Treating Our Students as Adults

摘要

Our students arrive to begin their university education after many years of experience as students. They have been students for at least twelve years. Some of them expect to be students for almost a decade more. For much of their earlier education, these students were children and were treated as children. We would like to consider when students should begin to be treated as adults, and what this might mean. The dictionary definition of adult is: "A person, animal, or plant that has reached maturity. In civil law the term is applied to males after the age of fourteen and to females after twelve." In the U.S., few would consider a fourteen-year-old male or a twelve-year-old female to have reached maturity. Indeed, the actual age of what is called "majority" can be quite difficult to determine. The age at which minority ends and majority begins varies from country to country (and sometimes varies by state/province). Certain activities have different ages of entry into adulthood than others. Legal ages for drinking alcoholic beverages are sometimes quite different from ages at which one can obtain a driver's license (sometimes lower, sometimes higher!).