I'm curious if any other country has 16 years olds demanding cars for their birthdays or if it is just our insane culture.
There are countries where 16 year olds would be completing their 6th year at a sweatshop making shirts.
There are countries where 16 year olds would be completing their 6th year at a sweatshop making shirts.
Having said that some discretion on our part is needed. I don't think every 16 year old needs a car. But that is up to the parents.
I was thinking there has to be some kind of middle ground.
Also, I don't want to be on the same road as a 16 year old driver in 2013 in the US (with their own car). Zero attention span.
They should be looking to us with a very critical and suspicious eye.
Here's a review of the topic: http://library.la84.org/3ce/HighSchoolSportsParticipation.pd...
Notably, it starts out with "... research has time and again demonstrated a strong and positive correlation between high school sports participation and academic achievement. This basic, baseline finding holds for a wide variety of measures and on a whole range of data sets, methodological approaches, and social conditions."
"The crucial point for a general audience is that periodic updates, reviews, reappraisals and re-evaluations (Braddock 1981; Picou et al. 1985; Holland and Thomas 1987; and Marsh 1992) have, over the years, consistently and invariably yielded evidence concluding that there is a significant baseline correlation between high school sports participation and higher rates of academic achievement and aspiration for individual students... Even research that is critical of the sports/education nexus or that seeks to complicate and unpack this statistical association begins from this basic assumption and understanding."
Just take care not quash dreams while recommending having a plan B. Exceptional is not normal. True. But it's normal to dream, and from the morass of many unfulfilled dreams emerge our successes, dreams still intact.
I asked for one too, and I got one. I had to buy it myself but my family helped me find one that was super cheap ($50) and it lasted me all through highschool. It wasn't stylish, but as Fat Tony would say, the sentimental value of it was through the roof.
The ones who don't have money for gasoline or $1800 a year for insurance, and who know without asking that their parents will never pay for any of this.
Did I want a blimp when I was 16? If someone offered me one I would have said yes, but it's not something I ever really considered - likewise for a car.
I suppose a large part of this is due to growing up in an area with very good public transportation and bike infrastructure, but there were a million things I wanted before a car, such as the $60 computer I spent years saving for.