h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The frustration with childhood is felt by everyone who goes through it, no matter what race or cultural background, it is still felt. The frustration arises from the rules mostly. Such as how if your not 18, you can't see a scary movie, vote, drink, or do anything else for that matter. Childhood is always in the shadow of adulthood. Adults choose what we do, where we Are, what clothes we wear, who we visit,. what we eat, and sometimes, what our career will be.

It's inconcievably annoying being a child, because you have no power. You are constantly getting all of societies problems dumped on you, and you can't fight back. Well, you CAN, but that is also inconceivably hard. I, for one, own an underground publication named "The Subterranean" which is a subsidiary of The Subterranean Press, of which I also own. The Subterranean Press is focused on bringing you issues to light, and more or less pointing out the flaws of compulsory schooling. Printing my newspaper is incredibly hard, because the school administrators are clamping down on me. My teacher even claimes that since it talks about the school, I can't even make it. Being a child is hard, because if you want any real change, you can't vote anyone out of the governement.

You also can't leave your home, and your parents literrally OWN you. They can subject you to almost anything they want, and there isn't a single thing you can do about it. You can only leave home when your sixteen in canada (where I live), so yet again, we are powerless.

School. School is not a place for children, or anyone for that matter. School is a collection of people that don't want to be there, and it focusses on discipline, not learning. Schools opress the people in them, and don't give a damn about how they turn out. The people running schools are mor interested in making kids know facts, and having them jump through hoops to get a diploma. The more we subject ourselves to this, the more we're hurting ourselves. it's not news that school isn't about learning to question things. The objective is to subdue us, and give us useless facts like the year of confederation. We are required to get an education, and most parents aren't going to homeschool their children. And you can't leave until your eighteen.

There is of course, the problem of how the governement dumps all of societies problems on kids. If you look in a newspaper, the pages are likely to be filled with headlines such as "YOUTH DRUG USE ON THE RISE" or, "YOUTH CONVICTED IN FATAL SHOOTING OF TWO CLASSMATES" or, "THE COLUMBINE SYNDROME -- COULD YOUR CHILD BE A MASS MURDERER?" It's stuff like this that totally warps the minds of parents, school administrators, and any other adults mthat come in contact with it. This is what's causing the real problems. The delegation of societies problems to kids is only making matters worse. By passing on the problems to youth, 1, the problems are not getting solved, and 2, youth are being put on drugs, put in mental hospitals, counseling, and are in a bad place in general because the governement doesn't have the balls to say "Yeah, we screwed up big time there." When are people going to realise that WE are not the problem, and start taking responsibility for their actions?! The very fact that every crime done by a youth is publicised means that we are not commiting very many!! how many robberies do you hear about? maybe a few a day accompanied by a ten second blurb on the radio? But when YOUTH commits an offence, it means that society is going to hell in a hand basket!!! Lock them up!!!! let's put every kid that has ever stolen a candy bar to death!!! get out the burning stake!!! KILL THEM ALL!! NONE ARE SAFE FROM THE WRATH OF A TEN YEAR OLD!!!!!!!!!!! Can you see the point I'm trying to get across here? we are not criminals, we are not evil incarnate. I wouldn't be surprised if the moral standards of kids today are better than the moral standards of the adults when they were young.

So please -- don't criminalise youth. If you put us all in jail, there won't be any of us left to run the world when your gone. And we are the future.