Coersion and the lash -- wielded for the kids' own good, of course -- don't just betray parental insecurity and a poisoned view of childhood and adolescence. These measures strip teenagers of every rite of passage in the name of "doing the right thing," infantilizing budding adults by wiping out every activity that facilitates maturation in a human being. Certainly nobody wants them to be kids forever.

Or do they? Privacy on high school campuses has vanished, as if only constant surveillance can ensure that teens won't dabble prematurely in adulthood. Lockers are searched; surveillance cameras installed in hallways and parking lots; campus doors locked so that students can't leave the safety of school grounds and get in trouble. Administrators hand students specimen cups and require them to urinate in order to prove that they are drug-, alcohol- and tobacco-free. If they fail, they'll be booted off the soccer team, or barred from the prom. High school seniors who are arrested for possessing even the smallest amount of marijuana are told that they'll lose federal financial aid if they go to college.

To prevent kids from even thinking about sex, they are urged to take virginity pledges, to heed the word of government-sponsored abstinence-only sex education programs that teach teens that their lives will be ruined if they don't stifle their sexual impulses. Teenage girls who do have unprotected sex -- perhaps because they weren't taught about birth control in their abstinence-only classes -- will find that they can't get abortions without parental consent, and that the morning-after pill isn't available.

Zero-tolerance policies expel kids from school for bringing a Swiss army knife to school or putting up a Web page that complains about a teacher in vaguely threatening language. Books like "Harry Potter" are banned from school libraries, lest an impressionable freshmen decide she wants to become a witch. At one San Diego high school, the female principal recently forced girls to lift their skirts and prove that they weren't wearing seductive thong underwear if they wanted to get into a school dance. Harassment, but committed in the girls' best interest.

And now, in San Fernando Valley high schools, graduating from high school is a privilege earned with one more perversion of teen justice. It is not enough to ban thong underwear in school; now high school administrators want to regulate kids' behavior far into the future, manipulating their choices once they've left their high school home. Suddenly, getting a job while you figure out your life or helping your family make ends meet just isn't good enough; it's a "bad" decision that, like taking drugs or having sex, deserves to be punished.

These programs are almost breathtakingly naive in their ignorance of even the most remedial aspects of adolescence. Lots of kids are going to dabble in drugs or sex or petty crime or general aimlessness. And they will do it because it is against the rules. Some might become dropouts and losers. Most will dabble and learn from their mistakes, much like their parents and the administrators whose sudden-onset amnesia keeps them from remembering, perhaps fondly, their own pasts. Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard. Steve Jobs did lots of acid. They both seem to have turned out just fine.

Of course, it could be memories -- explicit and cringe-inducing -- that cause school administrators and some parents to make rules to quash the natural development of children. These panicky attempts to ward off adolescence often come from panicked adults with futile plans to keep their kids from following in their footsteps. How sweet. How dumb. It is one thing to use your experience to soften the blows of adolescent screw-ups; it is a pompous and unrealistic thing to think you can prevent potential unpleasantness and life-changing blunders. In order to eliminate those dangers, you would have to eliminate the process of growing up. They're trying. But it will never work.

Fortunately, we tend, as Americans, to fight hardest for our freedoms: Freedom of speech and self-expression dominate our basic sense of justice. Autonomy and individuality are the essence of our brand. Yes, we want kids to graduate and go to college. We want them to steer clear of drugs, avoid pregnancy and disease, and stay out of jail. But we also are thrilled when they strike out, build something in the garage, write novels, reject the tyranny of the main to accomplish something extraordinary on the periphery. And they should do these things because they have realized on their own that they want to do them, not because they have guns to their heads. If we lighten up and trust, we can acknowledge that this is what it is to be an adult in a free country.

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