Underwhelmed (Score 2)

I'm a little underwhelmed by the perceived attack on the natural rights of the Phillipine school children.

Point the first: These kids are supposed to be in school, going to school, or coming home from school, during the hours of the ban. I know we all agree that The Internet Is A Wonderful Thing, but so is a structured and regular education. That's part of how we in America invented the Internet in the first place-- a large body of mandatorily educated adults.

When someone can make a good demonstration that a child sitting unsupervised on the Internet for eight hours a day will be more aptly prepared for the complexities of adult life, I'll rethink my position.

I smell sacred cow-burger because this involves the Internet.

Point the second: This is not entirely different from passing laws to keep your kid out of video arcades during the day.

Point the Third: We are talking about children, here. It is accepted legal policy (and just plain good sense) that children by their natures are not the most qualified individuals to plot the courses of their own lives. We can quibble about statistical outliers, special circumstances, and whether the cutoff should be 14, 16, 18, or 21 years, but the sense of it remains.

Therefore, children do not have the same spectrum of rights as adults. Among other things, they are told to get their kiesters in school, not to drink, not to do drugs, not to gamble, not to drive automobiles, and so forth.

When they become adults, their status and spectrum of rights change accordingly.

Point the Fourth: The only way this law could be improved is to split the fine between the legal gaurdians (to keep the parents' responsibilities uppermost in their minds) and the shopkeepers (to prevent them from enticing the kids with impunity.) That, and maybe apply the same fines (if they are not already) to comic book shops, video arcades, movie theaters, and wherever else Philippine kids spent their truancy hours, these days.