Monday 24 March 2008

Changing and lengthening the Australian minority years

I see the media has been reporting on the idea of extending the school leaving age.
Last year Victoria increased leaving age to 16 years of age. Matching South Australia, Queensland and Tasmania.
In West Australia it went up to 17 this year.
Now there's talk of raising it to 18 in New South Wales, so that all students would leave high school and become legal adults all in the same year.
Across the board there also appears to be a debate about raising the legal drinking age to 21 years. Which would leave the young adult in the strange position of being trusted with a right to vote in governments but not to drink an alcoholic beverage.
I'm not knocking the desire to see the young receive a reasonable level of education or discourage alcohol abuse, but it almost looks like we are trying to extend our concept of what childhood is again.
If we keep this up a 'child' will be anyone under 30 years. Rather a tiring thought for all those working parents out there.

No comments: