When Do I Grow Up and Other Tales from a Confused Teenager
High school. The last step before the independence of college. Going off on your own into the dark, cold, unfeeling world. The world that won’t infantilize you. The world that won’t give you time to adjust to its ways. The world that, frankly, you aren’t prepared for.
Constantly in grade school, teachers are telling us how they’re readying us for the “real world,” for life outside of school. And yet they still continue to patronize us and shelter us. By the time we are sixteen we are legally able to drive, get jobs, and even drop out of school. So why is it that society believes that we are responsible enough to obtain a driver’s license and literally hold the lives of others in our hands, but we aren’t worthy of the responsibility to decide, when given the opportunity, what websites we should go on during the school day? Or where we can go to spend our free periods? When we can go off school campus?
Shouldn’t we have the choice?
We have to be able to make our own decisions. And, in doing so, face any consequences that may result. That’s how we will learn. Learn responsibility. Learn discipline. Learn and develop the traits and skills we need to aid us in the future.
Soon we will be in college. Where everything will be available to us, there will be no boundaries, save for the laws that everyone abides by, and we will need to be able to discern what will help us from what will hurt us. There are many options available to us at all times, but the school administration is currently blocking a wide portion of them. By opening us up to more of these options in high school we will be given an opportunity to get a head start on knowing which would be the more advantageous routes and which would be better to avoid. Some of us get some of this exposure at home, where limitations are more slack. But the in school experience of making the decision to, say, read an article on a topic you’re learning about in your biology class or read a satirical bit on The Onion regarding looking directly at the sun could prove to be the character building choice that gets you to realize when the time to focus on work is and when the time to read funny, irrelevant pieces is, and how to find the happy medium that proves to be most beneficial in helping you get your work done.
Trying new things and asserting ourselves via platforms such as Twitter, Medium, and Reddit, can help us to discover ways to make beneficial choices when it comes to using the Internet. By limiting these choices in school, blocking us from viewing and posting, connecting with others, collaborating, high school is not doing it’s job. It is not preparing us for the real world. It’s not preparing us for life, as much of life, especially this day and age, involves social media and technology. Learning how to navigate these foreign lands and use them to our advantage is crucial for our futures.
