posted
The relationship between the Young Person and society is of great intrest to me, being a young person myself and thus having something of a vested interest.
As an adolescent, I feel increadibly marginalized from contemporary society. The general view in the United States, and elswhere to a greater or lesser extent, is that teenagers are an inevitable, but largely undesirable group of pupae, who may, eventualy, mature into human beings.
Under a system designed to aid in this hypothetical transistion from aprentice to journymen human beings, adolescents have little control over their own educations (most schools require four years of math, but good luck trying to find advanced courses in philosophy of ancient history) and no say at all in political affairs which affect their future.
The only realm in which youth are considered genuinly important is the consumer realm, where they are expected to buy an endless stream of tickets to bad films etc. Tragicly, many do. An unspoken and unholy alliance between the media and the young feeds a series of artless films and useless items. So institutionalized has this system become that cinemas showing art films often deny entrance to people under the age of seventeen without a parent, regardless of the content or rating of the film shown.
And yet, intelegent books and films aimed at a youth audience are often extreamly succesful: such opera Dead Poets' Society in cinema and Ender's Game in literature owe their sucesses primarily to appealing to an intelegent youth audience.
Youth political involvent is down, probably as a result of its brutal supresion by various governments in 1968.
How will a generation,raised to follow blindly, lead the world when the time comes? The potential is present, I see countless of the budding intelectual leading lights of the 21st century in school every day, but what shall become of us. At seventeen I fear that my generation has left it until too late to find a voice and a cause.
quote:As an adolescent, I feel increadibly marginalized from contemporary society. The general view in the United States, and elswhere to a greater or lesser extent, is that teenagers are an inevitable, but largely undesirable group of pupae, who may, eventualy, mature into human beings.
I don't think this is how society views teenagers. I think this is how teenagers think society views them.
I think society views teenagers as very talented and highly desireable people with a very tragic tendency towards very very bad judgement. I suspect that view is fairly accurate - but misleading. It is misleading because it suggests adults have a lot better judgement, which I've found to be untrue. Adults, I think, often have slightly better but still fairly poor judgement, although often their mistakes tend to be in different areas than their teenage counterparts. For instance, teenagers tend to fail to see the consequences of their actions, whereas adults tend to overworry about the consequences of their actions.
But the point is this: Teenagers are not viewed as undesireable and they aren't viewed as any less intelligent than other segments of society. But they are viewed as having poor judgement skills - and that is the reason they are kept out of many things. I think it has been this way for a long time, and I think eventually those growing up will learn to lead and hold the same adult biases that past generations have.
Posts: 8120 | Registered: Jul 2000
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posted
I don't know, I think teens are in general viewed as a bit vapid, and not stupid, but visionless and apathetic, and I think a great many teens fit that description. Popular culture is aimed towards dumbing kids down, I think unintentionally, but it's still there. It makes them culturally barren.
But I also blame a lot of this on politicians. They don't orient any of their speeches or legislation towards youth. I think if a serious effort was made to court youth voters in the same ways that politicians try so hard to court the elderly vote. There are more young voters, but by far more legislation is written for, and vastly more sums of money are spent on this nation's elderly than its youth. It isn't fair, and it is just one of the many reasons why the youth of the nation feel like Washington just doesn't care.
Lower the voting age. Get kids actively involved, explain to them why it is so important that they vote. So long as they feel like nothing will effect them, the less they will consider voting important. They never get involved, so they never bother to learn how things that are voted on today will drastically effect their lives in 20 years, or even 10 years, not to mention 50 years.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Lower the voting age. Get kids actively involved, explain to them why it is so important that they vote. So long as they feel like nothing will effect them, the less they will consider voting important. They never get involved, so they never bother to learn how things that are voted on today will drastically effect their lives in 20 years, or even 10 years, not to mention 50 years.
That's terrifying. I'm tired of the uninformed presently eligable voters voting stupidly, and you want to expand the pool?
I think there should be some kind of civics examination, and having eliminated the lowest common denominator by a trial of the mind, the politicians won't be able to pander to them any more. If there were a test, I would support age restrictions being lifted.
Posts: 1156 | Registered: Jan 2004
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posted
And who makes the test? Good luck getting one that both parties approve. Either way, what the hell is that? Training Wheels Democracy? They have to take a test until they turn 18 and THEN we let the dumb kids vote?
You missed one of my main points. I'm not talking about empowering the ignorant, I'm talking about making the ignorant into the knowledgable, the informed, the passionate. That will never happen until they are more involved in the process, and it is NOT fair to leave teenagers out of the process, when old people are making decisions that might not have an impact until after they are dead.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
I guess I know more stupid people than you do. Please excuse my cynicism, you're talking to someone who's sophomore english teacher couldn't name the three branches of government.
You have much more faith in people than I do. Many many people have no intention of becoming informed, and while I respect ignorance, I don't believe they should have any control, whatsoever, over my life.
Way to be idealistic!
Posts: 1156 | Registered: Jan 2004
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posted
It's very fair to leave kids out of the process, and for the same reason it's fair to have a driving age and a drinking age. Teenagers, the majority of them anyway, are not responsible enough to be left in charge of their own well being. It's not that they're stupid; just inexperienced.
Kids are hesitant to swallow the 'inexperienced' label, because they think it's the societal equivalent of 'I'll tell you when you're older/you wouldn't understand'. But the fact is that experience is an important factor in your decision making process, and there's simply no effective shortcut to it.
Yes, the age is largely arbitrary, and yes, it's unfair to the minority who are smart and self aware enough to participate in things like that. That's simply the cost of doing business, that the equitable treatment of the few is sacrificed for the well being of the many.
By the way, teenagers can vote. 18 and 19 year olds. And those who are interested should have a voice. Just not a vote.
Posts: 5462 | Registered: Apr 2005
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quote:Originally posted by airmanfour: Please excuse my cynicism, you're talking to someone who's sophomore english teacher couldn't name the three branches of government.
But s/he probably knew the difference between an interrogative/possessive pronoun and a contraction. Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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posted
I was hoping I was being optimistically realistic ::sheepish grin::.
The reason so many people are ignorant is because they just don't care. The trains keep moving, the lights keep turning on, and that's all that matters. Since so much of legislation these days is social issues, or complex other issues, they don't take the time to learn it.
In the case of kids, they are ignorant because they believe they have no role to play until they are older, so all but a select few bother to even get informed enough to make intelligent choices. When you start to see Congressmen and women and Senators taking up major youth issues, like college affordability, and what not, then more will get involved, and you might even see them branching out into the environment and budget issues.
I think we need to get them involved in government classes and other social studies issues. And for that matter, P A R E N T S need to play a role in getting their children into the political process. Teens and young adults have opinions on a lot of things, and will have better opinions as they learn more, and learn their place in the world better. But parents need to stop insulating them by giving into their culturally oriented desires. That isn't the only problem, but it is one of them.
I think it can be done, but not without a lot of people pitching in.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:In the case of kids, they are ignorant because they believe they have no role to play until they are older
See, I'm not sure I agree with this. Most kids (and when I say 'kids' I'm talking about high school age kids) are not concerned with worldly things. As a rule, kids are very self-centered. It's not a dig, but most kids grow up thinking the world exists for them. Food is on the table and clothes are on your back. Parents take you everywhere you need to go.
The vast majority, I'd guess, have no idea what turns the lights on, nor do they care so long as they stay on. Politics are boring -- this is the reason I think kids aren't interested in them.
Posts: 5462 | Registered: Apr 2005
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quote:Originally posted by El JT de Spang: It's very fair to leave kids out of the process, and for the same reason it's fair to have a driving age and a drinking age. Teenagers, the majority of them anyway, are not responsible enough to be left in charge of their own well being. It's not that they're stupid; just inexperienced.
Kids are hesitant to swallow the 'inexperienced' label, because they think it's the societal equivalent of 'I'll tell you when you're older/you wouldn't understand'. But the fact is that experience is an important factor in your decision making process, and there's simply no effective shortcut to it.
Yes, the age is largely arbitrary, and yes, it's unfair to the minority who are smart and self aware enough to participate in things like that. That's simply the cost of doing business, that the equitable treatment of the few is sacrificed for the well being of the many.
By the way, teenagers can vote. 18 and 19 year olds. And those who are interested should have a voice. Just not a vote.
I don't believe this. 16 year olds and higher, and maybe 14 year olds and higher, though that's a neutral zone for me, are perfectly capable of understanding their decisions and making rational choices. They are at least as capable as their parents.
The problem isn't that 16 year olds are inherently incapable, it's that they aren't given the tools the need to understand and react by the time they are that old, unless they go looking for them themselves. Idealistic youth does NOT automatically equal inexperience. I know you didn't say it does, but it's a stereotypical assertion to make. I think it's a sad one too, because it automatically assumes that once people learn about the real world, they'll give up any hope of trying to fix it.
Twelve year olds used to marry and go to war, and there were many a 14 year olds who fought in the Revolutionary war and Civil War. They knew what they were doing, and even if they didn't at the outset, they figured it out pretty fast. It all depends on what they are taught, on what they learn up to that point, and comparitively, children are shielded and protected from the "grown up world" in this society.
If you want to use experience as a label, then all age is entirely arbitrary as a decider of who can vote. I've known insular, stupid 30 year olds, and smart 16 year olds. There are exceptions to every rule. Quite frankly, the apathetic ignorant 16 year olds out there really aren't a threat. If they don't care that much, you really think they will make the effort to go vote for something they know nothing about?
This society needs to stop sheltering their youth, stop passing off the duties of parenting and raising them politically to schools (among other things), and start actively involving them in the process, so by the time they are 16, they'll have all the tools and knowledge they need, not that the time between 16 and 18 makes them magically able to become better voters.
It's something that needs to be phased in over time, but it is certainly realistic to believe that it is possible. They aren't incapable by nature.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:In the case of kids, they are ignorant because they believe they have no role to play until they are older
See, I'm not sure I agree with this. Most kids (and when I say 'kids' I'm talking about high school age kids) are not concerned with worldly things. As a rule, kids are very self-centered. It's not a dig, but most kids grow up thinking the world exists for them. Food is on the table and clothes are on your back. Parents take you everywhere you need to go.
The vast majority, I'd guess, have no idea what turns the lights on, nor do they care so long as they stay on. Politics are boring -- this is the reason I think kids aren't interested in them.
Alright, maybe we're getting tripped up on terminology. I'm not advocating eight year olds in the voting booth, nor do I think you can, or should, teach an eight year old about politics. But I see no reason why the voting age couldn't reasonably be lowered by 2-4 years, and have perfectly capable voters enter the voting pool.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:16 year olds and higher, and maybe 14 year olds and higher, though that's a neutral zone for me, are perfectly capable of understanding their decisions and making rational choices. They are at least as capable as their parents.
In most cases, this is flat out not true. Sure, there are some parents not as capable of making rational choices as some kids. But to say "at least" implies that, if there is a difference, it's in the kids being more capable. And that's just not true.
quote:then all age is entirely arbitrary as a decider of who can vote.
No, it's not entirely arbitrary. It's a proxy because the real things we care about can't be fairly tested. Sure, it's both over- and under- inclusive, but all proxies are. Nevertheless, we use them because there's nothing better.
You, yourself, are willing to use age as a proxy ("I'm not advocating eight year olds in the voting booth, nor do I think you can, or should, teach an eight year old about politics.") You just disagree with how it's used as a proxy - a different contention altogether from age being entirely arbitrary.
quote:This society needs to stop sheltering their youth
I don't think most teenagers would appreciate it if they were no longer sheltered. I'm not sure if you think the "the tools and knowledge they need" to vote are a subset of the general tools and knowledge of life. They're not. Unless you want to make kids really face the travails of life from which many are sheltered now - and I mean face them, not just see them up close but run the risks associated with them - then you aren't giving them the tools they need.
Do most 18 year olds have those tools? Probably not. But we feel that to be the tipping point where many will either start working full time or leave for college will add experience.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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Sorry. Appears we understand each other loud and clear, and just disagree. The kids at my school were almost all entirely capable of voting intelligently by their junior year. But personal anecdotes never hold up when it comes to this type of issue.
Your view of mid-ranged teenagers doesn't reflect what I've personally witnessed or experienced. I wonder what minority teenagers would think of such a choice.
Dag -
That's a good point about the arbitrary nature of voting, I shot myself in the foot a bit there. And also, I was overstating my case when I said that mid-aged teens are as capable as their parents. I guess what I meant was more along the lines of, they aren't inherently not as capable as their parents because of their age. You don't always need a ton of life experience to make intelligent decisions on voting. Hell, the people in Congress are making incredibly stupid decisions right now, and I'd bet they are on average at least 10 years older than me.
And sure, it could easily look like that means I just don't have the experience to rationally judge their decisions, but that's a cop out if you ask me, and as references earlier, highly smacks of the "We're older and know what's good for you" argument. I've read enough history to know that they DON'T always know what's best for me.
I guess I question the foundation of your argument which seems to say that only people who've had to fend for themselves know how to vote properly. Does that mean that trust fund kids shouldn't be able to vote when they grow up? Does it mean that kids who are hard pressed from an early age SHOULD?
If I had to choose between a very, very carefully created 14-18 year old oversight voting program, and nothing, I'd choose the oversighted program, but I wouldn't like it at all.
posted
The real problem is, that as Pelegius and many other intelligent youth demonstrate, many decisions should not be determined by age. Alas, this is the easiest way to do things. There are many a grown-up adult that understand politics only as much as TV ads and pop-culture teach them. And there are many teenagers that have taken courses in American government, Comparative government, International Affairs, or World History. Yet the uneducated elders take part in the political system, while informed minors have to sit by and watch as their voice gets lost in a vast sea of unattainable political icons whom they themselves did not choose to be there.
The problem as presented though, is that this is all too often not the case, because minors DO get brainwashed. But the thing that I think most people miss (probably because they make up the majority of EVERYTHING), is that the percentage of adults, and the percentage of teenagers that don't know what they are doing is almost the same. Although I can in no way back this up with numbers (and frankly, I don't see how you could), it seems to make sense logically. Can you tell if the portion of society that has been ruling the world is getting smarter at all? I think you can say they aren't, but I also think you can say they aren't getting too much stupider either.
Posts: 879 | Registered: Apr 2005
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Pelegius, I think you presented a good, cohesive argument here. The only place you lost me was here:
quote:And yet, intelegent books and films aimed at a youth audience are often extreamly succesful: such opera Dead Poets' Society in cinema and Ender's Game in literature owe their sucesses primarily to appealing to an intelegent youth audience.
I agree with you, but the spelling errors caused my brain to misfire. I'm not going to criticize you for these errors, which I feel would marginalize your post. Instead, I'll toss a suggestion your way. Type out a post like this in MS Word or Works, or any other word processing program with a spell check function, then paste it into the message box when you're done. Not only will you improve your spelling skills, you will also appear more intelligent. Posts: 1813 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
I think the standard for voting should be that you've lived on your own, paying your own way, for at least one year, and that you have an IQ of 100 or better. Experience and intelligence are more important than age.
If you're 26 and have never had a job or lived away from home, you don't have much of a stake in the society, so you shouldn't vote.
I think it's entirely reasonable that voters be average or higher intelligence in the general sense, so that they are able to reason out issues and understand the platforms presented in an election.
I think any type of civics or history test is a bad idea, because it goes back to Jim Crow, and will too easily be set up by the party in power of the particular area in such a way to keep undesirable voters away from the polls.
Posts: 3950 | Registered: Mar 2006
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Yeah...because a big list of rules is what John Adams, and Martin Luther King had in mind for vorting and democracy when they were trying to effect change in our society...
You know, most inner cities are full of degenerates that contribute nothing to our society, I don't think any of them should vote. And old people are just biding time until they kick it, hanging out in their old folks homes, do they really even play a part in society anymore? No one over 65 can vote anymore, unless they are living on their own, with a job, and without social security.
Placing restrictions on our voting is what disenfranchised Catholics, and blacks, and women, and immigrants and others. We should be looking at ways to enfranchise those that still want to vote, not to disenfranchise those that already have the right.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:Yeah...because a big list of rules is what John Adams, and Martin Luther King had in mind for vorting and democracy when they were trying to effect change in our society...
Would it surprise you to know that John Adams and the Founding Fathers did, in fact, have a big list of rules for suffrage? A list which, I might add, makes the complaints here look pretty tame.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote:Originally posted by MightyCow: I think the standard for voting should be that you've lived on your own, paying your own way, for at least one year, and that you have an IQ of 100 or better. Experience and intelligence are more important than age.
If you're 26 and have never had a job or lived away from home, you don't have much of a stake in the society, so you shouldn't vote.
MC, I am sorry to say that your post has caused me to lose a bit of respect for you. You suggest disenfranchising over half of the electorate. The kindest characterization of your proposal would be "elitist". I find it disgusting. I usually don't come to Hatrack to be contentious, but I really think that you ought to reconsider your stance.
I work with lots of hard-working, responsible, moral people, who (I'm guessing) would score below 100 on an IQ test. They are good citizens and to disenfranchise them would be a crime.
My husband (as well as many of my friends and clients) is disabled, and unable to live independently. Would you deny his vote as well?
All citizens have a stake in society. What happens when you disenfranchise an especially vulnerable subset is that that group becomes even more vulnerable to exploitation. An exception to this is minors, since they have parents who are invested in protecting their interests.
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posted
I think that the problem with using age as a proxy is the question, what is it a proxy for? It's not "life experience," it's not supporting oneself, or owning a house or having a job, it's not getting married or having kids, it's not intelligence or critical thinking or understanding of current events, it's not knowledge of how the world works or how the government runs or anything at all about U.S. history. I've talked to a lot of people about lowering the voting age and there is little agreement on what is an appropriate criterion that justifies having a voting age at all. I find that frightening. Think of some good criteria, that you think most adults meet and most people under the age of eighteen don't. Any given criterion is either testable or it isn't; if it's testable, then test across all age lines without prejudice and without proxy. And if it's undefined and undefinable except in the eyes of the current set of voters...should it even be defended by proxy? Take responsibility, for example. A lot of people agree that teenagers are irresponsible while adults, in general, are. So what's responsible? Is it having a job, having a house, living on one's own? People are often quick to list these as reasons why teenagers aren't responsible, but are much more reluctant to say that dependent adults shouldn't be allowed to vote, or that independent under-eighteen-ers should. Why are proxy restrictions unacceptable for women, or people of African descent? Women couldn't vote because they were weak, dependent, too faint of heart to bear the responsibilities of voting. The majority didn't support themselves financially. They didn't have any interest in voting; those who did were minorities. And anyway, their husbands could vote in their interests. But very few people today agree that these reasons are sufficient to exclude half the human race--but they're acceptable to exclude everybody for eighteen years (in the United States, anyway). Who believes that if a man had to choose between voting for something that would benefit him, and voting for something that would benefit his wife, he would vote in his wife's benefit every single time? There's a reason why women wanted suffrage, and it involved men failing to vote for women's rights in astoundingly large numbers, married or not. If the criteria the voting age stands in proxy for aren't strong enough or good enough or even agreed upon enough to count across age lines, I don't think they should be used to keep taxpaying law-abiding legal citizens from exercising their right to have some kind of say in what the government does to them. If young people as a whole have opinions similar to those of their elders, then where's the harm in allowing them to vote? And if as a whole their opinions are different from their elders, is it just to deny them a voice? If kids are too stupid or ill-informed that they'll vote "poorly," all the bad votes should cancel each other out. But if they aren't--and I suspect that the average teenager, if such a person exists, would not waste time at a voting booth without at least a modicum of interest in political goings-on--then how can it be democratic to deny them the vote?
Posts: 283 | Registered: Jul 2006
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posted
Here's a big problem with the idea of lowering the voting age.
It's a well-known psychological fact that people tend to reinforce and rationalize a decision after they've made it. This means that the way you cast your first vote will likely determine how you vote from then on. You'll rationalize the choice you made that first time, because you won't want to feel like a fool.
So it's extremely important that you be well-informed the first time you vote.
Posts: 4600 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
I have no intentions of being a tyrant, MightyCow. Thus I reject your idea because it's hateful to me.
An IQ is not solely a measure of what a person knows. I find it ironic that someone wishing to use that as a standard by which suffrage is granted doesn't know that. Furthermore, the idea that someone who has not 'lived away from home' at the age of 26 has less of a stake in society is frankly stupid. It's also deeply stupid because you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a foolish jackass who successfully lives on his own.
People who are in favor of denying things like voting rights to 'stupid people'-and let's be honest, that's what you're really saying-are rarely as smart as they think they are. If ever.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
Personally, I think the voting age is fine, although I could see lowering it to 16 or so. The reason we have to have an age limit though, is to give young people a chance (and that's the important word there) to develop their reasoning skills and to learn enough to be able to make an informed decision. Why is chance the important word there? Well, learning is not something that can be given to you. Schools, libraries, parents and teachers can show you the way; can give you the tools to learn but ultimately the burden falls on you whether or not to use them. Since we can't very well deny voting rights to the "unintelligent" or the "dependent" we have to have a line that says those on this side can vote and those on that side have to wait. Eighteen years is plenty of time to grow and become informed, not that one has to stop growing after. It's up to you though, whether or not to accept those tools and become an intelligent, informed individual. As a further note, I've noticed that those people who don't tend to stay informed, who don't care, are the ones who don't tend to vote anyway.
Posts: 15 | Registered: Jun 2006
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Destineer-- First, I disagree that people will continue voting the same way as the first time they cast their votes. The issues change, the parties change, the candidates change, and, most importantly, the voter changes. The things that matter in someone's life will change--someone who starts off voting for people with a concern for education funding when attending college may find that a steady economy is more important when she goes into a career and starts a family, and that retirement options become more important later on. On a higher level, the way people think about issues may change later on, for better or for worse. Second, even if your assertion is true--and I certainly don't disagree with the importance of being well-informed when voting, for the first time or ever--there are no guarantees that someone voting for the first time at eighteen or older is going to be more well-informed than someone voting for the first time at an age less than eighteen. In fact, I'll go out on a limb and guess that people under the age of eighteen probably in general have more time to bring to bear on discussing politics, keeping abreast of current events, and so on...the year I spent in high school (granted, an atypical high school), my free time was spent discussing religion, philosophy, books, television, and politics with my friends. Some of the Circle (as we dubbed ourselves) were more interested in manga or video games or drugs than politics, religion, and philosophy, but I think it's a safe bet that they wouldn't have bothered voting if they had the opportunity, whereas Liz, Mike, Fondia, et cetera most certainly would have, and would have made sure that they were as informed as humanly possible before they did. Not that anecdotal evidence means anything, but with variations on "kids are stupid; I should know, I was one" should at least be countered with "young people aren't stupid; I should know, I am one."
Posts: 283 | Registered: Jul 2006
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quote:I think that the problem with using age as a proxy is the question, what is it a proxy for? It's not "life experience," it's not supporting oneself, or owning a house or having a job, it's not getting married or having kids, it's not intelligence or critical thinking or understanding of current events, it's not knowledge of how the world works or how the government runs or anything at all about U.S. history.
It's a proxy for the aggregate effect of all those things. Really, it's a simple reflection of a single fact: human beings tend to learn more and become more responsible as they age. This happens at an accelerated rate the earlier one is in life. There's a much bigger difference between the average person on their 16th and 17th birthday than on their 29th and 30th birthday.
quote:Any given criterion is either testable or it isn't; if it's testable, then test across all age lines without prejudice and without proxy.
That's not necessarily true, especially when you're talking the aggregate effect of many factors.
quote:If the criteria the voting age stands in proxy for aren't strong enough or good enough or even agreed upon enough to count across age lines, I don't think they should be used to keep taxpaying law-abiding legal citizens from exercising their right to have some kind of say in what the government does to them.
The big difference between age and other factors: age is not a fixed criteria.
quote:If young people as a whole have opinions similar to those of their elders, then where's the harm in allowing them to vote? And if as a whole their opinions are different from their elders, is it just to deny them a voice?
Should a 4-year old vote? If not, then you support an age limit. And if you do support an age limit, then you have to justify it as much as anyone else.
Once again, it's clear that people don't oppose an age limit per se. They oppose this age limit. Why? Because they think people of age X are sufficiently <insert whatever> to handle voting, while people half that age aren't.
So you've left the realm of lofty principles and entered the realm of practical questions about adolescent behavior and responsibility. And I haven't seen anything compelling in your argument to demonstrate that the terrible injustice of actually wanting most people to finish high school before voting.
quote:then how can it be democratic to deny them the vote?
Because we know the following:
1.) There's some age where essentially no one is ready to vote responsibly. Doesn't matter what that age is, it exists.
2.) Therefore, an age limit of some kind is necessary.
3.) This being a democracy, that age limit is ultimately set by the people (the last time, by 3/4 of the popularly elected state legislatures.
4.) People at <age_limit - 1> will almost always think it should be lowered, at least to include them.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Gwen: In fact, I'll go out on a limb and guess that people under the age of eighteen probably in general have more time to bring to bear on discussing politics, keeping abreast of current events, and so on...the year I spent in high school (granted, an atypical high school), my free time was spent discussing religion, philosophy, books, television, and politics with my friends.
I understand, and I was very political myself as a high-schooler. In fact, I was probably more convicted about politics back then (which I would count as evidence for the fact that I'm better informed right now!). But two things:
- When (/if) people go to college, they tend to pick up a much more diverse set of experiences than they had in high school. And they enter into a course of study that is better-equipped to teach them about history and ethics. So I think it's extremely common for well-educated people to become much better authorities on politics around age 18.
- High-schoolers who are very political also tend to be self-righteous. This doesn't mean teens aren't critical thinkers. It does mean that it's much rarer for them to think critically about their own views as well as their opponents'. It's very rare, even for adults, that someone realizes there's as much dishonesty and distortion being wrought (on average) by politicians who agree with him as by politicians who disagree. But the only people I've ever met who had this ability were college students or older.
But as you said, anecdotal evidence...
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It was never my intention to re-open discusion on voting age, which is but one of my many concerns about todays youth.
I fear that we, as nations, have made it so that we, as a generation, will not know how to vote. Not for whom to vote but even how to decide such an issue. Naturaly, most voters, fed by poorly written papers, are also ill-informed.
But we have here an issue which transcends politics: our society is stagnating. The last painter to be a household name, Lucian Freud, is now 84. No other field is quite so deprived currently, although music comes close, but I fear that the 21st century, which has already seen so much war, will have no Guernica, no Mahler, no Wittgenstein: no one at all to assist us in hour of need.
quote:I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.
quote:It's a proxy for the aggregate effect of all those things.
All right, but the point still holds: is it possible to test an individual person for having each of those criteria? If the answer is yes, is it desirable to enforce a test for those criteria across age lines? If the answer is no, then how is it justifiable to say that enough people under the age of eighteen don't meet them and enough people over the age of eighteen do that the age proxy makes sense? (In other words, say you think intelligence makes the voter. If you think that intelligence is testable-without-prejudice, why not test intelligence of potential voters, regardless of age? And if you think that intelligence is not testable-without-prejudice, how can you say that people under eighteen are, as a group, too unintelligent to vote--at that point it's not an empirical fact at all but an opinion.)
quote:Really, it's a simple reflection of a single fact: human beings tend to learn more and become more responsible as they age. This happens at an accelerated rate the earlier one is in life. There's a much bigger difference between the average person on their 16th and 17th birthday than on their 29th and 30th birthday.
It is true that people change and grow as they age, but even assuming that that change is generally for the better overall, is that enough justification to disenfranchise a good chunk of United States citizens, to simply judge them incompetent to vote for eighteen years without a chance of defense?
quote:That's not necessarily true, especially when you're talking the aggregate effect of many factors.
But--correct me if I'm wrong--it is true of each factor.
quote:The big difference between age and other factors: age is not a fixed criteria.
Growing out of disenfranchisement does not change the fact that one has been disenfranchised for eighteen years. And during those eighteen years, people under the age of eighteen have at least as much of a stake in what the government decides as people past their eighteenth birthday--"at least" because for most people, they spend much of their early life in school, and yet have no say in how the schools are run or even how (if) they are funded; I have never seen a curfew law in the United States affect an enfranchised group except under martial law. Same goes for corporal punishment, in fact, now that I think of it. Would Kerry have dared suggest required "volunteer work" of young people if they had more of a voice in the vote?
quote:Should a 4-year old vote? If not, then you support an age limit. And if you do support an age limit, then you have to justify it as much as anyone else.
Actually, I believe that any citizen of the United States who has not been adjudged incompetent to vote should be allowed to, number of Earth-orbits past first breath notwithstanding...but I do recognize that I am further in the minority with this position than I would have been with the one you thought I had. I doubt most four-year-olds would exercise that right, however; just as most adults do not. Apathy is its own filter.
quote:So you've left the realm of lofty principles and entered the realm of practical questions about adolescent behavior and responsibility. And I haven't seen anything compelling in your argument to demonstrate that the terrible injustice of actually wanting most people to finish high school before voting.
There is no high school requirement for voting. In fact, the Supreme Court ruled that a sixth grade education is all that is needed (in terms of education, of course) for voting. Even literacy tests are unconstitutional. And if there were such a requirement, it would be unjust because it would exclude a group of citizens from voting without any kind of due process of law whatsoever. Plus it would be really difficult to enforce--what do you with the GED-holder, the homeschooler, the girl who rose out of high school to attend college at fifteen?
quote:Because we know the following:
1.) There's some age where essentially no one is ready to vote responsibly. Doesn't matter what that age is, it exists.
I agree.
quote:2.) Therefore, an age limit of some kind is necessary.
I disagree. People incompetent to vote seldom express interest in voting, let alone go to the voting booth. Even assuming that they make it to the voting booth, random votes--the kind thrown by infants--tend to cancel themselves out in a large voting population.
quote:3.) This being a democracy, that age limit is ultimately set by the people (the last time, by 3/4 of the popularly elected state legislatures).
Well, the voting people, in any case.
quote:4.) People at <age_limit - 1> will almost always think it should be lowered, at least to include them.
Unless they are truly, as a group, disinterested in voting--which would probably mean that the age limit (if there was one, in this hypothetical situation) was set sufficiently low.
At the risk of duplicating certain arguments, the post at http://lefarkins.blogspot.com/2006/03/children-and-vote.html makes a much more eloquent, if more static, argument than I can. And someone added to that an argument which also addresses Destineer's voting-habits point better than I did:
quote:As it happens right now, the youngest cohort of legal voters tend to be people with an awful lot of instability in their lives -- going off to college or first jobs, etc. That's a situation that's not conducive to voting and, accordingly, turnout is low for the youngest voters. But forming the habit of non-voting tends to breed further non-voting in the future. Sub-18 people tend to have a lot more stability in their lives than do 18-25 year-olds and it would therefore probably be easier to inculcate habits of democratic participation if you dropped the age limit.
quote:is that enough justification to disenfranchise a good chunk of United States citizens
I'm not going to concede your language here. 18 year olds are not disenfranchised. The concept of minority (as in age) is a necessary one with a long tradition of analysis behind it.
quote:But--correct me if I'm wrong--it is true of each factor.
No, it's not.
quote:And during those eighteen years, people under the age of eighteen have at least as much of a stake in what the government decides as people past their eighteenth birthday--"at least" because for most people, they spend much of their early life in school, and yet have no say in how the schools are run or even how (if) they are funded
And they have parents who are constitutionally capable of controlling almost every aspect of their lives.
quote:There is no high school requirement for voting. In fact, the Supreme Court ruled that a sixth grade education is all that is needed (in terms of education, of course) for voting. Even literacy tests are unconstitutional. And if there were such a requirement, it would be unjust because it would exclude a group of citizens from voting without any kind of due process of law whatsoever. Plus it would be really difficult to enforce--what do you with the GED-holder, the homeschooler, the girl who rose out of high school to attend college at fifteen?
I'm not sure what this is in reference to. I'm not advocating requiring a high school education to vote. I'm pointing out that the age 18 has a lot of significance. It's not a coincidence that this the age most people graduate from high school. It's the age where we decide to let a person decide how to spend their days - something we don't let people under 18 generally do. Even those who graduate early are bound by the decisions of their parents in many ways.
quote:People incompetent to vote seldom express interest in voting, let alone go to the voting booth
You have zero basis for saying that.
quote:Well, the voting people, in any case.
Yep. You asked how it could be democratic. I told you.
quote:Unless they are truly, as a group, disinterested in voting--which would probably mean that the age limit (if there was one, in this hypothetical situation) was set sufficiently low.
Again, you have zero basis for contending that desire to vote is sufficient to make someone capable of truly deciding whom to vote for. Your whole argument is founded on this totally unsupported premise.
quote:Even assuming that they make it to the voting booth, random votes--the kind thrown by infants--tend to cancel themselves out in a large voting population.
That would greatly depend on the type of ballot and the mechanism for voting. You can't take it for granted.
Further, I don't want more random noise added to our elections.
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I didn't expect to get such angry responses to something I just threw out there. Interesting.
First of all, I know quite well that IQ doesn't measure what you know. I honestly don't care what people know, I am more concerned, for the case of this hypothetical voting restriction, with people's ability to understand the importance of their vote, the platforms of the candidates, and the ramifications of their positions.
Consider that we currently restrict voting by age. Age is certainly arbitrary, and disallows a large percent of the population from voting. It's highly discriminatory. Why should a 40 year old idiot be given the right to help decide how we live, while a well informed, hard-working, 17 year old gets no say?
The age restriction is simply an artificial way to require a certain level of maturity, experience, and intelligence of voters. A 10 year old doesn't understand the workings of government, or the importance of regulated workplace safety, or how our foreign policy effects our place in the world, so she doesn't get to vote. Why should an adult with the same lack of understanding be allowed to make choices for the rest of us?
Honestly, I'm surprised that more people aren't in favor of this. Most people think they're smarter than average, certainly they seem to think that they're smarter than whoever they're arguing against.
Consider also, that in our current state of affairs, the rich and powerful have much more control over the country than the average person. If being wealthy is empowering, shouldn't being smart be empowering also? Heck, I didn't even suggest that you had to be particularly smart, just that you couldn't be dumb.
Anyone who wants a moron making important decisions for them, please raise your hand. Anyone?
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quote:I'm not going to concede your language here. 18 year olds are not disenfranchised. The concept of minority (as in age) is a necessary one with a long tradition of analysis behind it.
Very well then, is it a sufficient reason to keep an entire group of American citizens from legally voting?
quote:
quote:But--correct me if I'm wrong--it is true of each factor.
No, it's not.
Er, I sorta meant "correct me if I'm wrong, with appropriate reasons why I'm wrong."
quote:And they have parents who are constitutionally capable of controlling almost every aspect of their lives.
So? I really don't see how this is relevant, unless you're broadening the discussion to youth rights in general as it was in the OP.
quote:I'm not sure what this is in reference to. I'm not advocating requiring a high school education to vote. I'm pointing out that the age 18 has a lot of significance. It's not a coincidence that this the age most people graduate from high school. It's the age where we decide to let a person decide how to spend their days - something we don't let people under 18 generally do. Even those who graduate early are bound by the decisions of their parents in many ways.
I was referring to the quoted text preceding my statement, which stated that I had not given a reason why it is such an injustice that people are required to graduate high school before voting. Hence, my explanation that the voting age has no such requirement, and a reason why such a requirement would in fact be unjust if we did use it to keep certain groups of people from voting.
quote:...you have zero basis for contending that desire to vote is sufficient to make someone capable of truly deciding whom to vote for. Your whole argument is founded on this totally unsupported premise.
First, my argument is founded on the premise that the harms caused by not permitting youth to vote are more significant than harms possibly caused by permitting youth to vote, namely in the fields of the constitutional definition of citizenship, the basic principles of our republic, and the amount of control youth do not have over their lives that other groups have. This premise of incompetent people not voting is based on what I consider incompetency to vote to be--a lack of understanding of the concept of voting. In other words, if someone doesn't know the difference between a vote and a watermelon, that person is incompetent to vote. But I can see how that leads to misunderstanding, since we currently have no consensus as to what actually constitutes incompetence to vote. So, with apologies, I withdraw that probably premature counterargument.
quote:
quote:Even assuming that they make it to the voting booth, random votes--the kind thrown by infants--tend to cancel themselves out in a large voting population.
That would greatly depend on the type of ballot and the mechanism for voting. You can't take it for granted.
Wouldn't random votes cancel themselves out by definition, regardless of the voting mechanism? Unless your argument is with the idea that infants and the like necessarily throw random votes, in which case I suppose I'll modify that to "With a fairly designed voting mechanism, anyone with truly no understanding of what a vote is would vote randomly, which votes would cancel themselves out."
Edit to avoid double posting: And I disagree that the fact that a given person will eventually be allowed to vote is enough to justify denying it for eighteen years. The fact is, people are different at different times in their lives--better able to vote, later on, according to the rationale for the voting age--and different things matter at different ages. To tell a thirteen-year-old that she'll be able to vote in five years, and then affect policy five years in the future--but not anything right then--and be able to vote for policies regarding, say, compulsory education only once they don't affect her anymore...it just doesn't make sense to me. And who's to say that she'll remember those she left behind to face what she went through when she can vote, enough so that she'll consider what they'd want and what she once wanted before she'll consider what she wants at the time of voting? Should people under the age of eighteen rely on the altruism of those over to represent them? It's disingenuous to say "just wait, you'll get your citizen's rights/priveleges/immunities soon enough." By analogy, just because it'll be over someday doesn't make an unjust prison sentence any more just, or palatable. -Gwen.
quote:Very well then, is it a sufficient reason to keep an entire group of American citizens from legally voting?
Yes. For the same reason we don't let an entire group of Americans serve on a jury, enter into legally enforceable contracts, and a host of other activities. Age matters, and it matters more the younger a person is.
quote:Er, I sorta meant "correct me if I'm wrong, with appropriate reasons why I'm wrong."
I'll wait to do that until you provide some reasons why they are accurately and fairly testable.
quote:So? I really don't see how this is relevant, unless you're broadening the discussion to youth rights in general as it was in the OP.
Having someone control your life - including being responsible for things you don't have to be - is part of not being ready to vote.
quote:I was referring to the quoted text preceding my statement, which stated that I had not given a reason why it is such an injustice that people are required to graduate high school before voting.
I didn't say that people are required to graduate high school. Read it again. I mentioned a milestone event that often coincides with being 18.
Again, I didn't say there was such a requirement.
quote:Wouldn't random votes cancel themselves out by definition, regardless of the voting mechanism?
Not necessarily. Imagine the ballot alternates in color like some tables in newspaper do. Then imagine that toddlers are more attracted to blue backgrounds than white. The votes entered for a reason other than selecting a candidate would not be distributed evenly. "Random" does not mean even distribution.
There are many other possible mechanisms. For example, imagine a touchscreen - the lower button might attract more toddler votes.
quote:"With a fairly designed voting mechanism, anyone with truly no understanding of what a vote is would vote randomly, which votes would cancel themselves out."
First, the mechanism which minimizes randomness caused by not understanding might not be the most suitable for making a ballot not confusing to voters. For example, it's possible the butterfly ballots equalize the distribution of random votes. I definitely don't want to compromise understandibility to allow infants to vote.
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quote:I'll wait to do that until you provide some reasons why they are accurately and fairly testable.
I never said that they were accurately and fairly testable. In fact the point that some criteria many people feel adequate for excluding under-eighteen-year-olds en masse are inadequate as far as testability for individuals was about half of my point. The statement that you corrected me on was that each criterion was either testable-without-prejudice (in which case why rely on a proxy that is fallible at best) or was not testable-without-prejudice (in which case it is illogical to assert that most people under the age of eighteen do not fit that criterion). The example I gave was intelligence. If someone said that intelligence should be the requirement for voting, and minors should not be allowed to vote because they are not as intelligent as adults, I would ask them to a) prove it empirically, by creating a test without prejudice, administering it to a good sample size of both populations, and comparing results; if this succeeded to b) administer this test to potential voters so that all non-intelligent voters, regardless of age, could not vote while their intelligent counterparts could. If they could not create a test for intelligence free of prejudice, I would say that their declaration that youth are unintelligent is absolutely baseless.
quote:Having someone control your life - including being responsible for things you don't have to be - is part of not being ready to vote.
So the emancipated sixteen-year-old can't vote and the dependent thirty-year-old can because...? It's an aggregate of factors, of course, but the sixteen-year-old who meets all of them still can't vote while the thirty-year-old who fails all of them can't.
quote:I didn't say that people are required to graduate high school. Read it again. I mentioned a milestone event that often coincides with being 18.
Again, I didn't say there was such a requirement.
But you did say I hadn't given addressed its injustice. This would imply its existence, and for that matter its justice, otherwise the fact that I hadn't argued against it would be meaningless. (As in, why haven't you argued that elephants aren't purple?) Really, this line of the discussion is pointless now, since it's clear that I misunderstood you misunderstanding me misunderstanding you. (Or something like that. )
quote:Imagine the ballot alternates in color like some tables in newspaper do. Then imagine that toddlers are more attracted to blue backgrounds than white. The votes entered for a reason other than selecting a candidate would not be distributed evenly. "Random" does not mean even distribution.
All right, if by random you mean "not based on rational understanding of the vote" this makes sense. But it still seems like it would be fairly easy to eliminate factors like that in the testing stage of new voting mechanisms.
quote:
quote:"With a fairly designed voting mechanism, anyone with truly no understanding of what a vote is would vote randomly, which votes would cancel themselves out."
First, the mechanism which minimizes randomness caused by not understanding might not be the most suitable for making a ballot not confusing to voters. For example, it's possible the butterfly ballots equalize the distribution of random votes. I definitely don't want to compromise understandibility to allow infants to vote.
Look, it's true that there may be some difficulties in ensuring that people who don't understand voting do cancel themselves out. But you still are assuming that these people even would go out of their ways to vote, and in large enough numbers that any benefits to allowing the competent people to vote are counteracted by the incompetent people all somehow voting for the same person. "Bad" votes--in the sense that they are not serious, understood, votes--slip through the system we have now. And yet Mickey Mouse has never yet won an election. When we have to work to make sure that the incompetent group of society doesn't overwhelm the competent group's votes, there are waaay too few competent voters. I really don't think idiots make that much of a difference in the current system, nor do I think they will in the proposed one.
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quote:The example I gave was intelligence. If someone said that intelligence should be the requirement for voting, and minors should not be allowed to vote because they are not as intelligent as adults, I would ask them to a) prove it empirically, by creating a test without prejudice, administering it to a good sample size of both populations, and comparing results; if this succeeded to b) administer this test to potential voters so that all non-intelligent voters, regardless of age, could not vote while their intelligent counterparts could. If they could not create a test for intelligence free of prejudice, I would say that their declaration that youth are unintelligent is absolutely baseless.
And my primary contention is that breaking it apart into separate elements destroys what age is a proxy for. Age is not a proxy for intelligence, experience, and knowledge separately. It is a proxy for something which intelligence, experience, and knowledge (plus hundreds of other things) are a part of.
quote:So the emancipated sixteen-year-old can't vote and the dependent thirty-year-old can because...? It's an aggregate of factors, of course, but the sixteen-year-old who meets all of them still can't vote while the thirty-year-old who fails all of them can't.
Yes. Because age is the best proxy we have AND because the denial of the right to vote isn't permanent.
quote:But you did say I hadn't given addressed its injustice. This would imply its existence
I've explained twice now why I meant it. One more time: I mentioned it as something that happened AT THE SAME TIME. Not as a prerequisite of voting, but as an example of the speed at which personal development occurs at that age as opposed to 10 years later.
quote:All right, if by random you mean "not based on rational understanding of the vote" this makes sense. But it still seems like it would be fairly easy to eliminate factors like that in the testing stage of new voting mechanisms.
And I still don't want them in there.
quote:But you still are assuming that these people even would go out of their ways to vote, and in large enough numbers that any benefits to allowing the competent people to vote are counteracted by the incompetent people all somehow voting for the same person.
I have met many teenagers who insist they are capable of voting and would who I don't consider ready to do so. This is the basic point of disagreement and one which nothing convincing has been presented on.
quote:"Bad" votes--in the sense that they are not serious, understood, votes--slip through the system we have now.
Yes. This is a reason to increase them?
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It's not your fault, Pelegius, it's an issue near and dear to me (as evidenced by my National Youth Rights Association membership card, among other things) and you really couldn't have come up with a discussion more guaranteed to have brought me out of lurkdom if you tried. Come on, post something, join in the fun! Or we could talk about something else...educational reform, curfew laws, school uniforms, age-based censorship, the war on MySpace and social networking sites, adultism in general, ageism in general, corporal punishment, the repressions--er, I mean, the possibilities for discussion--are endless!
All right, let's consider your aggregate A. Aggregate A is made up of factors X, Y, and Z. (I really don't know what the factors are that you consider important.) If factors X, Y, and Z are not testable-without-prejudice, then they are invalid factors, thereby rendering aggregate A invalid. You can modify the aggregate to exclude those factors, but until then, I'll consider it invalid. (I think I've already explained why factors that aren't testable aren't valid factors to even have a proxy for, but I'll do it again if anyone wants further clarification.) Furthermore, your aggregate also has to be testable-without-prejudice. Even if your final definition of "competence to vote" looks like diagnostic criteria (must meet all of the following, three of the next five, and at least two of the final ten, or one of the final ten if it is item j), at least it's defined. If you can't even define why you think people under the age of eighteen are so incompetent to vote while people over are the reverse that it's acceptable to deny them their citizenship priveleges, then what right do you have to do so (assuming fiat, of course; I know it's not you, personally, making voting age laws)? And if you can define it, why use age as a proxy?
The random-vote argument is another line of argument, against my personal belief in full citizenship rights without adjucation of incompetence upon assumption of citizenship. I recommend we reach a consensus on "qualifications to vote" before we go the extra step, for simplicity's sake. In the end, the particular people I have in mind for voting would probably meet most fair criteria people agree on; and of course they'd be allowed to vote if the voting age truly were abolished with no other restrictions in place. Either one is fine by me, although for priniple's sake I may argue further. But denying citizenship rights based on birthdate, with no agreement on what it's even a proxy for (unless it's not meant to be a proxy at all, and there are people who think that age is inherently relevant to voting...scary thought), seems...unfair? undemocratic? unconstitutional? stupid? Note that the United States Constitution doesn't actually say that it's illegal to vote when one is under the age of eighteen. Yet, by any definitions of "immunities and priveleges" and "due process of law" I can think of, the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits state voting age laws.
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quote:But we have here an issue which transcends politics: our society is stagnating. The last painter to be a household name, Lucian Freud, is now 84. No other field is quite so deprived currently, although music comes close, but I fear that the 21st century, which has already seen so much war, will have no Guernica, no Mahler, no Wittgenstein: no one at all to assist us in hour of need.
You pick kind of an odd example here. I don't think Wittgenstein was out to help anyone in their "hour of need." He just wanted to form a basic understanding of how language is used to refer to things in the world. And though his name was known to many people, almost no one read what he wrote or digested his ideas.
Anyway, I disagree that our society is stagnating. But even if it were, how could that be a result of kids having too little self-determination? Are you aware of how bad things were in this regard at the start of the last century?
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quote:Why should a 40 year old idiot be given the right to help decide how we live, while a well informed, hard-working, 17 year old gets no say?
Because in one year, that 17 year old will be able to vote.
I hope you realize how silly that particular argument is.
I don't understand how we can have a legal system in place that allows 16 year olds to MARRY, and to live independent of their parents, but not to vote. If they are capable of making those kinds of decisions, how are they not capable of deciding who to vote for?
I don't understand the logic behind it. Perhaps if you could explain the legal logic behind it, and how it in any way, shape or form makes sense, I'd be able to better understand your argument Dag.
How did we come to the conclusion that a 16 year old can decide who to marry (and YES this varies by state), or who to have sex with, or when to live on their own independent of their parents, but that somehow voting is harder?
If you ask me, it's placing more requirements on youth than we place on adults. No one stops to make sure the voting public is actually checking their facts, and voting on truthful information, or God forbid, even THINKING before they just vote along party lines or listen to commercials. Why are we therefore placing those restrictions on a 16 or 17 year old, when I'd say it's fairly well established that they have the mental capacity to understand those decisions. Whether or not they CARE about them is a totally separate matter, one that goes out to EVERY American, not just the youth of the nation.
The status quo, and the reasons for keeping it that way don't add up.
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Wittgenstein certainly helped understand thing in my hour of need. The reason I felt distant was that my personal language limited my comunication.
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Gwen, I like some of what you're saying, not because I agree with your position but because the issue about children's self-determination is more complicated than most people recognize. (Also, I remember the rush of fighting little battles for students' rights when I wrote for my HS newspaper.) I do think you're wrong, but the mistake you're making is the opposite of the one most people make.
Most people think it's just obvious that kids have only a few rights of self-determination, and there's no moral problem in allowing their parents very broad control over their lives. Such people aren't understanding the subtleties of the issue. We know that parents can exert too much control even over very young children. This is called indoctrination. What's unclear -- because it's a mystery, something our ethics of self-determination and liberty can't yet answer -- is what makes indoctrination different from ordinary child-rearing. And it may turn out that some aspects of what we'd now call 'ordinary' child-rearing are really examples of indoctrination.
But all the same, children who are young enough clearly can't possess the same rights of self-determination that adults have. Because they don't have the capacity of self-determination. An infant can't really make decisions on the basis of reasons. It may even be that an infant isn't a person, in the sense of having a developed, conscious mind and a decision-making will.
So there's some point at which a child becomes a complete person -- or more likely there's a continuous transformation from infant to autonomous being, that happens at a different rate for different people. Right now this process is too complex for us to understand. That much is clear. So rather than shake up a system that's worked reasonably well for our country's whole history, why don't we wait until we can understand how aging works?
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And, to be clear, I like (and more importantly agree with) some of what you're saying. I think you're wrong, but at least you're willing to discuss the issue. The problem I have with putting off the voting age issue until some day far off when we understand how aging works is the same reason women didn't wait until we understood sex and gender differences to campaign for women's suffrage. We don't know that we will ever understand aging and maturity fully, there really isn't all that much pressure for youth studies right now (off of the top of my head, I know exactly one person who teaches youth studies at a university, Dr. Mike Males), and actually I'm seeing the trend going toward an infantilization of older and older children than the reverse. Of course I'm not suggesting pushing kids out into the street before they're ready, or even allowing kids to take on adult responsibilities all at once, with no adult supervision or fallback mechanism. I do advocate allowing kids who think they're ready for something adult the chance to try it, with preparation and supervision and a chance to revert and a safe, controlled environment. I read something a while ago about the concept of teaching philosophy in elementary school. Not straight Plato and Descartes, of course, but discussions about ethics or principles of logic and reasoning. The transcribed dialogue from one of these classes (blah blah blah, anecdotal evidence doesn't count, blah blah blah, obligatory disclaimer) was simply amazing. Thinking back to the way I thought when I was younger--trying to explain why the statement "life isn't fair" is an invalid excuse for unfairness, because if people tried harder at being fair life would be much more fair than it is, for example--I'm astonished at how mindbogglingly stupid psychology and sociology textbooks assume children are. I know I was not the typical child, but I know that even the slower-than-average people among my peers had logical reasoning on the abstract scale long before the official ages. That's part of the reason Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow resonated so well with me (in addition to the great plot, setting, premise, characters, et cetera)--because, like Orson Scott Card, when I was growing up I never felt like a child, like my thoughts or actions were childish, like my ideas were somehow inferior to adults. Because, bluntly, they weren't, and never are, except for, perhaps, less knowledge of formal reasoning or debate, which people could easily master if only they were taught, even at a young age. Or, to use Dr. Seuss, a person's a person, no matter how small...and a citizen is a citizen, no matter how young. -Gwen.
Posts: 283 | Registered: Jul 2006
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quote:I hope you realize how silly that particular argument is.
No, it's not a silly argument. It is if you think it's my complete argument, but it's clearly not.
There are two things to be avoided:
1.) Allowing people to vote who are not equipped to do so, for whatever definition of "equipped" we want to use.
2.) Preventing people from voting who are equipped to do so.
The version of "equipped" most often used, even it can't be fully articulated, is undeniably related to age. That is, for the average person, there is a point A in their life when they are definitely not equipped followed by a point B, later in their life, where they definitely are equipped.
We can't fully articulate what "equipped" is. We don't understand fully what happens between point A and B. We do know that one of the things that happens between those points is that time passes.
I simply do not accept Gwen's argument that age isn't relevant to being equipped to vote, and it doesn't seem that you accept it to that degree, either.
So we are forced to either come up with a test to allow us to detect who is "equipped" - something I contend to be impossible right now - or we use the best substitute we can: age.
Granted, as Destineer pointed out, there is no single point in time where a person becomes equipped. We need a point that balances type 1 and type 2 errors as best as possible. We've picked 18.
And now we get to the part where the impermanency of the restriction matters. If we are wrong for some percentage of under-18 people, we are merely delaying the start of voting a very small amount of time.
If we are wrong with another kind of test for being equipped to vote, the deprivation is likely permanent.
So yes, the fact that in a year the restriction goes away is relevant, and it's not silly. It's the built in limit on the type 2 error - the maximum price we are willing to pay in reducing type 1 errors. Without that maximum, the price of reducing type 1 errors would be much higher.
quote:I don't understand how we can have a legal system in place that allows 16 year olds to MARRY, and to live independent of their parents, but not to vote. If they are capable of making those kinds of decisions, how are they not capable of deciding who to vote for?
In many states, parental permission is needed for the former and court permission for the latter. As for legal argument, there doesn't need to be one. There's no legal concept I'm aware of that says all age-related restriction need to come off at the same time. This is a political question up until the point the constitution takes over - at age 18.
quote:So there's some point at which a child becomes a complete person -- or more likely there's a continuous transformation from infant to autonomous being, that happens at a different rate for different people. Right now this process is too complex for us to understand. That much is clear. So rather than shake up a system that's worked reasonably well for our country's whole history, why don't we wait until we can understand how aging works?
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