7 ms·

I'm curious if any other country has 16 years olds demanding cars for their birthdays or if it is just our insane culture. There are countries where 16 year ol

by ck2 13y ago

I'm curious if any other country has 16 years olds demanding cars for their birthdays or if it is just our insane culture. There are countries where 16 year olds would be completing their 6th year at a sweatshop making shirts.

pcunite 13y ago
ck2, I get what you're saying ... it's true. But we don't model ourselves after the 3rd world. The governments of those nations should be looking to us, not the other way around. Having said that some discretion on our part is needed. I don't think every 16 year old needs a car. But that is up to the parents.
- ck2 13y ago
  The 3rd world reference was to show the other side of the extreme. I was thinking there has to be some kind of middle ground. Also, I don't want to be on the same road as a 16 year old driver in 2013 in the US (with their own car). Zero attention span.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- judk 13y ago
  The 3rd world doesn't have a 5th world to exploit, so looking to us as a model is not a viable option. They should be looking to us with a very critical and suspicious eye.
kjhughes 13y ago
I agree that it's insane for any culture to encourage such extreme feelings of entitlement, but don't lose sight of the motivational merit that's at the heart of this story. Wanting a first car (or an exotic sports car, or a yacht, or anything which is normally beyond our reach) can be very motivating, and that motivation can be productively channeled. That a 14-year old was able to do so is impressive and encouraging. That our culture celebrates productive ambition is also encouraging.
- BillyMaize 13y ago
  I want to agree with you because it sounds like a great story, the "American Dream", but there are so many kids who want so much and almost none achieve what this girl did. It's like praising a professional sports player for success but ignoring the fact that the other 99.9% of kids who played too many sports and didn't pay attention in school didn't get very far in life. It happened to work out in this situation but it is far from the normal case.
  - socillion 13y ago
    High school sports are correlated with academic achievement: http://newswire.uark.edu/articles/20127/it-s-not-either-or-success-on-field-and-in-classroom-are-related-arkansas-research-shows http://newswire.uark.edu/articles/20127/it-s-not-either-or-s...
    - BillyMaize 13y ago
      All that study seems to show is that schools with more students in the sports programs also produce better students. Isn't it possible that schools that strive for better athletes also tend to strive for better students and those two groups could be separate? I know out of the 20 engineers I went to college with, only one of them was in any sports and he did pretty poorly and barely graduated.
      - socillion 13y ago
        Of course, it's only correlation. Causality is unclear, the correlation isn't, and correlation is enough to render incorrect the inference that athletes perform worse academically than non-athletes. Here's a review of the topic: http://library.la84.org/3ce/HighSchoolSportsParticipation.pdf http://library.la84.org/3ce/HighSchoolSportsParticipation.pd... Notably, it starts out with "... research has time and again demonstrated a strong and positive correlation between high school sports participation and academic achievement. This basic, baseline finding holds for a wide variety of measures and on a whole range of data sets, methodological approaches, and social conditions." "The crucial point for a general audience is that periodic updates, reviews, reappraisals and re-evaluations (Braddock 1981; Picou et al. 1985; Holland and Thomas 1987; and Marsh 1992) have, over the years, consistently and invariably yielded evidence concluding that there is a significant baseline correlation between high school sports participation and higher rates of academic achievement and aspiration for individual students... Even research that is critical of the sports/education nexus or that seeks to complicate and unpack this statistical association begins from this basic assumption and understanding."
JoeAltmaier 13y ago
I'm sure some 16-year-olds do that. But this one merely suggested that a car would be a good gift. You've maybe done that yourself - planted the seed in your significant others' minds? Unfair to imply she 'demanded' anything - as if she's an entitled lazy girl instead of a record-breaking entrepreneur.
bluedino 13y ago
Do you want to drive your 16 year old around to school/work/sports/practice/friends/library/mall?
billmalarky 13y ago
She didn't "demand" a car, she asked for one. What kid in America doesn't want a car for their 16th birthday? I asked for one too, and I got one. I had to buy it myself but my family helped me find one that was super cheap ($50) and it lasted me all through highschool. It wasn't stylish, but as Fat Tony would say, the sentimental value of it was through the roof.
- socillion 13y ago
  > What kid in America doesn't want a car for their 16th birthday? The ones who don't have money for gasoline or $1800 a year for insurance, and who know without asking that their parents will never pay for any of this.
  - billmalarky 13y ago
    They still don't want a car that they know they can't have?
    - socillion 13y ago
      I enjoy moments like this, where it's suddenly obvious in a discussion that we think about something in completely different ways. Did I want a blimp when I was 16? If someone offered me one I would have said yes, but it's not something I ever really considered - likewise for a car. I suppose a large part of this is due to growing up in an area with very good public transportation and bike infrastructure, but there were a million things I wanted before a car, such as the $60 computer I spent years saving for.

by ck2 13y ago

pcunite 13y ago

ck2, I get what you're saying ... it's true. But we don't model ourselves after the 3rd world. The governments of those nations should be looking to us, not the other way around. Having said that some discretion on our part is needed. I don't think every 16 year old needs a car. But that is up to the parents.

ck2 13y ago
The 3rd world reference was to show the other side of the extreme. I was thinking there has to be some kind of middle ground. Also, I don't want to be on the same road as a 16 year old driver in 2013 in the US (with their own car). Zero attention span.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
judk 13y ago
The 3rd world doesn't have a 5th world to exploit, so looking to us as a model is not a viable option. They should be looking to us with a very critical and suspicious eye.

kjhughes 13y ago

I agree that it's insane for any culture to encourage such extreme feelings of entitlement, but don't lose sight of the motivational merit that's at the heart of this story. Wanting a first car (or an exotic sports car, or a yacht, or anything which is normally beyond our reach) can be very motivating, and that motivation can be productively channeled. That a 14-year old was able to do so is impressive and encouraging. That our culture celebrates productive ambition is also encouraging.

BillyMaize 13y ago
I want to agree with you because it sounds like a great story, the "American Dream", but there are so many kids who want so much and almost none achieve what this girl did. It's like praising a professional sports player for success but ignoring the fact that the other 99.9% of kids who played too many sports and didn't pay attention in school didn't get very far in life. It happened to work out in this situation but it is far from the normal case.
- socillion 13y ago
  High school sports are correlated with academic achievement: http://newswire.uark.edu/articles/20127/it-s-not-either-or-success-on-field-and-in-classroom-are-related-arkansas-research-shows http://newswire.uark.edu/articles/20127/it-s-not-either-or-s...
  - BillyMaize 13y ago
    All that study seems to show is that schools with more students in the sports programs also produce better students. Isn't it possible that schools that strive for better athletes also tend to strive for better students and those two groups could be separate? I know out of the 20 engineers I went to college with, only one of them was in any sports and he did pretty poorly and barely graduated.
    - socillion 13y ago
      Of course, it's only correlation. Causality is unclear, the correlation isn't, and correlation is enough to render incorrect the inference that athletes perform worse academically than non-athletes. Here's a review of the topic: http://library.la84.org/3ce/HighSchoolSportsParticipation.pdf http://library.la84.org/3ce/HighSchoolSportsParticipation.pd... Notably, it starts out with "... research has time and again demonstrated a strong and positive correlation between high school sports participation and academic achievement. This basic, baseline finding holds for a wide variety of measures and on a whole range of data sets, methodological approaches, and social conditions." "The crucial point for a general audience is that periodic updates, reviews, reappraisals and re-evaluations (Braddock 1981; Picou et al. 1985; Holland and Thomas 1987; and Marsh 1992) have, over the years, consistently and invariably yielded evidence concluding that there is a significant baseline correlation between high school sports participation and higher rates of academic achievement and aspiration for individual students... Even research that is critical of the sports/education nexus or that seeks to complicate and unpack this statistical association begins from this basic assumption and understanding."

JoeAltmaier 13y ago

I'm sure some 16-year-olds do that. But this one merely suggested that a car would be a good gift. You've maybe done that yourself - planted the seed in your significant others' minds? Unfair to imply she 'demanded' anything - as if she's an entitled lazy girl instead of a record-breaking entrepreneur.

bluedino 13y ago

Do you want to drive your 16 year old around to school/work/sports/practice/friends/library/mall?

billmalarky 13y ago

She didn't "demand" a car, she asked for one. What kid in America doesn't want a car for their 16th birthday? I asked for one too, and I got one. I had to buy it myself but my family helped me find one that was super cheap ($50) and it lasted me all through highschool. It wasn't stylish, but as Fat Tony would say, the sentimental value of it was through the roof.

socillion 13y ago
> What kid in America doesn't want a car for their 16th birthday? The ones who don't have money for gasoline or $1800 a year for insurance, and who know without asking that their parents will never pay for any of this.
- billmalarky 13y ago
  They still don't want a car that they know they can't have?
  - socillion 13y ago
    I enjoy moments like this, where it's suddenly obvious in a discussion that we think about something in completely different ways. Did I want a blimp when I was 16? If someone offered me one I would have said yes, but it's not something I ever really considered - likewise for a car. I suppose a large part of this is due to growing up in an area with very good public transportation and bike infrastructure, but there were a million things I wanted before a car, such as the $60 computer I spent years saving for.