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Well, you don’t have the sample size I do, so your observations are interesting, but not definitive. And certainly not enough to make me abandon all the conclusions I have come to after observing 2,000 13 year olds. I know enough about this stage of human development to say with some assurance that putting too many of them into a college setting with adults who have paid to be there will cause problems, and I stand by that prediction. You are not required to agree with me, by the way. This is all just people giving their opinions on an idea that is never going to be implemented anyway, so... have the last word, if you like. I have noticed that parents always think they have to have the last word when talking to teachers, so have at it.

Please feel free to have the last word. I am not speaking as a parent but as a scientist. Your opinions are your own and I would never seek to take them from you. When you see children as a cohort, a group of thousands it may be easy to generalize. Just like when looking at a forest one doesn’t see the leaves.

I believe in the freedom of the individual and that each child in America deserves to strive to fulfill their dreams. I would no more think that their age trumped their abilities and maturity than I would think that each would need the same shoe size.

I think that the colleges are not full of adults in any case.

Please re-read my post, I said post high school training, and/or college. In a later post I added safe work that would be appropriate for a young person. Did you note that college was not the **only** option.

Why are you sooooo concerned about the colleges? They are run by big boys and girls and are fully capable of deciding who will or will not attend their colleges without your overprotective concern.

According to Charles Murray, only about 15% of the population have an I Q high enough to have success in college. And...an even smaller proportion of the population are capable of college level hard sciences. He came to this conclusion using the statistics from the SAT organization. So.....I doubt that colleges would be overrun with misbehaving kids who **willingly** chose to attend and who were **willingly** accepted by the college.

Also....Is it possible that the behavior you observe in the classroom is **not** normal behavior for youth but is really a response to being incarcerated in a prison-like setting? Is it possible that youth are subjected to a prison-like environment that no normal adult would tolerate for themselves and would actually win them millions in court?

Is it possible that after being treated like a prisoner for the sole crime of being born, these kids are then told that this is “good for them”. This is the ultimate in **gaslighting**!!!

Geese! No wonder these young people ( who would have been considered adults just 100 years ago) are “cheeky”!