Have you ever dealt with actual High Schoolers?
Because your entire argument is based on abstract principles that have jack-squat to do with reality.
I've been an Ice Hockey coach from the Squirt level to the Midget level. That's roughly 10 years old through 18 - 19 years old. I've been the president of a Youth Ice Hockey association, and probably surprisingly to you, associated with "Take our Daughters and Sons to Work" day for several years, and as part of that, attempted to steer young women toward Science and technical careers.
The young boys and girls on the hockey teams have a marked tendency to be well behaved at the squirt level - with only a few exceptions, then when puberty kicks in, can become quite erratic in behavior. By the time they reach 15 years old, most have adapted to the surging hormones. By the time they are at Midget age, they are pretty close to physical adulthood, and are in large part, pretty sensible, and are capable of making intelligent decisions. note: I was not around many young ladies at the midget level, because with a few exceptions, they had moved to women's Hockey from co-ed hockey due to differences in mass of the young men.
While my experience with the young ladies in the TOSADTW events was not as in-depth as the coaching, the same maturity level was true. Little kids that turned into giggly early teens, then by they time they were seniors, intelligent and articulate young ladies. If they were allowed.
18-year-olds are not mature adults. Period.
And some folks want to extend that age of adulthood to 25 years old. But it really doesn't matter, because children will stay children as long as you allow/force them to be children.
http://www.medicaldaily.com/ad...
I'll bet that 30 years might be the next extension.
Not too many years ago, people were married at the young age of thirteen or so, and supported themselves and raised families.
I was 21 when I was married, and my wife had just turned 18. I was working full time, just having started my first retirement program - at her insistence, which turned out to be a rather mature move on her part, perhaps?
But if you are correct about their immaturity, it is because we don't allow them to be mature, not because they are inherently biologically or psychologially incapable of maturity. Millions of years of evolution mock your "Period". If 18 year old people were not capable of maturity, we wouldn't be here today. We'd be sleeping with the fossils.
They have quite the legal responsibilities of adults, but nobody is surprised when they check a criminal record which includes a lot of stupid shit prior to the age of 21 and is clean thereafter.
And you know, some people never gain adult maturity either. Regardless, my notation of the biological versus artificially extended childhood still stands. You didn't see those 15 year olds a hundred years ago with a couple children getting into trouble.
Moreover, this story is not about 18-year-olds. It is about 16-year-olds. They have even less maturity. They have fewer legal responsibilities.
Sure. But it's part of the extended childhood thing. And I'm not even arguing against extended childhood within reason
But people - all of them - have to realize that there is simply no possible way to protect their children from every possible threat or from bad people, or even other people who are just goofy. That's why colleges had so many problems with Helicopter Parents. The parents were still trying to make every decision for the pseudo adults they were refusing to let go. Ever have a adult child call mommy and daddy, because some professor is "mean" to them, then the outraged parents demanded the professor be fired? It's happened. Ever see a parent scheduling their childs classes - even at 21 when the child is a senior. Some want to come along to job interviews:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/th...
Universities are now trying to cope with the helicopters. On orientation day, they separate the mommies and daddies, and their babies,(hyperbole intended) and tell each of them that it's part of becoming an adult, both for the child to start to claim control of their own life, and the parent's to let go. It's hard for sure, but the benefits are great. At least in my case, I could hardly wait to get out from under parental control and make my own decisions. In my informed and experienced opinion, trying to keep your children as children as long as possible is cheating them out of many years of adulthood.
Learning to deal with jerks and other unpleasant people and situations is just a part of becoming a mature adult. Trying to protect them, trying to make certain that teenage boys do not say and do stupid things, and that you just might have to persevere at something, even if someone says you shouldn't, because it's a dead lock that all young people will run into adversity in school work, and life in general, is just part of growing up
And in the end, if young women are so turned off by a completely innocuous photo that they declare that as a reason to go into another field, and that a photo like that is ispo facto sexual harassment, we have a choice of three things.
1.Try these obnoxious males as adult sexual offenders, and give them the same punishments.
2. completely segregate the sexes in school. Send boys to one, and girls to another. At that point, there will be no male harassment to dissuade the young ladies, and the field should quickly even out in a gender equitable mode
Either solution which is pretty heinous. But we see many people thes presumably enlightend days that are lsowly heading us in that direction:
I was going to give a direct link, but if you google "Girls only STEM school", you will be treated to the future
Is that what you want? Because there is simply no way to protect any young lady from the offensive photo that might make her drop the idea of a STEM career because it is inexcusably sexist and demeaning.
By the way, those TOSADTW days were interesting. These were daughters and sons of engineers and scientists, both male and female. We always asked what careers they were interested in - especially daughters, since they were our actual target group and the original girls only day was rightfully percieved as sexist. The boys were sort of tokens. I think over the many young ladies polled, only one or maybe two out of hundreds over the years, were interested in and STE careers. Overwhelmingly, it was neck and neck lawyers and veterinarians, followed by MBA's. engineering, computers, science and technology were in the noise floor. Mor young ladies wanted to be singer/entertainers than STE.
To which I find a certain irony, in the lawyer and MBA preferences. I have a friend who's sister was an "escort" for her company. That's right, when an important visitor came to town, she would entertain them.
In summary, While it is the alarmingly sexist business and legal world, where some times you are told that sexual favors are the path to your promotion, it's those geeks in programming that are the real problem.
Or perhaps not.