Let me make one thing perfectly clear here. I'm fifteen, so legally, I'm still a child. I was in the magnet class for three years, have memorized pi to about 118 digits, use vocabulary words that can confuse adults well beyond my years, and know a considerable amount about quantum mechanics and astrophysics for someone my age. So, yeah, I suppose by your definitions, I'm "smart."
And I wouldn't wish anybody the pain of me being unleashed upon the world with full rights, myself included.
From what I've seen by looking through the seventeen pages of this thread, most of the debate is waged on the question of whether children are mature and prepared enough for the real world. Let me tell you, we aren't. It is scientifically impossible for children (teenagers included) to be entirely ready for the world of work and travails. It seems to me (now, granted, there's a possiblity that I've missed something on some obscure page) that most people so far has been using generalizations about sociological matters and things like, "Oh, look at all the adults that are messing it up in the world, shouldn't that show you how kids are capable of doing better?" or "Hey, if you let out all the kids into the real world, a bunch of bad ones will get out with the good," or "But what about just letting out the good ones," yadda yadda yadda. Yes, I'm paraphrasing, but... you get the point. And then the rest of the arguments go something like this:
"All children are mature enough!"
"No, none are!"
"Yes they are!"
"No they aren't!"
"Yes they are!"
"You're dumb!"
"You too!" *blows rasberry*
Again, I'm paraphrasing (rather crudely, by my own admition), and that's not the point. And to me, most people that I have seen who have posted as of yet have rather good arguments. But clearly, sociological arguments aren't getting us anywhere. Let's try the science side, shall we? (Gee, a nerd interested in science. That's novel.)
So back to my (sort of) thesis statement: it is not scientific to believe that children can handle everything this world throws at us. You see, before puberty, the brain is much more different than it is afterwards. Alright, I'll give everyone under thirteen a moment to cringe at what they've seen in films about puberty, everyone over eighteen a moment to cringe at what they had to go through, and everyone between thirteen and eighteen a moment to scream in terror at what they're going through right now. (I'm joking, just joking. Sorry for my terrible humor.)
Anyway, puberty is essentially the training period that gets you ready for everything. If we send in kids before or during it... ooh, shudder. Puberty does a massive amount of work on us. It's not just making us taller, or bigger, or more hairy; oh no, it does a lot more than that. And also, I'm not even really concerned about what it does to most of the brain; the thing I'm really concerned about is what it does to the frontal lobe. You see, the frontal lobe is what controls decision-making, determining what a person does, social responses, stuff like that. And it is never really developed until from sometime between ages 21-25 (Oh, hey, whaddya know. The drinking age suddenly makes sense!). You see, if we give a large amount of people who haven't got frontal lobes all the way up where they should be before real decisions (besides deciding whether you want PB&J or ham and cheese for lunch), all hell breaks loose. I'm not going to sugarcoat it, it's bad. Undeveloped frontal lobes are the reason why so many teenagers do drugs, and alcohol, and break laws, and get into car crashes, and cause pregnancies at the age of fourteen, and so on.
Honestly, I can't tell you how many ways that puberty reforms the mind and matures a human being. But trust me, the changes are drastic. It's a terrible idea to allow children (who have not yet obtained developed minds) the same rights and obligations as adults.
Now, keep in mind, this is all scientific fact, as much fact as the idea that the heart is a muscle, or that cells are incredibly complex, or that... or that feet are normally used for walking, for crying out loud. Puberty is basically our second "school," if you will.
Oh, and a large amount of people have been saying, like I mentioned before, things like "Oh, look at all the adults that are screwing it up in the world, shouldn't that show you how kids are capable of doing better?" Now, the difference between the irresponsible adults and the children in this world is that adults have gone through this stage of growth, while children haven't. I'm willing to concede that some children might be able to make it, but I don't think any of us are really capable enough to do so. Now, as for the adults, they should be responsible for what they do, even if they don't do so. They're more like aberrations from the regular course from naivete to adulthood, who have made dumb decisions despite their capability to do otherwise with their frontal lobes completely full-fledged and whatnot, while we children are almost completely predictable to not have entirely developed brains. Actually, I'm pretty sure that no one has a completely developed brain until at least around twenty or twenty-one, unless they have some sort of disorder that makes them grow more quickly. In any case, those with that disorder would be a fluke (something probably like one in ten million), and they would probably not have enough experience anyway.
And another thing, you're complaining too much about it. We have got it made. Our only responsibilites are school, and anything optional that we take upon us, unless you happen to live in a dysfunctional or poor family. And for that, I'm not quite sure that there's any remedy, besides making the family work together to love one another or finding the adults some way to get a better job. Anyway, for the most part, our lives are immensely better than those of adults. It's extremely easy for us, and we have almost no cares in the world compared to what adults must go through. It will be over in a flash, too, just wait for a couple years and then you'll have decades to have all the rights you want and then feel terrible about all the responsibilities too.
So, fellow infants, drink grape juice and be merry, for tomorrow, we get rights.
(Sorry, had to throw in that last reference. :P)
Actually, let me finish with one other reference: it's like Marco Polo said when he has about to die: "I have not told half of what I saw." There are so many ways (as I said before) that we kids aren't all the way there yet, it's too many to count or state.
