When I turned eighteen years old, the first thing I did was go out and buy a pack of cigarettes before going to get my bellybutton pierced.
Was this a momentous occasion, a long-awaited, celebratory exercise of new freedom granted to me simply by virtue of having lived eighteen years on this earth?
Actually, no, it wasn’t. I had bought cigarettes and gotten pierced before. The only difference is that this time I didn’t need to worry about being carded at the gas station, and I didn’t need parental accompaniment at the tattoo parlor. That’s it. I wasn’t all that different of a person the day of my eighteenth birthday than I was the day before; I was just sporting some new jewelry on my midriff.
The conversation surrounding the Howard County Student Member of the Board of Education, and the lawsuit recently filed to strip voting rights from the role, has seen one central theme coming from the naysayers: that a student not yet eighteen years of age, who cannot vote in elections, buy tobacco, join the military, enter into a contract, or get a tattoo, among other things, should not be permitted to cast a vote at the decision-making table of a $1B school system. They argue that he has not yet reached the age at which maturity and wisdom enable a person to make valid decisions on such important issues on behalf of 58,000 students and their parents.
It’s as if we all take some magic pill on our eighteenth birthday that instantly confers all the life experience and knowledge we’ll ever need to refer to as we make decisions about our bodies, our lives, and our country’s future.
Psh.
I can look around me and see kids and teenagers making mature decisions every day. They hold down jobs, in some cases to support their families; pay their own way through college; take care of young children, some even raising younger siblings; organize historic marches for racial justice; become internationally recognized advocates for climate change; put forth tremendous discipline to become Olympic athletes; become Eagle Scouts; experience trauma that would break an adult; operate motor vehicles; and many, many other examples. I can also look around me and see grown adults, some well past middle age, dropping laugh emojis on Facebook comments they disagree with; trolling the social media accounts of people they don’t like; using petty and unkind monikers to refer to others; engaging in road rage; participating in Mean Girls-style cliquish behavior; making fun of other people’s misfortune; and manufacturing frivolous drama.
This is because maturity is not a fixed state of being, an achievement unlocked once one reaches a certain age. Rather, it can be described as an attribute of decisions made and actions taken. A five-year-old can decide to eat a banana instead of a Twinkie. A fifty-year-old can choose to gamble away his savings. Much like learning, we begin maturing the moment we are born, and we don’t ever stop. Every day adds a new lesson, a new life experience, a new piece of information we didn’t have before. The likelihood of making good decisions in any given moment increases as we grow older, yes. But to say that one is incapable of doing so prior to their eighteenth birthday is both imprudent and imperious, not to mention self-righteously blind to adults’ substantial capacity for doing stupid things.
The youth among us are capable. They are intelligent. They are innovative. And most importantly, they bring a perspective that us moldy oldies don’t have – that of being a kid or teen in this country, in this day and age, in this public school system. A paternalistic “Father Knows Best” attitude that dismisses their viewpoints and inhibits their autonomy is a lost opportunity for us to learn from them and to model two-way respect.
Empowering our youth, respecting their voice, and putting faith and trust in them to make good choices will do far more to build their character than authoritarian control ever will.
