I was thinking about how 16 year olds in England are full adults, the idea that teens can decide their own medical care and move out without parental consent sounds amazing and could have honestly saved the lives of some kids I went to high school with. letting 16 teen year olds vote too makes sense since the obviously have a stake in the future more so than older people I would say. On the other hand the idea of 16 year olds binge drinking and being with older adults, and god forbid getting married to adults turns my stomach. I know we have some users from England so I am curious to hear your thoughts. I guess my instinct is to stagger everything at the appropriate ages. honestly sometimes i think 18 is too young to get married lol.
18 for adulthood. 21 is too old for some things, like only being allowed to go clubbing and drink at age 21? People that go to university straight out of high school would be almost graduated/in their final year of a three year degree by the time they get to 21. Half the fun of university is doing dumb shit while legally high or drunk from what I've heard. On the other side 16 is too young for some things. I don't want 16 year olds to have full on driver's licences or get married lol. So 18 is a good middle ground.
in carmerica thats considered a restriction on their GOD GIVEN FREEDOM!! 🦅 🦅 🦅 🦅 plus how would the children drive themselves to the coal mines
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its the bane of my existence
South Africa might just be the one country more car brained than the US, but even here you can only get your learners permit at 17, and a proper licence at 18, after a full on test in a manual car. (If you do the test in an automatic, your licence is restricted to auto only). Motorbike learners licenses start at 16 though. Sure these can all easily be bribed, but still. At least the laws exist.
whats the age to drive tractors, lol? also I wish I could bribe cops in America, make corruption work for me.
Farms and tractors is different, since there's a lot of private land and a low population density, you get literal kids driving pickup trucks, dirt bikes and farm equipment lol. Sometimes they even drive into town to pick up stuff. Knew someone in middle/high school that almost went to jail because they were driving on the highway near the farm and got caught.
Bribery definitely causes a lot of problems though. Obviously it seems cool to get the police to fuck off if you get pulled over for a bs reason (em, "profiling"), but it's really screwed up the transportation industry. See the minibus taxi mafia nonsense, no public transport, etc. Also leads to cops soliciting bribes, like they pull you over and don't want to ticket you, they just want a bribe. Weather it's cash, fast food or fizzy drinks. I've seen all three work as a bribe before. Hell even gas station pies can work, SA cops have no standards lol.
I've tried to use more American friendly vocabulary here to make it easier to understand, before someone calls me a fake South African for using words like pickup truck and middle school.
what y'all call pickup trucks? I know you guys call traffic lights robots! You see Im a big of a south african expert myself The Color of Friendship was my favorite disney movie as a kid/ jk.
Pickup trucks are called Bakkies (lots of words from other languages like Afrikaans, Zulu, Xhosa, Tswana, etc make it into our everyday English vocabulary), yes traffic lights are called robots, the elevator is a lift, and middle school doesn't exist. You get primary school (grades 1-7) and high school (grades 8-12). In primary school you have the junior phase (1-3) and the senior phase (4-7). In high school the junior phase is grades 8 and 9, and 10-12 is the senior phase. In grade 10 you get to pick your own subjects and stuff.
I've actually never watched the Colour of Friendship lol. From what I understand it's a story about a white girl from apartheid South Africa living with a black family in the US? Is that right?
Also edited my previous comment to add a bit about bribery.
Bakkies is a fun word! and yes thats the plot its not a good movie, but I loved it as a kid, i watched it probably a hundred times. the plot purely from memory is. a white south african student marhee goes to live with a black senators family in an exchange program. the senators kids are super exited to have a REAL AFRICAN living with them and are shocked and disappointment when this racist white girl shows up. marhee and piper (the oldest daughter) end up trying to talk out their differences to their parents so they dont have to admit they were wrong or something. Piper learns about how the south african government is evil to the point where they dont even let people watch black people on tv, or even touch black people, and white south africans are "brainwashed". Marhee learns about the magic of integration and the american civil rights movement and that black people are not scary. all is well until Steve Biko died in prison (i think it was him, not a fictional character) and then Marhee almost get KIDNAPPED by the south african government until senator dad saves her. and then marhee the worlds mos ungrateful little shit says something like "maybe he was breaking the law or something" while piper is crying. a huge fight break out and FOR SOME REASON everyone forgives her in like a day. anf then stuff happens they are bffs forever and marhee goes to her servent back home and shows her some flag to show she supports the liberation movement and she sets a bird free, and then she goes BACK to AMERICA to fight against the apartheid with black americans. truly a wild ride
I, like the black main character, also did not think africa had white people, and was shocked and upset at the concept (my dream was to move "to africa" at that age and thought it would be a land free of white people.) and then I learned about apartheid and was upset all over again. the movie is super "we should all just love and respect each other guys, and you gotta be patient with white people" I like it as a kid because it was all about how cool American black people were lmao. seriously it has a real "racism is over in america" victory lap.
I got my learner's permit at 15 which is just insane to me now