a youth rights activist sez;

[Lamumba]

Comment / By Brian Sorgatz / Jan. 20, 2:04 p.m.
As a youth rights activist, I find it typically outrageous in showing
bureaucratic disregard for a young adult�s constitutional rights. The
trend in the United States over the past century or so has been to
extend childhood well past puberty through measures such as compulsory
high school attendance. Far from representing true progress, the trend
has become a nightmare for many generations of American teens. Their
hormones are said to make them hopelessly irresponsible and in need of
micromanagement by their elders. But as with the war on drugs, policies
and problems must be examined carefully to distinguish causes from
effects. Do illegal drugs inevitably cause crime and sickness, or are
these largely the unintended consequences of drug prohibition in the
first place? Likewise, the notorious recklessness of the teenage years
should be considered mainly a consequence of policies that infantilize
them. When teenagers get drunk, steal, have unsafe sex, or bully one
another, let�s not forget that they are forced into schools that treat
them like products on an assembly line. They are pointlessly, rigidly
segregated by age, which alienates and humiliates those who learn slower
or faster than the statistical average. Curricula and schedules are
forcibly imposed on them by unionized government workers�for whom the
customer is always wrong. Why is the Soviet-style repression of the
typical American school rationalized as the cornerstone of democracy?
Maybe I�m cynical, but I have to think it�s because misery loves company.
--
Karma, What a concept!