'Teenagers Being Teenagers' is NOT Normal

It really isn't, folks. A 16 year old is supposed to resemble an inexperienced but real adult, not an overgrown child with unrestrained urges.

Anyway, this isn't directly related to Libertarianism or freedom issues, but I have access to the blog so I'm going to share my opinion. :) This is something I think I had an apostrophe about (Ed. Note: Epiphany. I assume.) and wanted to submit for consideration here.

The sneering, haughty, contemptuous attitude of teenagers/young adults--I speak primarily of boys, but it often applies to girls also--is the direct result of organized, age-segregated schools. Among any gathering of adults of various ages where the few late teens are the youngest in the room, they will starkly stand out, because their attitude is easily markable as silly and juvenile. They're idiots, knowing nothing, yet each sincerely believes he is the wisest person in the room.

How does this happen? It's the inevitable product of the school culture. Yes, schools have their own culture, where the teachers are outside oppressors, and the ruling class, the people at the top of the social pyramid, are the high school juniors and seniors, the oldest/biggest kids. A 17 year old regards himself as the pinnacle of human development because in his world, he IS.

This should be no surprise. From age 5 forward a child's primary culture is the school culture, with all of its own cultural nuances. Every child spends the vast majority of his time surrounded by other children, primarly those of the same age, and rarely are adults around at all except to swoop down and try to impose undesired and cumbersome rules.

Consider: Within the standard family unit, a child's ruling class, life guides and role models are adults--primarily parents, who not only instruct them and rule over them but also live with them, and by that I mean perform the daily activities of life day by day with them*, and also parents' adult friends and acquaintances. All but the firstborn have older siblings in a similar role.

* This is something we've lost in modern excessively-busy society and sorely miss.

But within the school culture, a child doesn't participate in the daily activities of life alongside ANYONE older than himself! For a child growing up in a family, the ancillary people generally surrounding him are predominantly adults, with only younger siblings and their friends being younger than himself.

But for a teenager, in the school culture, his world is predominantly populated by younger children--so he's already mature by those standards (and he grew up believing that teenagers were the most mature people in the world). How is one supposed to learn to be an adult in that setting?

Therefore it's easy to understand why homeschooled teenagers tend to behave like inexperienced but recognizable adults, whereas school-cultured teenagers tend to behave like children with adult desires and passions.

Wickard vs. Filburn

Wickard vs. Filburn is a court case involving a farmer who went over a quota of what he could grow and harvest of wheat. His argument was that the excess was for his farm and family and therefore shouldn't be considered under the commerce clause, or rather that if there was an effect it was trivial. I can understand the want or need for legislation that brought order to an otherwise chaotic situation, but can we, as Americans not see the importance of this situation? If interpreted as so, that food grown for our family and farm be considered as something that can be regulated by the government, then we are wholly in subject to that government.

Indeed this court case was one of many that has opened the door for all liberty in this country to be stolen away in any situation, deemed by a small percentage of the population, as "necessary and proper." In fact I actually would have agreed with the court had they specifically stated that as long as you don't sell any wheat you can grow and do whatever with it as long as it doesn't leave your farm. That is not what the case said though. According to the case, if the amount allotted to him for how much wheat he could grow was not enough to sustain his farm, then he would have to purchase the rest. There is a big difference. In what I have said, the government could have regulated commerce and preserved liberty, in what the Court said, liberty was taken away.

I thought about putting possible things that government could tell you what to do under this clause, but I think I should let you imagine possible interpretations. And if I have interpreted anything wrong from this case please enlighten me.