Getting your driver's license
as a sixteen-year-old is possibly the first and most important step
into independent adulthood for teens across America. Suddenly, you're
free from your parents in a very tangible way; you're the ruler of your
own domain and you can do things never before dreamed of with reckless
abandon. Fear of teenagers on the rampage have and continue to motivate state legislatures nationwide to
insert (or attempt to insert) stipulations
into the teenage driving code to raise age thresholds
and create curfews for adolescent automobile operators.
The latest effort comes from
Virginia, where it joins the ranks of illustrious states such as West Virginia and Louisiana
in tying public school attendance to driving privileges. Evidently not wanting to be outdone in questionable bureaucracy by its
charmingly backwoods neighbor and a state that nature intended to be
mostly underwater by now, Virginia passed a new law starting next month which suspends the license of any high schooler who misses
10 straight days of school at a Virginia public school without a sufficient
excuse until their 18th
birthday.
According to the legislation,
once the principal notifies the juvenile court that a particular minor
attending a public school in that court's jurisdiction has had 10 consecutive
unexcused absences, the minor will be summoned to court
to give reasons for why his/her license shouldn't be suspended. And since
we all know exactly how persuasive sixteen-year-olds' cogent syllogisms
on driving privileges tend to be, they're pretty much going to be open-and-shut
cases of “Sorry kid, welcome to the real world.”
Yes, we want school systems that have compulsory
attendance policies to have their students actually attend school. Yes,
the government has legal control over issuing driver's licenses and
can suspend them as they see fit. Yes, teenagers are dumb, unruly savages
who have no respect for authority and listen to that crazy rap music
and play on their Wiiboxes and iPhones all day long. But unlike the typical carrot-and-stick
approach, this law seems to be not only beating teenagers with the stick, but tying them up and
poking them with the carrot, too. Making them think that
the government is just a bigger, meaner version of their parents before
they can even vote probably won't instill the sort of civic responsibility we're all looking for in future generations. Besides, shouldn't the parents be the ones to decide proper punishments for skipping school?