Laws restricting teens should be abolished.

Work Psychopathy: I am glad that you go into the characteristics of psychopathy, but you apparently did not get the point. This was an . indeed harsh - example. If there are signs for psychopathy, that person is treated medically, and not let to risk others and themselves. This, while does not exactly correspond, has some common things with this - those who are unlikely to report a crime - in our case, a work condition against the laws do harm both for themselves, and for others as well: the employer likely will believe that he can do the same or worse for many other people. Lack of trust: the core point is, what I mentioned already, but did not emphasize: this age causes rapid changes, which cause lack of trust. The first is obvious, for both biological and social changes. While biological changes are important, let's concentrate on the social ones. Teenagers have different responsibilities, changing often. These changes, however, create an atmosphere, in which the expectations are unclear - this can easily be seen every day in real life, for example, new employees tend to be unsure what the workplace expects. Quoting Wikipedia: "In psychology, trust is believing that the person who is trusted will do what is expected." [link 1]. This way, without knowing the expectations, it is hard to trust. Another contributing factor is that young people tend to be more negative, while old people are more positive. [link 2] Trust in government: nearly the same reasoning goes. We, however, have to add that a huge part of social changes occur in places related to authorities and government: school, responsibilities in laws. Taxi driver: certain areas of brain have different "flexibility". To prove this, let's just consider the memory. Even old people can easily retrieve information stored 30-50 years ago, and can exercise this, they occasionally forget what happened the last day. For being a taxi driver, you have to have good spatial vision and reflexes - which often do not even go through brain. [link 3] However, for example, critic thinking will not develop enough - this can be seen via the number of cases, when old people are scammed. [link 2] Education: Training to job: you asked whether should not we only train for our jobs. ("Then why does school require we take gym (physical education)? It should be optional, right? And school should just require the basics of what we need for a job. We can do that with less school hours."). The question which is more interesting: what are the basic skills? You say: reading, writing and these things. I, however, believe that much more is needed. The world has changed - we now need not only basic calculations, but statistics, critical thinking, even some economy, and probably even more. Early leave: even for them, the decision may not be final. Not to mention the need for the same basic skills. Tendencies: first of all, it is interesting that you need studies for common, everyday seen things, while you have not linked much. But see [link 4]. While the link is not only about teenagers, it shows that numerous norm forms exist amongst young people - thus, many have to be nonconformist. College: and many don't. And a 14-year old is much different from an 18-year old. It is also unclear that what do you mean about choosing between high school and college. Do you want some people not to have many of their core skills, or to make their timetable full (college takes time, so does high school, therefore, combining the two takes even more). Not to mention that your idea is actually against your original one - you wanted to abolish compulsory high schools, now want to make a decision between high school and college. Runaway: Risk taking is not age-dependent: I have linked already that risk taking is a result of being a teen. Meanwhile, I believe that you have not proven that risk taking is not caused by age - other skills were mentioned. And even if you did so: what would make your link better than mine? Nothing. Links: http://en.wikipedia.org... http://news.sciencemag.org... http://youtu.be... (this part lasts for around one minute) http://www.law.uchicago.edu... (page 14, in PDF page 16)