Who are you calling “boy”?

I’ve noticed an interesting pattern in the news and I think it reflects changes in our society.  Who do you think of when you hear the word “children”?  I think of small children who are unable to take care of themselves.  I don’t think of teenagers and I tend to exclude preteens as well.  Someone who is 12 years old and able to take care of my children is not really a child.

In the past, as children grew up they became “young adults”.  Teenagers were considered young adults.  Older teens were actually considered to be adults.  We arbitrarily assign the age of 18 as being old enough to vote and to serve in the military but these “adults” can’t have a glass of wine until they are 19 (in Saskatchewan) or even 21 (in Iowa).  Younger adults can have a glass of wine in many (all?) European countries.  So, the designations of child and adult are arbitrary and the dividing line between the two moves depending on the situation.

I would argue that a 15-year-old is not a child.  He is a young man and capable of choosing right over wrong.  This is true of Omar Kahdr who was 15 when he threw a grenade, killing a US soldier.

Andrew James was 15-years-old when he was working for a paving company in Manitoba.  His parents consented to his taking the job.  He died this week when a load of hot asphalt was dumped on him.  This is a tragedy but it could have happened to any of the employees working there.  The company definitely needs new workplace safety strategies in place (like a spotter to tell the driver when it’s okay to dump the asphalt).  However, Andrew was not a “boy” as the Globe and Mail subtitle states.  He was a young man who died tragically at a summer job. 

The company will be fined because they violated the law but the government admits that the law is only enforced if someone complains.  I worked at jobs as a teenager doing such dangerous “adult-only” jobs as using a pizza crust roller.  Young adults shouldn’t be excluded from jobs based solely on their age and this tragedy shouldn’t be used to argue otherwise.  The same thing would have happened had someone else been standing there.