What changes do you want for young people?

[Brain O'Conner]

I'd like to see quite a few changes.

1) More funding for accessible third spaces, higher quality outdoor green areas, and more affordable and localized activities like cheap bowling or arcades would be great for young people. Most youth don't really have anything to do when they're allowed outside, which leads to them idling; which in turn just means they get bored, and are more likely to take part in crime or try out drugs/drinking.

2) We also need a change in perception towards what ages youth are actually allowed outside without constant supervision. The trajectory for the minimum age is heading up and it's more common to hear that even younger teens aren't allowed outside without being supervised.

3) Ways for youth to take part in the political process. I've seen the idea floated around that we should abolish a voting age entirely (which I personally agree with), but that might not sound good for everyone. An alternative could be to open polls for more localized votes for young people. For example, if a local town/city council are holding a vote on what to do with an abandoned building, why not let 12+ year olds cast a vote? First we would need to encourage voting on more minor issues like this, but still— this is something that adults could benefit from as well.

4) An alternative balance around school life. Not only do kids need to spend 6-8 hours in school, but they're expected to give even more time studying and doing homework outside of it. Kids could spend anywhere between 8-12 hours a day on school work if they were to do all their homework and study for each subject appropriately, and still sometimes have to give parts of their weekend away if they have bigger projects.

5) Allowing young people to have a source of income would absolutely delete so much abuse. Where I'm from, the government have recently created a new law specifically designed to target sexual abuse through offering children something in return (eg, money). This has been in response to a growth in reports of people doing things like offering impoverished teenagers money for takeaways in exchange for sexual favours. If young people were allowed to earn money, you'll cut out a significant portion of youth that seek out adults for money, or are coaxed into accepting something they don't really want to because they're offering something like a game their parents won't buy them.

Ah man, I have to disagree with the school balance honestly. I personally don't think the school system, the way that it is designed, is good at all. If it were me, I would do a total rehaul of the system. It wouldn't be for 8 hours, or k-12 grade system. It wouldn't also be based on memorization, which is flawed for a lot of the stuff that they're learning in school, instead, they will understand the concepts and real-life uses of such things. It serves as a cheat sheet once they understand the whole picture and everything becomes easy to solve. This rehaul will also only have the essential things for kids to learn, and the rest of the stuff is optional depending on what career path, hobby/ interests they have. Now that is what I call a balance. 8-12 hours a day? You must want Chinese school life.

[Bookshelf]

8-12 hours a day? You must want Chinese school life.

I was saying that the current expectations aren't good. If a kid wants to succeed (ie, do all their homework and enough studying for all their subjects) they're expected to first go to the 6-8 hours of school, then do the couple of extra hours of work after which can end up eating 8-12 hours of their day total. I'm not proposing we raise school time to 8-12 hours a day.

[BLueRibbon]

China is actually making significant efforts to improve its system to reduce the burden on students.

Anger would be better directed at Korea, which is more concerned about upping the birth rate while making sure parents can continue to slave away at its massive corporations.

https://www.brianribbon.com/home/why-ch ... t-it-right