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[Nodaisho]

Very very true Emilio, I have found the people that demand respect are stuck-up pricks as well. Most of them are teachers, but I am sure that will change once I start working for people other than my father.

[BrittanyMarie]

Neither could I if I applied at the places you got accepted.

I was meaning more primary schools. It's kind of a well-known thing-at least in the US-that both parents and schools that are in the lower-incomes (classes?) teach more authority, which is kind of the opposite in the more affluent areas, in which they teach to question authority. For the most part, of course.

[E. Spaceman]

 My tuition at mcgill .amounted to 14k a year, which from what I hear about most US places, is prety low

[ruyi]

I think he means school before university. Didn't you go to a school that had mostly upper-class kids? Sorry if I'm wrong, I don't really remember.

[E. Spaceman]

Yes i did, I found most of them the worst people I've ever met

[morca007]

For the record, we in Oregon must be total and complete hippies; Through two different universities, I have had every single professor insist that we call them by their first names, and correct students who said Professor.

[morca007]

Fucking shit, quote =/= modify.

I guess I will use this double post to say that the drinking age should be lowered. In general, I have found that the more liberal a parent is about alcohol, the less likely the child will go out of their way to get wasted.

[Patrick]

Incidentally, prior to this night I had a crush on the older sister of the girl who's house this party was at. The next day the older sister was actually impressed because I drank so much that I threw up. After that, I didn't have a crush on her anymore. Ironic huh? If she thought what I'd done was disgusting and stupid, I'd still have a crush on her, but I was turned off because she was impressed by something I was embarrassed about.

Heh. I couldn't even begin to tell you how much better I feel thanks to this. You've been helpful.

First time for everything OHHHHH ICEBURNNNNN

[Switchblade]

Interestingly enough, When I was in college my lecturers flat-out DEMANDED that we call them by their first names. The same is true on my university degree at the moment. It was only in school that we were required to refer to our teachers as "Sir" "Miss" or "Mr. Ormerod" or whatever, and even then a couple of them (like my English teacher) waived that restriction when we hit sixth form.

Some teachers (and I would tend to agree with them on this point) seem to believe that the best way to teach is to be friendly, approachable and strike up a conversation with your class, rather than being an aloof authority figure at the front dispensing information. A lot of my secondary school teachers were like that but still preferred an honourific (The aforementioned Mr. Ormerod being the best example)

It's not disrespectful if the teacher asks you to call them by name, rather than by title. On the other hand, if they haven't given permission, then I'd consider it extremely rude.

Chapter 2: drinking

My first introduction to alcohol was around about the age of 12, when my parents gave me a glass of sherry to ring in the New Year with. It was a small glass, and when I asked if I could have more, they explained that drinking too much of it could be very bad for me. The next day, in fact, my Dad sat down with me, fired up the Internet (man, is the Internet really that old now? shit...) and researched with me the precise Goods and Bads of "That them thar alcomohols". We researched cannabis at the same time, which is why I've never touched that stuff either, and never will.

Result? I've been drinking in a measured, sensible way since that point. UK Law allows minors of age 14 or over to drink with a meal provided the parents consent to it, and they always gave their consent. In return, I made a point of drinking in moderation.

I don't think that you need to "trick" kids like Amaroq's folks did. It's a valid tactic if you don't want them to drink at all, sure, but I'd say that providing enough information for the kid in question to make a sensible, informed choice on the subject is by far the better angle to take.

One of the most obvious differences in generation, which I only notices in my mother recently, is skirt length. Evidentially, four inches above the knee is too short, even with leggings.

Hehe... weirdly, my Mum grew up in the 60's, and fell into the "miniskirts" crowd. For the short stretch of her life where my Sister was experimenting with short skirts, our Mum turned out to be unflappable on the subject. No matter how long (or not) the skirt in question was, Mum had worn a shorter one.

I think it was frustration that drove my Sister back into jeans.

[tania]

my professors let me call them by their first name. some professors don't let you call them by their first name. obviously there's no right answer here. the argument "you do it just because it's just the way it's done" is really kind of a ridiculous one. things change. eventually people are going to stop and question things. there's no point in continuing a tradition that doesn't serve any real purpose anymore - in this case, professors who don't want to be called by their last names because it makes them feel uncomfortable.

the drinking and smoking age in canada is 19 which sounds pretty reasonable to me. i've never heard any complaints. i don't know anyone who has a drinking problem.

[jhocking]

Teachers were paid to teach me, the tuition i paid provided for their wages. They were given a payment for their services, expecting a special treatment above that seems ludicrous to me.

You obviously understand little about the economics of teaching. Teachers are paid very little, especially considering the amount of training they have to receive (well college professors anyway, maybe not middle school or something.) Certainly in my case if I didn't have a significant source of income in addition to teaching, there's no way I could afford this. And I'm not saying teachers expect to be paid more, but the simple fact is that people get into teaching for reasons outside of money. These people are consciously forgoing a significant chunk of income in order to better your life, and that deserves your respect.

[a pack of wolves]

Here in the UK, people drink for an abundance of reasons. Depression is the number one cause. Social awkwardness or shyness not far behind. Somewhere down the line is the people who actually enjoy alcohol. They are pretty much a minority. I don't think many people drink to stick it to the man. To clarify, I think the drinking age in the UK should be 21. I am not suggesting a ban here. Other countries can do as they please. Here in the UK there is a serious problem and nobody is addressing it.

I agree the UK has a problem with the level of alcohol abuse but I can't see raising the legal drinking age having much effect beyond making it more of a hassle to put on gigs (although the inevitable increase in all ages venues would be good). The only thing that would really change things is addressing the reasons people have an unhealthy relationship with alcohol. I see things like binge drinking as symptomatic of something larger wrong with the culture. Alterations to the licensing laws will only effect what substances can be procured when, not stop people wanting to annihilate themselves and everything around them in a sea of alcohol at the weekend.

[0bsessions]

This entire thread has gone stupid and fucking hostile. Time to contribute!

If you take away something to rebel against, such as drinking laws, young'uns will be less likely to rebel against it.

That's such a load, Patrick. Whether you make it legal or not, teenagers are still going to be irresponsible and the social stigma's still going to be there to rebel against.

I am of the mind that the drinking age is right where it needs to be. Honestly, my opinion lines very heavily with Tommy on this. Sure, kids are still going to drink, but it's going to be I want it to be as hard as fucking possible. I'll be the first to admit that I was an incredibly irresponsible teenager. Yes, many adults are not responsible either, but it's a simple fact of nature and growing up that a teenager is more likely to be irresponsible than an adult. This isn't meant as a knock towards youth, it's just part of growing up. When I was a teenager, I had a major caffeine problem. I didn't really process the effects it had on my body as I had that usual teenage invincibility complex. Nothing could hurt me and fuck the man! It took like six different doctors telling me that if I didn't curb it, it was going to lead to serious physical and emotional issues due to sleep deprivation. I wasn't addicted, per se, I just didn't give a shit cause I simply thought the doctors were wrong. It took three years of severe depression and health problems before I finally considered "Hey, maybe these guys are on to something" and I quit caffeine for a good three or four years. My health took dramatic leaps forward after that. I also developed a nascent fear of substance abuse to the point I went pretty much straight edge for a long while (I obviously didn't know my limits and decided it prudent to not test them). This was all just on caffeine, I don't even want to think about how I would've turned out if I drank as a teenager.

It's a matter of maturity, I guess. Most teenagers have that invincibility factor and a bit less foresight towards potential consequence of their actions. I won't say all teens are that way, but the majority most definitely are and I fell in that majority. It's a simple personality trait. It takes a certain sense of mortality to properly handle drinking and I really think it's that fear that keeps you in line. If you're not at least a little afraid of drinking yourself to death, it's a lot harder to be reasonable with your drinking. That's not to say one will automatically kick into it, when I first started drinking, I had one really bad summer as I went through a very harsh breakup only a couple months after I first started. Fortunately, my survival instincts kicked in and I realized that if I kept drinking at that pace I was either going to kill my liver, wind up with an STD or get someone knocked up (I don't have any figures, but I'd be willing to bet that at least 70% of teen pregnancies happen while drunk).

One of the other big things, though, is physical development. Booze is bad for you. It is, literally, poison. That buzz you feel is the poison slowly killing your brain. Once your body is fully developed, it's all damage that's going to grow back in time, but before that you can do serious, permanent damage if you overdo it. Now, I'm not sure when the female body completes its development, but the average male finishes up his physical development around twenty-two (I believe that females finish a bit younger). This actually, initially at least, had nothing to do with the drinking age, it's just baseline coincidence to my knowledge. Drinking heavily before that can cause damage that you're never going to fully recover from and can in many ways stunt your physical development, limiting your physical and mental potential (Not necessarily a definite, but you've got a decent likelihood). Couple this with the innate irresponsibility of youth and you're more likely to cause yourself serious harm drinking as a teenager. If you've gotta get yourself fucked up to enjoy yourself, smoke pot or something, that's not going to hurt you unless you're an idiot or an emotional cripple.

So yeah, like I said, i think the drinking age in the US is fine where it is. Teenagers have plenty of life ahead of them and they don't need the additional baggage that drinking brings. Yeah, it's fun, but you can have that fun when you're older.

In terms of voting/military service, I think the voting age is fine. In my experience, most teenagers responsible and mature enough to vote in a smart and informed manner account for most teenagers who actually take the initiative to vote at all (There's a small contingent who vote because someone else told them to, but a few years isn't going to get them over that attitude). Aside from that idea, though, raising it would make things even more a pain in the ass for youths who really want to vote with the infrequency of major elections. As it stands, this year would be my first presidential election (At the age of twenty-four) if they raised it to 21. As it stands, I honestly think they should lower the voting age to sixteen (Same as with eighteen, the only ones who would bother would be the ones mature enough to handle it), maybe with a limitation like requiring a high school elective on politics.

The military service age, however, is fucked. Needs to be higher. Honestly, I think it should be 21 to enlist and 25 to be deployed. Give these kids that college education these pricks are promising before you ship them off to die in a fucking sandbox. Smarter soldiers means less fatalities. Pushing the deployment age back to 25 would also mean more emotional responsibility and accountability. If we send in only heavily trained and mature soldiiers, we'll have less instances of PTSD/shell shock which means less homeless and psychiatric treatment which saves the government money in the end. Yeah, I get that disposable soldiers are a nice cheap idea to begin with, but if more soldiers survive and come back well adjusted and EDUCATED, we've got more responsible voters and more potential essential services employees for jobs that need more people (Like police, firefighters, etc). These extra workers then have to buy more shit: houses, cars, produce, electronics. You know what happens then? YOU STIMULATE THE FUCKING ECONOMY! Seriously, people. The economic boom from World War II was not a fluke. When you have a sudden influx of people who need homes, food and machines, you develop the need for more builders, farmers and engineers which means more jobs and more money and more purchases. URGH! Now I've gone and pissed myself off. I blame this hostile fucking thread.

P.S.: Teachers do not deserve respect. People deserve respect. Teachers are people, so they earn that base level of respect that should be afforded to all. From there, any additional alloted respect is based upon the quality of a person, not what job they perform. Beyond that, a title is not a measure of respect, it is a measure of authority.

Edit for counterpoint to Joe:

You obviously understand little about the economics of teaching. Teachers are paid very little, especially considering the amount of training they have to receive (well college professors anyway, maybe not middle school or something.) Certainly in my case if I didn't have a significant source of income in addition to teaching, there's no way I could afford this. And I'm not saying teachers expect to be paid more, but the simple fact is that people get into teaching for reasons outside of money. These people are consciously forgoing a significant chunk of income in order to better your life, and that deserves your respect.

As someone who wasted fourteen grand in an abandoned attempt to become a teacher (And has been reconsidering said abandonment while I still have time to), I empathize with what you're saying, but feel you're a bit off base. Not all teachers are in it for the sheer betterment of others. I've met more than my fair share who've done it for a laundry list of the wrong reasons: not being willing to let go of their youth, craving authority (And being aware subconsciously that being a teacher is a better way of getting that), etc. Even from there, you run into the issue of some teachers becoming just plain jaded and resentful towards the very youth they initially wanted to help. Despite all the jokes we all make regarding how old you are (Read: really, really old), you're young yet when it comes to teaching. Your ambitions are noble, but can you be sure that someday you won't just develop a hatred and resentment towards your students? Looking at things from your current perspective as, I'd assume, the young and cool teacher, would you feel you're afforded that same respect were you to eventually change and degenerate into a petty prick who's essentially only teaching because it's what you know?

[0bsessions]

Oh man, I would. I fucking hate all ages shows. This stems from a large amount of hatred toward teenagers and a glaring resentfulness in the back of my head screaming "Yes, you were that much of a tit when you were their age too."

[a pack of wolves]

I like them myself, the ones I've been to have had far more enthusiastic and appreciative crowds than the jaded old Leeds crowd with their arms staunchly folded against fun.

Back to the booze, I see where you're coming from tommy but to me it seems to be the wrong first step. It addresses the symptom and not the cause and what that generally leads to is the symptom being focussed on at the expense of addressing the underlying problem, so it just ends up popping up somewhere else as some other issue instead. Curtail the drinking and you end up with a greater abuse of other substances, or more violence, or twocking... whatever it might be. Besides, I'm always averse to any measure which curtails individual freedoms. Once you've reached the age of 18 I'd say it was your own business what you do with your body, not the state's. Not to say that what people choose to do is always well advised, like you and so many other people who grew up in the UK I've had my own problems with alcohol in my teens, but I don't think legislation is the answer to that.

[Liz]

I appreciate all-ages shows because I'm not 21 yet, so they let me see some good music. I just wish more shows would be 18+ instead of all-ages because that would keep out the obnoxious 14 year old fangirls that seem to show up for everything.

[mooface]

oh man there are too many posts and they are soooo long and whiny.  but i just wanted to point out that hellooo, here in italy there is basically no drinking age at all and we are all a-ok!  people still get drunk and act stupid when they are young but not nearly at the level that americans do.  and when they get older they mostly just drink glasses of wine with their food and chill out.  so i don't know if lowering the drinking age would help anything, but i thought i'd throw out an example of a country where 5 year olds can legally drink but where young adults don't get shit faced every time they go out.

maybe this is just a cultural thing?  are people of anglo saxxon origin just predisposed towards being stupid alcoholics?  maybe!
i think it couldn't hurt anything to lower the drinking age.  teenagers in america are already getting drunk too much, and being really stupid while doing so.  i don't know a single person (in the states) willing to obey the drinking age.  maybe if people got used the fact that they could drink whenever they wanted when they were young then they would get the fuck over it by the time they got older.

personal anecdote:  i've been offered wine at the dinner table since i was a kid, but i never grew to like it.  my father is very disappointed in me.  the only thing i can drink is bitch drinks because the fruit juice covers up the grossness.  even then i would prefer a coke.  the few times i got drunk was because "well everyone seems to have so much fun doing it that it must be kind of fun right?"  after 3 or 4 tries i realized that i am a weirdo and have much more fun when sober.  oh well, i save a lot of money that way!

[Lines]

I agree with the 18+. The ONLY benefit of having younger teens at a show is because they are shorter and provide a better view. Other than that, especially for shows where the audience is dancing/moshing/squishing other people, it's not good to have younger kids, because they get trampled. I forget what the band was, but it was a metal band my friends went to see and they spent most of the show helping this couple keep others from crushing their kids, who were around 10. That and going to all ages shows makes me feel very old, because the kids look at you like, "OMG, WTF, she's leik so old."

For the teacher thing, I considered being a teacher until I realized 1) I didn't want to stay in school for an extra year and 2) I don't want to end up teaching art to people who don't really want to be there. I can only take little kids for so long, so I would have taught older kids, but then I remembered what shits I went to high school with who treated my teachers like crap. I would not be able to put up with that crap for 5 days a week. I gave my teachers a LOT of respect because they did deserve it. Putting up with shitty kids to try to help improve their life and give them the education they needed deserves respect. I happened to really like a lot of my teachers and I felt badly for them when some random idiot gave them shit. The teachers who were douche bags, though, I did not disrespect them, but I felt no empathy for them if kids decided to mess with them. If I ever decide that I want to teach, I will either teach community classes or I will get my MFA and teach college level. At least then I know that the people I'm teaching actually want to learn.

[a pack of wolves]

The last time I went to an all ages gig with moshing the ten year olds were doing speaker dives. Let them get a little squashed, it's what being a kid's all about. After getting flattened by a large man falling over in a circle pit it will have taught them a valuable lesson to make sure they look where they're going or they could overbalance a gentleman of girth moving at speed.

[Patrick]

The thing is, I'm not even worried about alcoholism.

Good for you. However, this is of little comfort to the rest of the world. I'm going to go ahead and suggest that possibly the reason you don't drink as much as you might because you don't have the opportunity very often.

All it takes is me calling some friends and going downtown (a 30 minute walk from here, 5-10 minutes by taxi depending on traffic) and hitting up a bar. You do have a point regarding the living-with-my-mother thing, and I'll give you that, but when I was in Alaska I had people who would've bought me beer if I had given them the money, but it never happened. I drank on two occasions there and was never past a good buzz (probably had something to do with the fact that MGD is shit, but whatever).

but i just wanted to point out that hellooo, here in italy there is basically no drinking age at all and we are all a-ok!  people still get drunk and act stupid when they are young but not nearly at the level that americans do.  and when they get older they mostly just drink glasses of wine with their food and chill out.

I swear Italy and Albania are clones of each other in this respect. Even the foreigners (Yanks, Canadians, Brits and the like) will sometimes let their 10-and-up kids drink occasionally.

I honestly believe that if you don't make a big deal out of alcohol when kids are young, there isn't so much mystery behind it, and there isn't such an air of "Drinking is exclusive because it's only for the cool adults" surrounding it. When I was a little kid in elementary school, there were the kids who would be like "Yeah my dad let me have a sip of his whiskey" and other kids would be like "OH LUCKYYYYY". I was one of the kids saying how lucky the other kid was.

[jhocking]

As someone who wasted fourteen grand in an abandoned attempt to become a teacher (And has been reconsidering said abandonment while I still have time to), I empathize with what you're saying, but feel you're a bit off base. Not all teachers are in it for the sheer betterment of others. I've met more than my fair share who've done it for a laundry list of the wrong reasons: not being willing to let go of their youth, craving authority (And being aware subconsciously that being a teacher is a better way of getting that), etc. Even from there, you run into the issue of some teachers becoming just plain jaded and resentful towards the very youth they initially wanted to help. Despite all the jokes we all make regarding how old you are (Read: really, really old), you're young yet when it comes to teaching. Your ambitions are noble, but can you be sure that someday you won't just develop a hatred and resentment towards your students? Looking at things from your current perspective as, I'd assume, the young and cool teacher, would you feel you're afforded that same respect were you to eventually change and degenerate into a petty prick who's essentially only teaching because it's what you know?

Oh I definitely agree with you about some teachers being in it for the wrong reasons. Lord knows my students tell me dirt all the time about other teachers (not that I take all of it at face value; these are after all young people complaining about authority figures.) And ultimately, if I'm being honest with myself I know that my own desire to help others is more than a little due to selfish motivations like prestige. However, I was reacting to Emilio's statement that being payed negates the accordance of respect.

[Sox]

Patrick, I don't think that people drink because it's "mysterious". I do know a lot of kids who drink because they're pretty self destructive and unstable. Making it easier for these kids to obtain alcohol is just about the worst idea in the world. The more difficult it is to obtain alcohol, the fewer people will drink it. Raising the legal drinking age certainly isn't going to cause more people to purchase alcohol.

[pilsner]

If you're inclined to destroy yourself, alcohol is just one of a variety of options open to you.  There's no reason to think that making alcohol less accessible reduces self-destructive tendencies in young adults or makes it more difficult for them to harm themselves.

What rendering alcohol less accessible does do is makes it more likely that a young adult will be less experienced with alcohol when he or she does encounter it, and gives the teen a great incentive to binge since if you can't go to the corner store to get it, you have to take advantage of it while it's there right?  And the damage that alcohol does to teens isn't most frequently through gradual every day use, it's through binging and doing something stupid or something you can't help: driving, putting themselves in a dangerous situation, aspirating their own vomit, passing out outside and dying of exposure, etc. 

For instance this news article cites experts who suggest that a higher drinking age had a significant effect on lowering car accident related fatalities in teens but has a number of negative effects including raising the likelihood that teens would drink more alcohol in a shorter period.

[Amaroq]

When I was eleven, one rainy evening during Thanksgiving weekend, my mother put my brother and I through a terrifying twenty-minute ride (on the wrong side of the road, sometimes) before running a red light, crashing into another car, then spinning around and hitting a stoplight so hard it fell over.  I had known, when we got into the car, that she was too drunk to drive, and I felt awful knowing that I had almost asked my dad not to let her drive us but didn't have the balls to follow through.

That suxx. Sorry to hear about it; glad nobody was hurt.

I hope you're not still blaming yourself for that. You were eleven, and not responsible for her actions!

At that point, I promised myself that I'd never drink.  At about the same time, because my parents both smoke pot, I vowed never to smoke.  It's hard to rebel against a couple of hippies, really.

My friends and I have a long-standing joke about this: really, the only way to rebel against a pair of hippie parents is to become a Republican!

I've managed to politely decline the now-almost-weekly invitations that I get to smoke pot with my increasingly drug-minded friends (one close friend and one acquaintance have started dealing in the past year), and I've kept my drinking so far to very occasional, very light social drinking.  Will I continue to be such a prude?  I don't know.  But for now, that's how I'm different from my parents.

I totally empathize.

When I was 13, a close friend of mine got so into hard-drug addiction that he wound up stealing from just about everybody he knew, but loathing himself for it. The epitome of low self-esteem perhaps? Anyways, I promised him I'd never ever start, and then he died of an overdose. So .. the promise had a lot of weight for me.

I had a ton of druggie friends throughout high school, and, as you can imagine, it was important to me to "take care of" them. I was always the one baby-sitting. From pot and acid to dabbling with crack and heroin, I sat through their experimentation with them - I figured I had more experience with drug use and side-effects than any non-user outside of the medical / counseling professions. I certainly got very good at talking people down out of a bad trip!

Then, as though to challenge my ability to say "no", I went to pot-haven U.C. Santa Cruz .. and played for the Ultimate team. At least I got away from the people doing the hard drugs!

Just figured I'd offer my own experiences and support for your choice: I don't think it makes you a prude. It just shows that your word (to yourself) means something.

If you've got that kind of personal integrity, you're "good people" in my book.

[E. Spaceman]

Oh I definitely agree with you about some teachers being in it for the wrong reasons. Lord knows my students tell me dirt all the time about other teachers (not that I take all of it at face value; these are after all young people complaining about authority figures.) And ultimately, if I'm being honest with myself I know that my own desire to help others is more than a little due to selfish motivations like prestige. However, I was reacting to Emilio's statement that being payed negates the accordance of respect.

No no, i respect a lot of teachers, however I don't respect then because they are teachers, just like I don't respect anyone for whatever employment they may have.
Jon summed up my opinion here

Teachers do not deserve respect. People  deserve respect. Teachers are people, so they earn that base level of respect that should be afforded to all. From there, any additional alloted respect is based upon the quality of a person, not what job they perform. Beyond that, a title is not a measure of respect, it is a measure of authority.

[tania]

like mentioned earlier, i don't know anyone with substance abuse problems, but this probably has something to do with the fact that most of the people i associate with are fellow university students who are paying a lot of money for their degree and can't really afford to fuck it up.

the thing is, i drank far more before the age of 19 than i did after turning 19 and also had quite a few friends in high school with substance abuse problems. using maiada's example, i'm guessing social context plays a much bigger role here than the law. while raising the drinking age does help in that it makes alcohol harder to acquire (personally i wouldn't complain if for some reason or another the drinking age here was raised to 21, even though i am 20), it isn't going to accomplish much if situated in a culture where binge drinking is seen as acceptable regardless.

[idiolect]

Whoa whoa whoa!  Call people by whatever name that they ask you to call them by, not whatever you decide on.  Jeez.

why?

Do you seriously not understand that?  I really don't know how to put it any more clearly.  I mean, if you told someone to call you X, and they said "Nope, I think I'm going to call you Z.  How's it going, Z?" wouldn't you find that annoying and disrespectful?

people are idiots and that questioning is an essential thing if you don't want to be an utter sheep.

Oh no!  I don't want to be a sheep!  Please tell me how to be different!  Will certain kinds of music and perhaps fashion help?  Are there other different people I can be just like?
/snark

Anyway, sure, okay, an active and inquisitive mind is a good thing, generally.  It's also much better if that energy is put into asking interesting questions, like how the world works, what the purpose of life is, how to be a good human being, etc etc, instead of all this impertinent "questioning" about why you should do something like call people by the name they'd want you to.



Also, I don't know what you guys are talking about with the "class issue" thing -- in terms of elementary and secondary education, the schools I went to were pretty upper-middle-class, and we had to call everyone by their last names and there were pretty clear rules and requirements and such, pretty standardized disciplinary procedures.  Since then, I've worked in a couple of schools that were so bad off they didn't even have toilet paper in their bathrooms, and there, everything was WAY more flexible and strange and disciplinary procedures pretty much depended on whatever teacher was there at the time, and the atmosphere of the school suffered immensely for it.  Even though kids could get away with a lot more in the latter situation, the whole atmosphere was WAY more tense and unpleasant.
Now I'm back in school myself at a terribly expensive college, and we call EVERYONE (students included) by their last names in class, which lends it this (imho) cool, formalized, old-school scholarly atmosphere.  This particular school is kind of a unique case though, and I could imagine that somewhere like Marlboro for instance might prefer first-name-basis naming instead.

[Patrick]

The more difficult it is to obtain alcohol, the fewer people will drink it.

Yeah, uh, history has already showed us how that can backfire.

[tania]

what?! banning alcohol altogether isn't even remotely the same thing as having it available only to people of a certain age. everyone gets older eventually.

[Elizzybeth]

When I was 13, a close friend of mine got so into hard-drug addiction that he wound up stealing from just about everybody he knew, but loathing himself for it. The epitome of low self-esteem perhaps? Anyways, I promised him I'd never ever start, and then he died of an overdose. So .. the promise had a lot of weight for me.
[...]
Just figured I'd offer my own experiences and support for your choice.

I'm sorry for your loss. But thank you.  It's nice to hear that people have made decisions like that and truly managed to stick to them.  Some of my friends seem to have a "well, that's fine for now, Elizabeth, but one day, when you're as mature and as cool as we are, you're probably going to try it" attitude, which has maybe started to get to me a little bit (actually, my mom, too--she's been offering me pot when I complain of menstrual cramps).

[RedLion]

The more difficult it is to obtain alcohol, the fewer people will drink it.

Yeah, uh, history has already showed us how that can backfire.

Oh man, but I'd love to go back to that time, in spirit if not in law. Going to a Speakeasy in the 1920's would be amazing. And Bootleggers, while not a pleasant lot, were probably much better than the drug cartels we've got nowadays.

ADDENDUM.

Whoa whoa whoa!  Call people by whatever name that they ask you to call them by, not whatever you decide on.  Jeez.

why?

So if you introduced yourself to someone and said "my name's John," and the other person responded "Yeah? Well I'm going to call you Alfonzo every time I see you," and then did that, you wouldn't be the smallest bit annoyed? It doesn't really have anything to do with the idea of respect, but with the idea of not being a douche.

[Patrick]

what?! banning alcohol altogether isn't even remotely the same thing as having it available only to people of a certain age. everyone gets older eventually.

The example is still valid though. If you make laws ridiculous, somebody's going to break them.

[Scandanavian War Machine]

If you make laws, lots and lots of people are going to break them.

fixed

[Amaroq]

I'm sorry for your loss. But thank you.  It's nice to hear that people have made decisions like that and truly managed to stick to them.  Some of my friends seem to have a "well, that's fine for now, Elizabeth, but one day, when you're as mature and as cool as we are, you're probably going to try it" attitude, which has maybe started to get to me a little bit (actually, my mom, too--she's been offering me pot when I complain of menstrual cramps).

You're welcome; and thanks, its been 20 years but as you can tell I still think about him sometimes.

That's a subtle form of peer pressure; I've heard it applied to sex as well. Maybe hearing it in that context will help: some  swingers I knew used it to argue for the swinger lifestyle: "We're just so much more well-adjusted than the typical judeo-christian-ethic American sex hang-up; when you're as well adjusted as we are, you'll want to try it too."

Its a classic trick of debate: the statement starts with the postulate that their choice about drug use, or swinging, or whatever, is inherently more "right" (sophisticated, mature, etc) than the choice not to. They take that postulate as a given; you don't. Neither is right or wrong - but the way they're phrasing it is: "Because we're right, the fact that you disagree with us implies something is wrong with you." That stems from our human tendency to "want to be right". And of course, by using words with high positive connotation (cool, mature) its playing on your emotions and natural desire to want to fit in.

I got that a bit, about the drug use thing, but for the most part I was lucky: I surrounded myself with people who respected my choice, even if it wasn't the same choice they'd made.

It still trips me out a bit to know that my mom's done more drugs than I ever will.. 

[Boro_Bandito]

Oh man, but I'd love to go back to that time, in spirit if not in law. Going to a Speakeasy in the 1920's would be amazing. And Bootleggers, while not a pleasant lot, were probably much better than the drug cartels we've got nowadays.

Man, That is the best party idea I've heard in a while. I'm going to have to pull it off. Invite two groups of people, the first has to dress in 20's costume and then have mixed drinks in old bottles with labels like moonshine and absynthe.

Then about half an hour in have the second group show up in police uniform.

But yeah, You do know that Bootleggers are more or less the start of organized crime in the US? Nothing bad has ever come from any of that has there?

[Storm Rider]

It doesn't really have anything to do with the idea of respect, but with the idea of not being a douche.

To be fair, this is a pretty foreign concept to Emilio.

[Darkbluerabbit]

So if you introduced yourself to someone and said "my name's John," and the other person responded "Yeah? Well I'm going to call you Alfonzo every time I see you," and then did that, you wouldn't be the smallest bit annoyed? It doesn't really have anything to do with the idea of respect, but with the idea of not being a douche.

One time I went to a boyfriend's family Christmas, and his drunk uncle decided to start calling me Isabel.  "Jill, I'm never gonna 'member Jill.  I'ma gonna call you Isabel."  I thought it was pretty funny, actually.  One of my friends had a similar thing happen to him, and now he has a great nickname that he has fully embraced, which we all call him by to this day.

[calenlass]

My grandfather calls all of his daughters and granddaughters names like "Oscar" and "Charlie". My only male cousin on that side is "Margaret" or "Ophelia" or "Susan", depending on the day.

[tania]

If you make laws ridiculous, somebody's going to break them.

but... they're not ridiculous because literally every single person on earth is capable of aging.
i just don't see what makes a drinking age of 21 so unfair.

[Liz]

I wish I had strong feelings on this topic so I could get really involved in this discussion but as I pretty much despise alcohol I don't really give a damn what the drinking age is.

[pilsner]

Man, That is the best party idea I've heard in a while. I'm going to have to pull it off. Invite two groups of people, the first has to dress in 20's costume and then have mixed drinks in old bottles with labels like moonshine and absynthe.

Then about half an hour in have the second group show up in police uniform.

There's a bar in Manhattan that more or less tries to set out the speak-easy experience.  Unfortunately, it's filled with douchebags on the weekend.  I'm not sure what would happen if you went there in 1920's police outfits.  Could be tragic, could be awesome.

[Nodaisho]

Personally, speaking as a 16-year-old in the U.S., the only reason I give a shit about alcohol laws is that it would drive up the price if I wanted to buy any, since I would end up having at least one more middleman than buying from a liquor store. I am not afraid of the police catching me drinking, that is less likely than the alcohol spontaneously combusting. However, my dad would notice, he keeps an eye on me because he knows what teen-aged boys are like, having been one himself at some point in the mesozoic. I could get around him, if I tried, but I don't care enough to do so, I don't really see the attraction to doing something that gets you stupid, the only attraction for me is curiosity, I want to know what it tastes like, and maybe what it feels like to be slightly intoxicated, my self-preservation instincts are too well-maintained to find the idea of getting plastered attractive.

So, I suppose the laws work to stop me, but only because I do not care enough about alcohol to make enough of an effort to bypass the laws. While I do not have any evidence either way, I would guess that the people that care enough to get around the laws are also far more likely to be the people that get dangerously drunk, and I also believe that not knowing when you would be able to drink next would make it more likely for someone to drink as much as they can, which is obviously dangerous.

[onewheelwizzard]

On the subject of the "we make our decisions to use drugs because we are more sophisticated/mature" attitude that some people have, I have to admit to having been distinctly guilty of this in the past to varying degrees, and furthermore not really feeling bad about it.  I've personally had such powerfully positive and meaningful experiences using drugs that I find it damn near impossible to shake the idea that in some way, somehow, someone who's never taken mushrooms or LSD (or for that matter smoked weed) is legitimately missing out on something important.

I know that in reality, there isn't a single reliable advantage that doing drugs offers anyone.  For me personally, it absolutely has been advantageous to take drugs and I feel as if I'm much better off for having done so, but under no circumstances can that sort of thing be generalized beyond my personal experience (obviously).  Still, there's a part of me that honestly feels as if there's just something about tripping that helps a person develop their mind, and that the only way someone can take psychedelics and not benefit from the experience is if they somehow manage to completely ignore or even consciously deny that opportunity for development.  Sometimes I feel like no matter how objective and sensible I try to be about it, my faith in the potential offered by drug use still kinda puts me in the category of people who consider themselves to be somehow more mature or mentally sophisticated or emotionally healthy because of a lifestyle choice to take drugs, and that's not a category that I am particularly proud to be in ... even though I'm quite happy to credit a significant portion of my personal development to my (entirely subjective and unique to me) experiences with drug use.

It's weird ... the reason why I can't generalize my own positive drug experiences is that I know they're personal to me, but at the same time the reason why they're so powerful is that they've given me the distinct feeling that drugs actually do have some sort of universal power to do good.  I guess this is what it feels like to be religious ... you know in your mind that your own choice clearly wouldn't work for everyone on Earth, but you only follow it as closely as you do because it keeps giving you the unshakable impression that somehow it could.

TL;DR I think some drugs are awesome, and I respect and support people's choices not to use them but I'll probably always hold a little hope that someone who doesn't want to use them will change their mind sometime and take the plunge.

(My parents have grudgingly accepted that I do drugs.  It's not their favorite, obviously, but they know I'm OK and so they're not worried.)

[a pack of wolves]

but... they're not ridiculous because literally every single person on earth is capable of aging.
i just don't see what makes a drinking age of 21 so unfair.

It's just far too old in my opinion. The idea that you'd get up, go to work, come home and then would have to break the law to have a beer while you watched a film or have some wine with your meal is utterly ridiculous to me. Even though you'd be able to get access to alcohol without too much trouble, just as it was no real hassle for my friends and I to buy booze every weekend from the age of 15, the principle that you aren't allowed it until the arbitrary age of 21 is wrong. Plenty of people I know had been working full time for five years by that point in their lives, or were parents, or at least had been living away from their own parents for years. They were adults, but a drinking age of 21 would treat them like children.

[Hat]

but... they're not ridiculous because literally every single person on earth is capable of aging.
i just don't see what makes a drinking age of 21 so unfair.

Do you not agree in a place with a drinking age of 21, a young person of 20 has all the responsibilities of an adult, and yet doesn't have this adult privilege? I would say it is reasonably unfair to expect all the qualities of adulthood out of a 19 year old for legal purposes while denying them this basic adult pastime.

Quite frankly, I just don't see what makes a drinking age of anything above 18 justified in the first place.

[Nodaisho]

Well, I have heard that before then the brain is still developing, and the alcohol can harm it, but I haven't seen the studies that said that, and if any actually did, I would not be in the least bit surprised to see that they were done in the U.S. and had some government sponsorship.

[Spluff]

It's not like anybody actually ends up waiting for the legal age anyway, be it 18 or 21.

[Nodaisho]

Some people do, but those are the ones that wouldn't be problematic in the first place.

I honestly do not think that the drinking age is effective in the least, it is not well enough enforced to intimidate people into obeying it, which is how a law does its work, fear.

[Switchblade]

If you make laws ridiculous, somebody's going to break them.

but... they're not ridiculous because literally every single person on earth is capable of aging.
i just don't see what makes a drinking age of 21 so unfair.

It's not the drinking age at 21 that weirds me out, personally, so much as all the other legality ages relative to it. Specifically, the gun laws.

To me, it's purest industrial-grade Madness Oil that any country is willing to let it's citizens legally buy lethal weaponry before they can engage in such a comparatively benign action as drinking.

The driving at 16 thing I can understand - it's a big country. But I'm consistently bemused by the fact that, Quote: "An individual 18 years of age or older may purchase a rifle or shotgun from a federally licensed dealer in any state."

I've heard the arguments in favour of this arrangement - that somebody who's had three years to get used to proper, safe handling of a firearm is less likely to do something stupid with it when they get drunk for the first time. But, the same argument works the other way round - somebody who's used to drinking and has built up a degree of experience and immunity will be more able to handle the alcohol, and is therefore less likely to do something stupid when he finally gets his hands on a gun.

[Patrick]

Exactly. You have time to learn exactly how idiotic alcohol can make you, because with alcohol there's a world of possibilities as to what kind of ridiculous stupid shit you can get up to.

With guns, however, I can think of only 4 possibilities as to what kind of stupid shit you can get up to:

1. You hurt yourself
2. You maim yourself
3. You kill yourself
4. Any of the above, but applied to somebody else

Those are things that you don't really want to learn about by example, I am pretty sure! Starting off by learning how to handle guns and THEN throwing alcohol into the mix is just a recipe for disaster. Your judgement is fucked up, your inhibitions are fucked up, your motor skills are fucked up, and either of those things behind a trigger would make me crap myself. Better to learn how alcohol affects you BEFORE you learn how to handle a gun.