I have always fought a tendency to be overprotective of my growing children. Apologetically I would say to my firstborn, “I’ve never had a son your age before, and I need to be a little older so I can get used to it.” This explanation carried us through new experiences in his life that ranged from his first airplane trip alone to getting his driver’s license.

Then he left for college, and all my anxieties returned until he called me one day in October. “Rush is starting, Mom,” he said fondly. “Are you old enough for me to join a fraternity?”

—CC—

We received the following letter from our good friend Tom Adams. It was great!

Dear Bill, Dayna, and the rest of the crew: Thought I would write to let you know WHAT’S UP with the Adams family. Last Friday morning I WOKE UP about the time the sun CAME UP with an UPSET stomach. In fact, I thought I was going to THROW UP but after I GOT UP and drank a 7-UP my pain began to EASE UP and I didn’t feel so UPTIGHT. Doris was UP by this time and asked if I wanted to do my PUSHUPS as the Dr. had advised. I said that I just wasn’t UP TO IT but would do them later.

UP in the morning, I went to the mailbox and got your paper from it. When I OPENED IT UP and got to page 6 and 7 of your comments, I was CHEERED UP considerably. Particularly interesting was your WRITEUP on the many usages of the little two-letter-word, UP. I have played games with this little word for years. When I’m having trouble getting to sleep, I often try to THINK UP all the ways this word can be used. I counted UP to 36 in your article and I will add that many more so the total will ADD UP to 75-80. What I do is try to THINK UP a verb for each letter of the alphabet. Some are easy and a few are hard. I have marked some letters with an asterisk because I could not COME UP with an adequate verb but some reader may THINK UP one.

A. My parents often warned me when I was young not to ACT UP in public.

B. I’m always having to remind Doris to BUCKLE UP when we are in the car.

C. I fondly remember when we were dating and would CUDDLE UP at the drive-in theatre.

D. We DIG UP dirt from the ground and on our enemies.

E. I recently spotted a cop’s car in front of me, so I EASED UP on the gas.

F. We’ve got the evidence on you, so you might as well ‘FESS UP.

G. Before we go anywhere we had better GAS UP.

H. The cops lost track of the suspects in the HOLD UP but soon learned where they had HOLED UP.

I. It’s wise to let your faucets drip on cold winter nights, lest your pipes will ICE UP.

J. When I heard Doris scream, I immediately JUMPED UP.

K. We once had neighbors named JONES but we couldn’t KEEP UP with them.

L. S o m e basketball scores are made by jump shots, osme by set shots and other by LAY UPS.

M. Why don’t we kiss and MAKE UP?

N. * O. “By faith Abraham, when he was tried, OFFERED UP Isaac. (Heb. 11:17) P. You have owed me $20.00 for 6 months; now PAY UP!

Q. The people who QUEUED UP to see Queen Elizabeth’s body formed a line several miles long.

R. As election day approaches, politicians usually RAMP UP their rhetoric.

S. There was a SHAKE UP in the company I worked for and I was fired. They said I should have been more FIRED UP on the job.

T. I will TAKE UP the matter with you later.

U. Sorry, but you have USED UP most of the credit on your card.

V. * W. My liberal friend thinks men can give birth to children, so I told him to WISE UP.

X. * Y. According to the Bible, you die when you ‘YIELD UP the ghost.’

Z. * I CONJURED UP MOST OF THESE OFF THE TOP OF MY HEAD SO THERE MAY BE SOME DUPLICATIONS IN YOUR ARTICLE WITH MINE. A THOUGHT TO PONDER: What would our vocabulary sound like if this little word was extinct? Hope you can use some of this writing in some way. Forgive the sloppy typing. My correction key is broken so I am having to use WITE-OUT. Very truly yours, Tom Adams —CC— Teenage Wasteland The bill is coming due for our 2020 and 2021 efforts to “flatten the curve” of COVID-19. The price we are paying is a massive sike in violent crime by the teenagers whose lives we shut down.

The crime wave sweeping most of America is disproportionately a teenage crime spree. Children of high school age, including plenty from among the record number of dropouts, are leading the trend of assaults, homicides, and car-jackings in many major cities.

Carjackings in Washington quadrupled over the pandemic. Twothirds of the arrestees so far in 2022 have been children. Neighboring Prince George’s County, Maryland, has reported more than 100 carjacking arrests so far. The median and modal age of a carjacker was the same: 16. Chicago police officers in November arrested a “prolific carjacker.” He was 11.

And the motives are not necessarily what you might expect.

I honestly believe it’s a game,” carjacking victim Tariq Majeed told the New York Times. According to the report, “Stolen cars used to be stripped down, with the parts sold for cash, he said. Now people are carjacked, and the cars are often found afterward, crashed or just left on the street. “It’s a game.”

That makes sense. The first wave of lockdown crimes was notable because we saw a decrease in burglaries and robberies and an increase in assaults and homicides. That is, crimes of profit went down, while anti-social crimes went up. We were stealing purses less and punching strangers more.

The crime wave has broadened since 2020 to include more homicides and robberies, but part of the pattern remains. Young people (whom our health authorities spent 18 months desocializing by closing their schools, canceling their sports, and discouraging them from seeing friends) were acting out.

Teenagers turning to crime were “more likely to live in areas with lower internet access and school attendance, especially during the pandemic,” one University of Chicago study found.

Crime, particularly carjacking, is “a thrill, almost like a fad,” explained Tariq’s brother, Warees Majeed, who works with troubled youth in the district. “When you don’t have activities in their communities, everything’s shut down, young people are going to find a way to entertain themselves. It’s recreation—that’s what it is.”

So when you look at those plummeting math and reading scores, recall these weren’t the only harms we inflicted on children by shutting down their live. We also turned thousands of them into violent criminals. By Timothy P. Carney

—CC— Families Know the Education System is Failing Them Across the country, families are heading back to school and into an education system in which failure is the norm. Two decades of educational gains were wiped out over the past couple of years thanks to feckless leaders who kept schools shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic, but reading and mathematics scores were dropping well before the first case of COVID-19 appeared in America. Our education system simply is not working— and families know it.

A recent Gallup survey found that satisfaction with the U.S. education system is the lowest it has been since the turn of the century. More than 55% of the public said the education system isn’t working as it should, with 1 in 4 people indicating that they are “completely dissatisfied” with it.

The respondents’ main concern is the lack of academic rigor in schools. They’re right to be alarmed. The average eighth grader in California has the mathematical proficiency of a fifth grader, according to an evaluation of recent test scores. Young children, especially, are well behind where they should be, with the average 9-year-old testing lower in reading and mathematics than students their age did 30 years ago.

But the public is also concerned about the political agenda that has hijacked the education system.

continued Page 14 Woke subjects such as critical race theory and gender ideology are now commonplace in the classroom, and families are starting to experience the effects of these ideologies at home. Indeed, an alarming number of young girls have identified themselves as “transgender” in recent years, and the coinciding spike in anxiety and depression among that population is no coincidence.

Education reform is desperately needed, and no one knows that better than families who are stuck in schools with which they’re becoming increasingly dissatisfied. The best solution is to give these families options and the financial freedom to place their children in a better school that suits their needs. Perhaps, then, we’ll start to see changes within the system.