Here's another one for the Empty Vessel theory. This is the mindset that children, up until the exact age of 18, are mindless automatons, incapable of individual, independent thought, and useful mostly for their ability to parrot the beliefs and prejudices of whichever adult has the keys to the machine. And, hopefully, to take out the garbage in a timely manner.

The news story in question mostly has gotten attention for a different reason: political harassment. It involves the late May filing, by the District Attorney of Humboldt County (Calif.), one Terry Farmer, of eight counts of felony child endangerment and eight counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor against 19-year-old David Wehrer of San Francisco. In the incident that got him in trouble, Wehrer, an Americorps volunteer, brought 16 San Francisco high school students up to Humboldt County to participate in restoration projects and outdoor education. While there, eight of Wehrer's 16 students were detained for trespassing during a community protest against Maxxam Corp.'s redwood-cutting policies.

The charges are, of course, a grandstanding ploy by Humboldt's district attorney, who, in saying Wehrer used his students as "cannon fodder," compares them to the involuntary tykes of the Children's Crusade. (This doesn't explain why only half of Wehrer's students participated in the protest.) The students committed misdemeanor infractions; their teacher gets hit with multiple felonies.

For perspective, remember that this is the same jurisdiction in which pepper spray, swabbed directly into the eyes of peaceful, nonresisting protesters, first gained law enforcement currency--and where the death of eco-protester David "Gypsy" Chain, a genuinely violent crime, was attributed to a falling tree, sorta like a gunshot victim being murdered by the bullet. During the protest Wehrer attended, one of his students, Alex Kelley, was reportedly treed by loggers who threatened to burn him alive. No charges, "endangerment" or otherwise, are pending against the logger. In Humboldt County, it's pretty clear who the law does, and doesn't, apply to.

Beyond that, however, there is a telltale attitude toward minors, one that quietly pervades much of the thinking in America's War On Kids. It is that anyone under the age of 18 not only has no rights, but has no brain. Wehrer is only a couple of years older than some of his students; the idea that he could order them to helplessly go forth and commit civil disobedience is ridiculous to anyone who's ever lived with a teenager. His students should be responsible for their own acts, prudent or not.

But the same mindset that guides Humboldt County's DA also thinks that curfews, the War on Drugs (and anti-smoking campaigns), and ever-more- draconian juvenile "justice" systems can impose societal will on kids who are simply imitating the perfectly legal (or at least unpunished) behaviors of adults. Or it thinks that super-achieving kids must have every minute of their days crammed with activities that appeal to whichever adults inflict them. Childhood is a process of exploring and of learning to exercise judgment and responsibility. It is being eradicated.

The consequences of adult efforts to control every aspect of minors' lives range from laughable futility to the needless destruction of lives--and where it really gets costly is when Authority tries to drum out the admirable idealism and questioning that most kids--especially teens--wield against the world. In a healthy, truly democratic society, that skepticism would be a cherished lifelong value. In America, or at least in Humboldt County, some prefer to believe that it's not possible.