All Children Should Be Delinquents
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Also, back then was a different time. You could do stuff like that, get caught, and not pay a huge price. Now, that's not true, in the US, at least. The climate is one of zero tolerance for stuff mentioned in the article. Example: some kids in the middle school my son goes to played a prank in the computer lab: they swapped a bunch of keys of some of the keyboards. The result? They were banned for life from using computers in the school district (yes, this would follow them to high school). A complete over reaction, but the norm for punishment in the US.
1) Trespassing private property
2) Theft
3) Willful and malicious destruction of property
4) Arson
5) Indecent exposure
6) Consensual rape (my girlfriend was 2 years younger than me)
7) Driving under the influence
I consider myself a highly moral individual, and some people consider me the most level-headed and patient person around.
I would argue that being a vandal in your teenage years may have a positive impact on the rest of the life of some people. You have to be smart about it and try not to hurt you or anyone else too much in the process.
In most countries, school is just the place where you have lessons for a few hours, and all other activities, including even lunch breaks, are part of kids' private lives outside of school and outside of school grounds.
Add to that no school buses and no parents driving their kids to and from school in SUV's, and you get a culture in which kids have a considerably chunk of private life outside of either parental or school control.
The problem imho is giving school administrations so much influence and authority over kids in the first place.
Citation needed, my experience has been the opposite (except for Germany). I was getting out of school at 2:45 in the US, 6 in France.
I know there are extracurricular activities, but still.
So theft, destruction of property, driving under the influence, and arson are victimless crimes?
Maybe I'm a stickler for rule of law but when you start fucking with other people's stuff, that's not cool (understatement). Especially if it's just because you're bored.
You could say you're increasing the risk for everyone else, but the same can be said for use of PCP or meth or some drug that correlates with higher rates of violent crimes, and those are acknowledged to be victimless crimes.
There's a risk/reward analysis at work here, an driving under the influence has had a very, very bad track record.
It's probably not worth it to get into it, but I think I'd prefer a situation where you don't get punished for "pre-crime" like driving under the influence, but you get punished extra harshly for anything that causes damage as a result of something like that. So crash into a pole when sober, pay a fine. Crash into a pole when drunk, fine plus 3 months in jail. That sort of thing. Similarly you can imagine a lot of the outrage about jaywalking would go away if jaywalking were legal everywhere, but causing an accident or traffic jam while jaywalking would carry a hefty fine. This allows people to make local risk assessment decisions for which they are taking responsibility (it's 2 AM and there are no cars around - is it worth it to cross now knowing that if I do end up causing an accident or traffic jam it'll cost me $500?). Not saying it's a perfect system, but it seems like a start in addressing the legitimate concerns people have about victimless crimes.
I am biased because I lost a parent to this, but unlike, say, smoking weed in your house, driving under the influence has a near 100% chance of endangering people around you. Just like how people need a license to drive a car,it's not unreasonable to ask you to not be so selfish as to endanger those around you just because you got wasted and want to drive home in your 3 ton machine.
Additionally, it's disingenuous to say there's a "near 100% chance of endangering people around you". That's saying that there's a 100% chance that you've increased the risk by some amount. There's nothing even close to a 100% chance that you will actually do any damage to people around you, or crash. According to [1] there are 112 million self-reported episodes of impaired driving, and 1.4 million arrests, but 10,000 deaths. Obviously these are not hard numbers, but my guess is that driving under the influence likely triples or quadruples an existing (small) risk that you would kill or harm someone. That's not a trivial thing, but it would still mean that in the vast majority of cases, if you drive under the influence, everyone gets home safe.
And in any case, I'm not in favor of people driving under the influence. Similarly I don't think people should drive while tired (it's a similar rate of impairment), but the simple fact is that these crimes by themselves don't have victims, they are just occasionally the cause of actions which do have victims. You can certainly make the case that drunk driving should be against the law for any number of reasons, but that's a separate issue as to whether that crime actually has a victim.
1. http://www.cdc.gov/MotorVehicleSafety/Impaired_Driving/impai...
And no, it does not make it worth classifying "out of the victimless crime" category, because victimless is not a matter of degree, it's a question of whether or not there is an aggrieved party. Any time there's an accident as a result of drunk driving, then it's got a victim. Otherwise there are only "potential" victims.
Again, I think it's a behavior that needs to be discouraged, because it forces people not capturing any of the benefit (the drinking, the convenience of being able to take your own car afterwards) to assume some of the risk (the chance that a drunk driver will harm them or their property). I'm just saying that driving drunk by itself doesn't inherently have a victim.
Seems a little harsh. Is there any 'process' available (appeal against ban &c)?
In UK that would be telling off and phone call to parents with perhaps a formal disciplinary depending on age.
The keycaps punishment sounds completely over the top. Surely both administration and parents can see that? It is not possible to have a rational discussion about it?
I'd say this article is not necessarily the biggest advocate for delinquency, rather, it advocates for self-discovery in children, which is rare in modern parenting and educational systems. Sometimes this 'self-discovery' can lead to incidents of delinquency, but I think it's best to do dumb stuff young so you learn bad from good based on experience.
^ sums up my feelings about this topic almost exactly.
What opportunities do you have right now? Can you see any of those slipping away? It's really hard to think outside of the box on this one.
Perhaps you'd like for someone to tell you what you should do - but if they did, would you listen? And if you did, would they be right?
There is a constant stream of opportunity. Looking back and looking forward can be useful, but not if it stops you looking in the present.
Hehe that reminds me I did that with my dad, once. Looking back it was very dangerous but it was great fun. It was a new site for a 9 story residential building right next to ours. Once we thought we'd get caught by the guard, as we heard steps, so we hid, and it turns out it was some other people also exploring the site.
Another thing we did was climb a parachute training tower, and also hopped on a slow moving cargo train to hitch a 3 km ride towards my grandparents' house.
Aside from that (which if anyone knows me would totally uncharacteristic of me, but I guess it was more my dad than me), I was a pretty awkward nerd that liked tinkering with electronics (and later computers) and had only a few friends.
Parents of nerds sometimes get worried like that. Which is also a 'self-determination' type issue just as much as raucous behaviour.
Who knows, it is possible. It was a fun thing to do, I look at it as more of a "hey let's do a crazy thing together" and one of the things I remember fondly.
> Parents of nerds sometimes get worried like that.
He was also a bit if nerd, and I think how I said "people would be surprised to hear I did those things" they would not a lot less surprised to find out my dad did those with me as well.
http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/14.06/chemistry.html
"Vint Cerf – who became one of the architects of the Internet – spent months blowing up thermite volcanoes and launching backyard rockets. Growing up in Colorado, David Packard – the late cofounder of Hewlett-Packard – concocted new recipes for gunpowder. The neurologist Oliver Sacks writes about his adolescent love affair with “stinks and bangs” in Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood. “There’s no question that stinks and bangs and crystals and colors are what drew kids – particularly boys – to science,” says Roald Hoffmann of Cornell University, who won the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1981. “Now the potential for stinks and bangs has been legislated out.”"
Maybe you don't get these great people if you remove their freedom to explore in their formative years. But that freedom also meant a bunch of kids blew their hands off or worse, and if your kid dies in a gasoline accident, it's your fault as a parent and nobody says "well he just wanted his kid to be Nobel Prize material, valiant effort." It's unfair, but reality doesn't care. All you can possibly change is the societal attitude, not the actual fact that freedom means some unsupervised kids always are gonna die and it might be yours.
As a side note, Skenazy was called "World's worst mom" for allowing her son to ride the subway by himself[2].
[1] http://www.freerangekids.com/
[2] http://theweek.com/article/index/96342/the-last-word-advice-...
"Like real world resourcefulness, conversational resourcefulness often means doing things you don't want to. Chasing down all the implications of what's said to you can sometimes lead to uncomfortable conclusions. The best word to describe the failure to do so is probably "denial," though that seems a bit too narrow. A better way to describe the situation would be to say that the unsuccessful founders had the sort of conservatism that comes from weakness. They traversed idea space as gingerly as a very old person traverses the physical world."
Since reading that, I've loved the idea of traversing idea space the way you might look for easter eggs in video games- click all the things, flip over all the stones!
When I was a kid, I took my BB guns places I shouldn't have, I never owned a bike helmet, and trampolines didn't have safety nets. Other than some things like that, I let my kids (ages 6, 8, 9) do as they please during their free time. My over-arching rules for them are "have fun, be kind to each other, and be safe". I'm sure I'll have to set more specific boundaries as they get old but for now it's fun to watch them just be fun, wild, dirty, creative kids.
(on a side note, I'm not sure "delinquency" is the term Id use)
The version of your rules that I grew up with was "trust God and do Good". Religious angst aside, I don't think there's a minimum age for being able to tell the difference between serious, considered principles and ridiculous, unfounded assertions like "If you don't wear a helmet, you will get hit by a car and die."
At 15-16 I smoked a lot of grass. We misused it and smoked much more than I would now. I had deeply tripy experiences dozens of times. Some of them scary. I don't think grass is bad, but I think it's tricky for kids, especially as it is basically open criminal activity. It create a distance between them and the police/teachers/parents.
I wouldn't take any of those experiences back. I find I like people who had such experiences as kids and that when I meet 19-20 year olds without them, I kind of think it's impoverished.
OTOH, I can't imagine standing by and letting 15 year olds smoke large quantities of grass or 9 year olds go canoeing by moonlight unsupervised.
All those things take casualties.
Catch 22.
One of my kindergarten friends got drunk one night and started playing with a handgun when he was 14. He'll be in prison until he's 45, without help from any cocaine. [1]
I think getting into a bit of mischief is a proper part of growing up, but I think the author advocates a bit too much.
[1] http://law.justia.com/cases/minnesota/court-of-appeals/1996/...
Which is the whole problem - the reason we say "dont do that it will hurt" is that it probably will hurt. Yes kids need to learn their own limits, and I want that to happen. I just would prefer not to have the lesson end in A&E.
I think mobile technology will enable a longer "lead" - but then who wants to be on a lead.
I think ultimately - I am my dad :-)
Wonder what happened to him? Sounds like he was on a trajectory leading to problems.
Is it a bad thing that warlord is no longer a thing we put onto our resumes?
Also - teenage mortality has reduced drastically[1]. It's hard to argue that could be a bad thing.
It is probably because we don't let them (wherever possible) carry out activities that might kill themselves.
I am a parent of 3; I will happily take my children mountain climbing, skiing, snowboarding, trekking, wild swimming. In a few years we plan to trek to Everest Base Camp and they are coming with me to the Andes.
We engage in controlled risk. If they break a limb skiing then they break a limb skiing. They pushed beyond their abilities in some way. I don't need to give them wrappers of cocaine from a criminal and a handgun to be a better parent.
There is also a very real risk of the "Tom Sawyer" bias. Each generation thinks their generation took greater risks and had more vivid adventures than the one previous. The cognitive dissonance curiously avoids the higher levels of child abuse, abduction, injury, poisoning, asphyxiation, malnutrition and disease. My father used to have great adventures playing as a child in asbestos riddled houses. You can talk to his friends about it sometimes...well the few that have not died before 60.
Oh look here is a group of kids that used lethal asbestos as chalk. [2] They really learned a valuable lesson about ad-hoc citizenry there.
[1]http://www.cbs.nl/en-GB/menu/themas/gezondheid-welzijn/publi... [2]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-24942338
This is probably why your children are much less prone to socially objectionable activities; they get it out of their system.
On the other hand, I think it is the easy access of information and videos on the Internet about everything that help younger people be less curious about what will happen if they do this and that. I don't think it is parents stopping their kids or the neighbours calling the police. Neighbours used to call the police in the past too. Those police were the parents themselves.
In other words: the data doesn't immediately suggest that increased caution has lead to reduced mortality outside of traffic. The NYT article is still plausible from this perspective.
On the face of it, it may sound like a frivolous law suit but if you look into the details, it was far from it.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald's_Restauran...
Coffee served by McD (180 to 190 degrees Fahrenheit) will give a person third-degree burns in two to seven seconds, while home-coffee brewers normally serve coffee at much lower temperatures (130 two 140 degrees) which won't immediately burn you. Yes, Starbucks and other joints do serve coffee at the hotter temperatures -- because some customers prefer it -- but then again, they get sued for it also.
Also, she attempted to settle for $20,000 at one point, and McDonald's refused
You may have heard that she got millions of dollars, when the final award was $640,000. Then from that you take out the medical bills (hint: skin grafts aren't cheap).
But she has to take some responsibility, right? She may not have been driving, but she was trying to open the lid in her lap so she could add cream and sugar. That's kind of careless, isn't it? Why couldn't the jury see that?
Well, they did. That's why the compensatory damages portion ($200,000) was reduced by 20 percent, because they ruled it was 20 percent her fault.
That's not to say the seller is faultless - but the verdict still strikes me as entirely disproportionate. Then again, that's the norm nowadays, isn't it?
I understand people get stuck on the 'coffee' aspect, but many acids cause similar levels of tissue damage. There is a huge difference between water at 140f and 190f.
To put things in perspective an autoclave at 134 °C for three minutes is as effective as 121 °C for 15 minutes. Steam at 134 °C can achieve in three minutes the same sterility that hot air at 160 °C can take two hours to achieve. Granted, 249.8F = 121 C, but water can transfer a lot of heat vary quickly.
You mention the amount of time needed for serious burns to occur, yet that amount of time is huge compared to the time needed for water (or coffee) will flow away off or for people will to react. For her to remain exposed to the full load of coffee for around 12-15 seconds requires a pretty odd set of circumstances. For those burns to be large enough to be life-threatening normally requires a large surface area to be burnt, and that requires a large amount of coffee for a long time. (The 12-15 number is from wikipedia which says her lawyers produced evidence that this is the duration t 82 degrees celsius that "may produce third-degree burns").
Of course, there's the complicating factor here that she was quite old; at 79 she would not have been as resilient as younger person. And while that's a terrible shame, it's unreasonable to blame macdonalds for aging. Reading, she weighed just 47kg before her injury, which is low. I don't believe that a healthy person would have sustained her injuries.
It sounds implausible that she could have managed to sustain those kind of injuries given the circumstances - unless some other factors played a role (such as frailty due to aging). It's terrible she suffered as she did, but I still don't see how that could have been reasonably foreseen by macdonalds (and therefore the verdict seems unreasonable).
The point of the lawsuit isn't (just) about what happened to her, but critically also about the degree to which MacDonalds' was taking unreasonable risks. And as wikipedia points out, there have been many, many similar lawsuits, that apparently were not successful. (And note that coffee is still served at that temperature).
As to water vs steam, steam has effectively a much higher heat capacity but far lower density. 90c water can cause 3rd degree burns in as little as 2 seconds but clothing generally extends the exposure duration significantly.
PS: In the end it was a low cost lawsuit which was settled for presumably less than 600k and well within the cost of doing business. They changed cup design not temperature, but that's about it. As far as their concerned the issue was not the actual cost but discouraging people from suing in the future as it's been 20 years without a repeat.
Well, that's a reasonable point. Children and old people do have more fragile skin and are going to suffer more severe scalds because of this.
She didn't just have any old minor burn; hers was huge - she stayed for months in the hospital and lost 20% of her body mass; that's not your typical scalding accident.
Such lawsuits have been repeated, they just haven't been so successful. The fact that it's been 20 years merely underlines how unusual her circumstances were - and perhaps how bad that original cup design was.
I just think that we rationalized the risks to our safety because a company as large as McDonald's must have done a lot of studies on their coffee and figured out a temperature that was the perfect compromise between preventing disease and putting meltdown hot liquids in the hands of people driving cars. I thought that their goal in making the coffee that hot was to lower their net liability (and hence, the public's net danger) rather than what it really was - a way to serve coffee that got very old.
It was a business decision that had a money value for the company. They undertook it in order to make money. Paying for the externalities in court is a good place for McDonald's to learn how to recalibrate how much injury is worth, and see if their price calculation for raising the temperature of their coffee still makes sense.
At the time, the reactionary corporate rhetoric parodied the position of consumer advocates as requiring businesses to cover coffee cups with long elaborate disclaimers about how coffee could possibly be hot. Go buy a cup of coffee at McDonald's today - you'll see nothing of the sort. Turns out you don't need much if you just don't serve coffee as hot as lava to save money.
Try making a coffee today and taking the temperature of that coffee ten minutes after making it. I doubt it'd be hot enough to cause full thickness burns.
Also, if you put a lid on coffee (which you'd do when you want it to stay warm as when it's not necessarily for immediate consumption), it can stay hot quite a while.
Personally, I don't believe most people would have gotten third degree burns in a similar situation. Unfortunately, she was old (79), light (therefore likely frail; 47kg), and wore cotton (absorbent) sweatpants, and she must have kept them on for at least 12 seconds according to the evidence her own lawyers presented. Frankly, that's just a bunch of bad luck piled up. Most people would have stood up when the coffee spilled toward them, not sat in it for that long, and most people would have taken off at least partially the hot pants, thereby distributing the heat better, some people probably would have their pants off entirely by that point. (Wikipedia claims scalding rarely results in third-degree burns, let alone third degree burns on 6% of your body's surface area with a lot more second degree burn area).
Even at boiling point you need a number of circumstances to get this kind of injury. It takes quite a while, and needs to affect a large surface area, and needs to somehow be retained near the skin. That's just not all that likely to happen; and when it does, being old and light make recovery slower and less likely. She simply had the worst circumstances on all fronts.
> Even at boiling point you need a number of circumstances to get this kind of injury. It takes quite a while, and needs to affect a large surface area, and needs to somehow be retained near the skin.
2% of non-fatal household scald injuries in > 65 year olds needed tranfer to specialist hospitals for specialist treatment. If that's what you mean by rare then I guess we agree, but it's not what I'd call rare.
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5836a1.htm?mobile... (apologies for mobile link)
The CDC used to have tables for the length of time it took to achieve partial thickness or full thickness burns at various water temperatures.
At just 60 C it takes only five seconds to get a serious scald. At the temperature of 80 C burns are almost instant and probably require surgery.
Here's a nice chart with plenty of sourcing so we can check it for accuracy.
http://www.accuratebuilding.com/services/legal/charts/hot_wa...
> at 180–190 °F (82–88 °C) McDonald's coffee was defective
Specifically, the hot-coffee lawsuit for McD was IMHO a genuine lawsuit that only gets bandied about because it 'sounds frivolous'. The plaintiff sued because McD was significantly overheating the coffee to reduce costs, much more than expected, and all Liebeck was looking for was to cover her medical expenses for third degree burns. There was the usual - "ignore and be dismissive about the problem" perspective from McD officials that led to heavy punitive damages being awarded by the jury. See more details here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald's_Restauran...
Since Liebeck, McDonald's has not reduced the service temperature of its coffee. McDonald's policy today is to serve coffee between 80–90 °C (176–194 °F),[28] relying on more sternly-worded warnings on cups made of rigid foam to avoid future liability, though it continues to face lawsuits over hot coffee.[28][29] The Specialty Coffee Association supports improved packaging methods rather than lowering the temperature at which coffee is served. The association has successfully aided the defense of subsequent coffee burn cases.[30] Similarly, as of 2004, Starbucks sells coffee at 175–185 °F (79–85 °C), and the executive director of the Specialty Coffee Association of America reported that the standard serving temperature is 160–185 °F (71–85 °C). Retailers today sell coffee as hot or hotter than the coffee that burned Stella Liebeck.
The National Coffee Association also suggest 195-205F.