Independent thought and parenting

[devonin]

Well the issues sort of go hand in hand. If you're going to argue that kids younger than 16/18 ought to be considered old enough, intelligent enough, and mature enough to have a greater freedom to decide things for themselves, it isn't much of a stretch to suggest that voting ought to be one of the ways that freedom expresses itself.

I mean, all age limits on everything are arbitrary, and there are people under the limits who would be perfectly capable of engaging in whichever activity (voting, driving, etc) and plenty of people over those limits who still aren't properly capable of engaging in those activities. The arbitray age is just assigned at a point in which it is decided the largest majority with the smallest minority are assumed to be capable. And I'm not entirely sure from my knowledge of dealing with 15-17 year olds (And in addition to having been one, and done co-op in schools around them and so on, I've got plenty of exposure to the way the average 15-17 year old thinks and works from a soild decade of online gaming) that you could say the -majority- let alone the -clear- majority of 16 and 17 year olds are either especially interested in, or espeically interested in putting in the time and effort to investigate the issues of an election sufficiently to vote.

I mean, I would have argued for my right to vote at 16. I might even be able to claim that by 16 I was politically aware enough and mature/intelligent enough to make a resonable decision come election time. But I acknowledge that a) everyone always thinks they specifically are above averagely smart/mature for their age, especially when they want something and b) that these age limits weren't just made up for no reason and that there's probably a reasonable explanation for why it is 18 and not 16.

[Note: Being Canadian, when I talk about the education system, "university" means "college"; and "college" means something between "community college" and "trade school" Our system makes more sense to me, but that's because I live in it. University here is where you go to get 4-year bachelor degrees in all the various fields; College is where you go to get 2-4 year certifications and degrees in usually technical sorts of fields]

As for the changes to the education system, the best and easiest way to change it would be to make highschool and perhaps even elementary school function like university. Each subject stream has its own prerequisites inside the subject stream (IE. 2nd year math requies 1st year math, but doesn't require first year english/history etc) there are multiple ways to meet graduation requirements (Math majors don't need to take any history, though they do have to take -some- social sciences or arts courses) and you can register for anywhere from 1-6 courses per semester.

If highschool functioned like that, you could take only the subjects you preferred, working towards a certain goal, and if you wanted to only take 1 or 2 classes and also have a part time job, or you wanted to overload to 6 classes to get highschool done sooner, you should be able to. You get the benefit of being able to offer things like certificates in certain fields, which could be used to either get entry-level jobs more easily or become new entry requirements for college and trade-school level schooling. (IE. You could get into a college computer hardware program with your highschool certificate in technology [Maybe you had to take computers all through, some science/physics, a couple years of math, and whichever ___shop classes your school offered)

Obviously there would still be emphasis on getting the "full" highschool program, especially if you intended to go on to University, but giving alternate avenues to still get educated, especially for certain types of jobs where the background in say, history and geography is largely irellevant, that option exists also.