What if you could improve your child’s academic performance with nothing more than a pill? That is no longer a hypothetical question.

Gerry Garibaldi was in the movie business for 25 years, then he decided to become a teacher. That was a brave enough move in itself, but he has now written a courageous essay arguing that the schools seriously shortchange boys in the classroom. It is an essay that demands close attention.

Dorothea Israel Wolfson sees the very end of children’s literature — and she sees it in “the new 2,471-page, lap-crushing Norton Anthology of Children’s Literature.” Her review of the anthology, published in the summer edition of the Claremont Review of Books, is priceless.

“What does it mean to be 13, back stage adults, watching on tiptoe, waiting to go onstage?” That question sent TIME Magazine and a team of its reporters into an extended investigation of the lives of America’s youngest teenagers–contemporary 13-year-olds. The magazine’s report will at times shock, inform, and interest America’s parents and all others concerned with the nation’s young.

Michael Kinsley, now a columnist for Slate, thinks he has caught evangelical Christians and others in the pro-life movement in a net of hypocrisy. As he sees it, when many pro-lifers argue against the use (and necessary destruction) of human embryos in medical research, they are really acting (or thinking) in a basically hypocritical fashion. In other words, we really do not believe what we say.

Adam Sternbergh raises a very good question in the pages of New York Magazine. Why do so many adults want to look like kids?

Something has gone wrong in a society that must come to grips with a growing problem of self-mutilation. Some now estimate that as many as 2 million Americans — most of them very young — are cutting themselves.

What’s the difference between Seattle and Salt Lake City? There are many differences, of course, but here’s one you might not know. In Seattle, there are nearly 45% more dogs than children. In Salt Lake City, there are nearly 19% more kids than dogs.