Agna Wrote:
Again, you're assuming that my view is a dogmatic one in direct opposition to the alternate view. It is not. My view is that the option to enter the so-called "adult world" should be available to individuals of all ages, not mandated.
Ok...I definitely did not get that from your earlier posts. The sentence I bolded is especially helpful to me in trying to understand your point of view, so I thank you for taking the time to spell it out so succinctly.
More than that, I have never denied that children and youth ought to be granted access to free schooling, but my contention with the modern school system is that it is compulsory, and that it is authoritarian. I would favor abolishing compulsory education for students, (while still mandating that it be provided to them), and implementing more democratic controls in schools that granted governance of them to the students themselves, in the same manner that A.S. Neill's Summerhill School functions.
While I love the idea of students who do not want to be in my classroom or any classroom for that matter to be able to leave - giving me just students that truly want to be there...I'm not sure I believe that the majority of young people, left entirely to their own devices would choose to learn about adding and subtracting positive and negative integers or the causes and effects of the Industrial Revolution.
Some would, yes...but many, many others would choose instead to get jobs and earn money in minimum wage jobs. Would our society be able to support such numbers? Would we be left with a large class of undereducated people...people who had not learned to read, write, or do mathematics...but who expect to be able to make a living in a society that no longer has large numbers of jobs for unskilled labor?
As to the Summerhill School method...I do not think it is a system that would work in large numbers. Why? Because in life we sometimes have to learn things which we do not like. I'm not sure that allowing whole generations to grow up ignorant of things they don't particularly like simply because we don't want to "force" them...is not something that would be successful in the current world we live in.
As for child labor laws, I would say that the general labor reforms that have been made in the past century have made them unnecessary, as unsafe working conditions and atrociously meager salaries and no benefits are no longer a regular staple of American employment, thanks to other components of the labor reform movement. So we ought to be more grateful to Bill Haywood than to Jane Addams.
I agree that I do not see chimney sweeps dying of black lung on street corners, little match girls freezing in alleys, or children being locked in manufacturing plants...
But I do wonder about what happens when a child, by my definition, decides to go it alone...then decides that he can't make a living...and comes home only to find out that his parents are quite content
not to provide for him and have decided not to...will the law require them to take him back in? For how long, until he is 18? Or will that child become dependent upon the state to take care of him?
My primary contention with the social extension of childhood is that it inhibits the capacities of children and young adults by infantilizing them rather than granting them maturing degrees of responsibility. I would recommend that you read this.
I agree with you whole-heartedly that we have extended childhood to ridiculous levels. 20-somethings and even 30-somethings are enjoying an extended adolescence that is, in many cases, simply obscene in how proud we have become of delaying maturity.
I agree with you completely that maturity is, in many cases, a social construct not a biological one.
I think where we still see things differently are my concerns with encouraging very young people to go out and "make their own way" in a world that is very different from the world that existed when such a practice was considered common place. Also, as it relates to this particular thread topic - that sexual viability is any indication of a person's ability to be mature enough to decide whether or not to "make their own way" in life.
Thanks very much for this post though...it cleared much of your opinion up for me...and I'm going to check out your last link right now.
