Let’s Talk About Giving Children the Right to Vote

I welcome the voices of children in public life: we need to hear them. Maybe it’s time we got serious about true universal suffrage.

Without an educated population, the grand experiment of democracy cannot flourish. This is why we educate children. It’s not, as many assume, so that they can one day join the workforce as a cog in the economy, but so that they can acquire the knowledge, skills, and habits required for self-governance. If it’s not for that then, frankly, we should stop spending our tax dollars on public schools and let the corporations train their own damned workers.

We need citizens who are critical thinkers, who ask a lot of questions, who question authority, who stand up for their beliefs, who listen to others with the goal of understanding, and who know that they contribute to society in ways far beyond their ability to earn a greasy buck. These are not necessarily the traits of a good employee, but they are those of a good citizen. And if there is anything we need right now, it’s good citizens.

We spend a ton of time and treasure preparing our children for citizenship, but what we tend to forget is that our children, even the newborn babies, are already citizens. In fact, children are citizens who make up approximately a third of the US population.