nocturnal transformation into an unofficial youth club, the store adopted the tactic a few weeks ago and says it has significantly reduced the number of loiterers, particularly around the car park. The strategy has reportedly been tried before by a local council at a car park in Australia, though previous efforts involved blaring songs by Barry Manilow. Matthew Watson, the operations manager at the Mt Annan McDonald's on the outskirts of...

As more U.S. states increase legalization and increased accessibility of marijuana a recent scientific study reveals that the negative impact on the brains of teenagers is being ignored.

We have become a nation of relentless self-promoters. Every day I check my email inbox and find it full of messages like “my media availability this week is…”, “I will be on TV or radio…”, “I am available for interviews,” or “my new book is available…” The onslaught of people promoting themselves makes it extraordinarily difficult for editors, funders and media to sift through potential talent, there is simply too much. Everyone wants to be a star, and the advent of YouTube and social media has made it appear to be readily attainable. The Internet’s democratization of access to publicity...

A 13-year-old boy who police say was doused with gasoline and lit on fire last week while walking home from school is recovering from first-degree burns to his face and head. The boy was just two blocks from his home in Kansas City Tuesday when two teenagers began to follow him and then attacked him, his mother, Melissa Coon, said. Police have described the suspects as black 16-year-olds, while the victim is white. "We were told it's a hate crime," Coon told KTLA. "They rushed him on the porch as he tried to get the door open," Coon told KMBC....