“I write everything as a wake-up call,” she says. “To myself and others, to anyone who may have gotten tired of hitting the snooze button.” Imperfect Birds is a well-informed wake-up call. Lamott is a recovering alcoholic, sober since 1986, and has just ushered her son Sam through his high school years in a bohemian enclave of Marin where drugs are there for the asking. Kids who remind her of Rosie are everywhere she turns. On this Sunday morning, she has just returned from a hike to the ocean, where she watched a search-and-rescue team look for a 17-year-old girl from Mill Valley who disappeared during an overnight party with her friends. Inside St. Andrew, Lamott’s beloved church, she offers prayers for the search. Later that day, the girl is found in the Pacific, dead.

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It is harder than ever for young people to learn the faith, because the culture keeps them from maturing and developing their freedom, according to the Italian bishops.

This was one observation made by the prelates in their four-day permanent council meeting last week. Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, archbishop of Genoa and president of the episcopal conference, led the meeting.

Given the difficulties in transmitting the faith, the bishops emphasized “the need for greater attention in presenting Catholic doctrine so as not to reduce Christian initiation to a generic experience,” according to Monsignor Domenico Pompili, conference spokesman. He said there is a growing awareness that the entire community needs to be catechized, and this conviction needs to continue to become stronger.

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It is not clear what some students at South Hadley High School expected to achieve by subjecting a freshman to the relentless taunting described by a prosecutor and classmates.

Certainly not her suicide. And certainly not the multiple felony indictments announced on Monday against several students at the Massachusetts school.

The prosecutor brought charges Monday against nine teenagers, saying their taunting and physical threats were beyond the pale and led the freshman, Phoebe Prince, to hang herself from a stairwell in January.

The charges were an unusually sharp legal response to the problem of adolescent bullying, which is increasingly conducted in cyberspace as well as in the schoolyard and has drawn growing concern from parents, educators and lawmakers.

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Avatars and Mad Hatters are already performing before American audiences in 3-D, and Shrek is coming soon. Now, a national Catholic television network is throwing priests into the mix.

CatholicTV debuted 3-D programs Tuesday in an effort to reach younger people and to make the faith message more vivid. The network posted several 3-D shows on the Internet, released its monthly magazine in 3-D – complete with glasses – and said it will eventually broadcast some programs in 3-D.

CatholicTV’s director, the Rev. Robert Reed, said he’d been planning to introduce 3-D well before the success of James Cameron’s movie “Avatar” or the 3-D “Alice in Wonderland.”

“It’s a way for us to show that we believe the message we have is relevant, and we’re going to use every possible avenue to bring that message to people,” said Reed, whose network reaches 5 million to 6 million homes nationwide through various cable providers.

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[GREG] COLLARD: It’s not just a Charlotte problem. U.S. Census figures show almost two-thirds of African-American kids don’t have a biological father living at home, and that can lead to other issues. A Justice Department report found the incarceration rate for black men in 2008 was six-and-a-half times that of white men.

Mr. WARREN BROWN (Bishop): We’re not just going to visit you in prison, we’re going to try to keep you out of prison.

COLLARD: That’s Bishop Warren Brown speaking this month in Columbia, South Carolina, at what was billed The Great Gathering. Almost 7,000 people attended a meeting of the major black Methodist denominations: the AME, AME Zion and CME.

Mr. BROWN: We recognize that oftentimes we feel that we will deal with our young black men in the eighth or tenth grade. That’s too late. We’ve got to work with them out of kindergarten.

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But whether banishing children from schools really makes them safer or serves the community well is increasingly questioned by social scientists and educators. And now the punishment is before the courts in what has become a stark legal test of the approach. Lawyers for the girls ”” who are black ”” say that denying them a semester’s schooling was an unjustified violation of their constitutional right to an education.

The case will be argued on Monday in the North Carolina Supreme Court and has drawn the attention of civil rights, legal aid and education groups around the country.

At issue is the routine use of suspensions not just for weapons or drugs but also for profanity, defiant behavior, pushing matches and other acts that used to be handled with a visit to the principal’s office or detention. Such lesser violations now account for most of the 3.3 million annual suspensions of public school students. That total includes a sharp racial imbalance: poor black students are suspended at three times the rate of whites, a disparity not fully explained by differences in income or behavior.

On March 8, the education secretary, Arne Duncan, lamented “schools that seem to suspend and discipline only young African-American boys” as he pledged stronger efforts to ensure racial equality in schooling.

A growing body of research, scholars say, suggests that heavy use of suspensions does less to pacify schools than to push already troubled students toward academic failure and dropping out ”” and sometimes into what critics have called the “school-to-prison pipeline.”

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“This is not a criminal proceeding,” Weinstein says. “We are talking about a code of conduct, which, I want to emphasize, both students and their parents sign before they begin any extracurricular activity, and they’ve all agreed to it.”

The code of conduct specifically prohibits students from consuming alcohol or drugs away from school.

Tenth-grader Justin Janowski says he doesn’t like the policy and thinks parents should be the ones making decisions about how to punish their kids outside of school. But he grudgingly admits the policy is effective.

“I mean, when I was a wrestler and played football like that’s one thing I didn’t want to do was get kicked off the team for getting bad grades. Or I don’t know, get caught smoking cigarettes outside of school, so I didn’t do it,” says Janowksi. “I stayed good.”

Janowski attends high school in a nearby district with the same policy. In the past decade, following the Columbine shooting, schools have suspended students for all sorts of misdeeds away from campus ”” vandalism, minor drug possession or cyber-bullying. Courts have tended to uphold these policies as long as officials can show some connection to school safety. But beyond the legal issues, there is also rigorous debate about whether “zero-tolerance” policies are effective.

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My high school, Mumford, has more than 2,000 students. This year, the administrative staff was replaced, we gained some new teachers, and we are losing others. Eight teachers are retiring this year amid the chaos within the school and the system.

As of Jan. 29, two teachers had already retired. And on that day, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear, 19 teachers out of 91 were absent. A school counselor told me that the Board of Education would not send that many substitutes to Mumford, and that counselors had to cover for them. Students who did not have teachers that day were sent to the auditorium.

There, students were divided up by classes. Some students listened to music. Others talked to each other or tried to talk on cell phones. Counselors watched to make sure students remained seated. The air roared with conversation. Some students decided not to go to the auditorium and either played around in the hallways or left school.

I was one of the students in the auditorium. I tried to do work for my other classes, but with the noise swirling around me, I couldn’t get anything done. It was a waste of my time. And it is worse for students who have teachers for longer periods of time. Without teachers, school becomes simply a social gathering and a waste of educational time.

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Colbert Williams was just 16 when he became a father and then had to raise his son as a single dad. Now Colbert is 30, and his son, Nathan, is a teenager himself. Recently the pair talked about raising kids.

“What were you thinking when I was born?” Nathan, 15, asked.

“I guess as a 16-year-old who came from a situation where there wasn’t a father, you know, my confidence level was probably as low as it possibly could get because I realized that I was going to be responsible for some person,” Colbert said. “So I was scared.”

Fear was what made Colbert reach out for help. He attended parenting groups, hoping to learn how to take care of Nathan. And even though he stuck out a bit, the sessions gave him confidence.

I just love the picture–read or listen to it all.

There are videos showing off card tricks, horsemanship, jump rope and stencils ”” and lots of rap songs, including one by a young woman who performed two weeks after oral surgery, with her mouth still rubber-banded shut.

There is also Rhaina Cohen’s video, working off the saying “You never truly know someone until you have walked a mile in her shoes,” and featuring the blue sandals from her bat mitzvah, the white sneakers she bought cheaply in Britain, and the black heels in which she “stood next to Hillary Clinton.”

It is reading season at the Tufts University admissions office, time to plow through thousands of essays and transcripts and recommendations ”” and this year, for the first time, short YouTube videos that students could post to supplement their application.

About 1,000 of the 15,000 applicants submitted videos. Some have gotten thousands of hits on YouTube.

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The sudden buzz over the relative value of senior year stems from a recent proposal by state Sen. Chris Buttars that Utah make a dent in its budget gap by eliminating the 12th grade.

The notion quickly gained some traction among supporters who agreed with the Republican’s assessment that many seniors frittered away their final year of high school, but faced vehement opposition from other quarters, including in his hometown of West Jordan.

“My parents are against it,” Williams said. “All the teachers at the school are against it. I’m against it.”

Buttars has since toned down the idea, suggesting instead that senior year become optional for students who complete their required credits early. He estimated the move could save up to $60 million, the Salt Lake Tribune reported.

The proposal comes as the state faces a $700-million shortfall and reflects the creativity — or desperation — of lawmakers.

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According to a 1982 study by two Indian researchers, the level of self-reported love in arranged marriages increased over time until they surpassed the level of self-reported love in marriages that were freely chosen. Incredible as it sounds, people with a very limited say in choosing their own spouses eventually became happier with their relationships than people with the freedom to choose anyone they wanted.

Although we almost always read “Romeo and Juliet” as the quintessential story of love at first sight,Shakespeare actually offered his own sly critique of romantic love at the beginning of the play. Romeo is pining away for love — but not for Juliet. There is another fair damsel who has rejected Romeo’s advances, and he declares himself inconsolable. He disdains finding someone else and tells Benvolio, “Thou canst not teach me to forget” — which is, of course, precisely what happens a few scenes later when Romeo meets Juliet and realizes that he was completely wrong before and only now has discovered true love.

We never remember that part of the story, though, because if we think of “Romeo and Juliet” from that perspective, the whole play starts to skew in ways that contradict our usual romantic notions.

Perhaps the time has come for us to take a skeptical view of romance, particularly the over-the-top variety peddled so effectively on Valentine’s Day.

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In a subchapter entitled “A ‘Special’ Act for a Special Evening?” the authors note that “some teens talk about prom night as the night they might have sex for the first time because the night feels special and significant.” Without making any ruling as to the wisdom of such a practice, they invite young people to consider whether to bed their dates by asking themselves: “Will I be able to look this person in the eye the next morning and talk about the experience? If we break up afterward anyway, how will I feel?” The authors conclude: “Sex is the most intimate act between two people, so you should take the time to consider all these questions and answer them coolly and honestly.”

It seems startlingly passive advice, even in an era in which, as a newly retired school principal ruefully told me, “Girls save themselves not for marriage but for the prom.”

Well, of course sex is intimate. It’s also profoundly consequential and, you’d think, something the heirs of Emily Post would be unafraid to tell young people to delay. (“Don’t allow anyone to paw you!”) Alas, no more.

“We’re not prudish by any stretch; we’re more realists than anything else,” Peggy Post explained by phone. “We really made a conscious decision not to try to lecture teens or tell them what to do, but instead give them the tools, questions for them to ask themselves, so that they don’t feel pressure.”

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Omar Hammami had every right to flash his magnetic smile. He had just been elected president of his sophomore class. He was dating a luminous blonde, one of the most sought-after girls in school. He was a star in the gifted-student program, with visions of becoming a surgeon. For a 15-year-old, he had remarkable charisma.

Despite the name he acquired from his father, an immigrant from Syria, Hammami was every bit as Alabaman as his mother, a warm, plain-spoken woman who sprinkles her conversation with blandishments like “sugar” and “darlin’.” Brought up a Southern Baptist, Omar went to Bible camp as a boy and sang “Away in a Manger” on Christmas Eve. As a teenager, his passions veered between Shakespeare and Kurt Cobain, soccer and Nintendo. In the thick of his adolescence, he was fearless, raucously funny, rebellious, contrarian. “It felt cool just to be with him,” his best friend at the time, Trey Gunter, said recently. “You knew he was going to be a leader.”

A decade later, Hammami has fulfilled that promise in the most unimaginable way. Some 8,500 miles from Alabama, on the eastern edge of Africa, he has become a key figure in one of the world’s most ruthless Islamist insurgencies. That guerrilla army, known as the Shabab, is fighting to overthrow the fragile American-backed Somali government. The rebels are known for beheading political enemies, chopping off the hands of thieves and stoning women accused of adultery. With help from Al Qaeda, they have managed to turn Somalia into an ever more popular destination for jihadis from around the world.

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When 17-year-old Anthony Turner was gunned down outside a city home early the morning of Nov. 1, 2009, siblings Emily Gibson, 14, and David Gibson, 17, knew they couldn’t stay silent anymore. Anthony had attended East High School with the Gibson siblings, and the home he died in front of belonged to someone they knew from the Cathedral Community Youth Group.

Emily, David and other members of the Cathedral Community Youth Group decided they had to do something to try to stop the violence that plagues their neighborhoods. With the help of Belinda Brasley, the Cathedral Community’s youth-ministry coordinator, the teens decided to hold a Teen Prayer for Peace, which took place at Sacred Heart Cathedral on the rainy evening of Jan. 24.

The lighting in the cathedral was dim that night, indicating the solemnity of the occasion. The mood of the approximately 50 people gathered there, however, was light. The teens and adults in the audience smiled as they murmured to one another before the event began.

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Sex education classes that focus on encouraging children to remain abstinent can convince a significant proportion to delay sexual activity, researchers reported Monday in a landmark study that could have major implications for the nation’s embattled efforts to protect young people against unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases.

In the first carefully designed study to evaluate the controversial approach to sex ed, researchers found that only about a third of 6th and 7th graders who went through sessions focused on abstinence started having sex in the next two years. In contrast, nearly half of students who got other classes, including those that included information about contraception, became sexually active.

“I think we’ve written off abstinence-only education without looking closely at the nature of the evidence,” said John B. Jemmott III, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, who led the federally funded study. “Our study shows this could be one approach that could be used.”

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Virginity is a hot topic at the moment, prompted by comments from the Leader of the Opposition. He may have copped a lot of flak but Tony Abbott’s advice makes a lot of sense and there’s nothing alarming in it. Besides, being a parent gives him a right to express his views publicly.

I am not embarrassed to admit that my ”gift” remains unwrapped – at least for the time being. Losing your virginity or ”V-plates” (as some of us like to call it) has always been a preoccupation of adolescents. Where to do it? When to do it? Who to do it with? Parents advise us to put it off, young men argue that right now would be the best time and some religions insist we must wait until marriage.

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What really knocked readers out about “The Catcher in the Rye” was the wonderfully immediate voice that J. D. Salinger fashioned for Holden Caulfield ”” a voice that enabled him to channel an alienated 16-year-old’s thoughts and anxieties and frustrations, a voice that skeptically appraised the world and denounced its phonies and hypocrites and bores.

Mr. Salinger had such unerring radar for the feelings of teenage angst and vulnerability and anger that “Catcher,” published in 1951, remains one of the books that adolescents first fall in love with ”” a book that intimately articulates what it is to be young and sensitive and precociously existential, a book that first awakens them to the possibilities of literature.

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Mr. Salinger’s literary reputation rests on a slender but enormously influential body of published work: the novel “The Catcher in the Rye,” the collection “Nine Stories” and two compilations, each with two long stories about the fictional Glass family: “Franny and Zooey” and “Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction.”

“Catcher” was published in 1951, and its very first sentence, distantly echoing Mark Twain, struck a brash new note in American literature: “If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.”

Though not everyone, teachers and librarians especially, was sure what to make of it, “Catcher” became an almost immediate best seller, and its narrator and main character, Holden Caulfield, a teenager newly expelled from prep school, became America’s best-known literary truant since Huckleberry Finn.

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The pregnancy rate among teenage girls in the United States has jumped for the first time in more than a decade, raising alarm that the long campaign to reduce motherhood among adolescents is faltering, according to a report released Tuesday.

The pregnancy rate among 15-to-19-year-olds increased 3 percent between 2005 and 2006 — the first jump since 1990, according to an analysis of the most recent data collected by the federal government and the nation’s leading reproductive-health think tank.

Teen pregnancy has long been one of the most pressing social issues and has triggered intense political debate over sex education, particularly whether the federal government should fund programs that encourage abstinence until marriage or focus on birth control.

“The decline in teen pregnancy has stopped — and in fact has turned around,” said Lawrence Finer, director of domestic research for the Guttmacher Institute, the nonprofit, nonpartisan research group in New York that conducted the analysis. “These data are certainly cause for concern.”

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The teen pregnancy rate in the USA rose 3% in 2006, the first increase in more than a decade, according to data out today. The data also show higher rates of births and abortions among girls 15-19.

The numbers, calculated by the Guttmacher Institute, a non-profit group that studies reproductive and sexual health, show a clear reversal from the downward trend that began in the 1990s.

About 7% of teen girls got pregnant in 2006, a rate of 71.5 pregnancies per 1,000 teens. That’s up slightly from 69.5 in 2005, Guttmacher says. In 1990, when rates peaked, about 12% got pregnant.

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