A story that has been in the news lately is the University of Pennsylvania’s acceptance of a 15-year-old into their Ivy League halls. Brittney Exline, one of this year’s freshman-class members at the northeastern university is, certainly, entitled to enrollment at a university well in advance of her peers, but such early academic prowess begs the question: What happened to adolescence?
The point is not that Exline, and other students her age, should be discouraged from attending universities earlier than their peers, but rather that such young students will be entering into a social strata for which nothing but life experience can prepare them. Because such students are so blatantly out-of-place on the college campus, the pressure of succeeding is that much greater and failure reinforces the popular idea that they as people are simply not ready for the university world. This pressure, the added stress and the workload that college students have to deal with on a daily basis is just too much for a student not yet allowed to drive a car to class.
At the ripe old age of 15, no one really knows who they are or what they are doing with their life. To be in college at such an age is asking for a mental breakdown and a mental contest between adolescence and the quasi-adult college student. No one should be forced to watch their adolescence flee so quickly into the realms of memory.
Not being able to drive a car, enter an R-rated movie without supervision or cast a ballot are just a few of the examples of how a college student the age of a high-schooler misses out on so much. Many things that happen during years in high school socially and mentally prepare students for the onslaught of moral and social predicaments that college students can easily find themselves mired in.
Another aspect to consider is what will happen after a student graduates with a college degree at the age of 18 or 19. Not many corporations would want to hire such a candidate-at least not without parental consent or a live-in babysitter. A student in college at the age of fifteen must continue on into postgraduate education just to be over-qualified when they finally do graduate at the ancient age of 22 with a masters degree.
Would-be sophomores in high-school are certainly not ready for the social atmosphere of college, and are definitely not ready for the after college business world. To be held accountable for so much at such a young age is a form of cruelty that parents should avoid. Where did childhood go? When did we start deciding that it is okay to rob our children of the social experiences that prepare them for the future? Children need to have their naive and irresponsible years to avoid becoming jaded adults who look at their past with regret. Let them keep their purity; let them keep their immaturity; let them keep their adolescence.
