However, the purpose is largely undone by a confusion. Children are not ready for autonomy. They have neither the internal moral nor intellectual resources to think and judge for themselves in important matters. This, as Sommers notes, is the thesis of Rousseau, though evidently he did not pursue its logic quite so far as his modern disciples. The autonomy of children is only going to make sense when autonomy is naively understood as simply pursuing one's spontaneous preferences.
Moral autonomy is nothing of the sort.
Instead, children require the kind of morally heteronomous upbringing, in discipline and restraint, just as described by Aristotle and Sommers. The insolence and rudeness of many of the recent young is now evident to many. The imprudence of the young, from teenage pregnancy to the kind of drunk driving incidents that returned the drinking age to 21 from 18, is a matter of large public concern. The criminality of the young, especially the sociopathic and even psychopathic behavior evident in recent school shootings and massacres, let alone the criminal slaughter found in inner cities for some decades now, is a matter of frequent sensational headlines. That the public debate over such incidents is typically diverted into controversy over firearms is one of the most disturbing and damaging misdirections in all of recent politics.