RyansWorld: Young Adult Leadership Program

'''Special Note: Please note that this scenario is meant to be read as entertainment, not as an accurate prediction of the future. Also note that the viewpoints and opinions that may come across in this scenario are not necessarily the viewpoints and opinions of the author.'''

The Young Adult Leadership Program (若い成人のリーダーシッププログラム) is implemented by the Government of the Japanese Federation in order to get people of the post-rock generation to become teachers, businessmen, politicians, lawyers and even medical doctors.

83% out of all Japanese-born air racing drivers (some would say pilots because their vehicles almost never touched the ground) were rated between "very good" and "excellent" on the Young Leadership Program's notoriously hard exit exams between 2105 and 2668. The Young Leadership's exam focus on social skills made it difficult to hone their racing skills other than on the weekends and on school-sanctioned holidays.

Summary
Only natural-born Japanese-students can join the main program but there is a special component (外国人のための若年成人のリーダーシッププログラム) for foreign-born students that eliminates the politics/civics component. This is considered one of the passages of rite into adult life for the Japanese students. Students who fail to achieve up to the expectations of this program by their 20th birthday are institutionalized in psychiatric hospitals and are often sent away on weekends to do the menial tasks that tomorrow's leaders simply refuse to do. Emphasis in Asian politics in the 21st century is to get the people to become secular leaders instead of professional video gamers, slackers and religious leaders (religion is discouraged in the Third Millennium because it entices students away from studying science, politics, medicine and the legal profession).

Most members of the Young Adult Leadership Program reside in the Tokyo area where they have access to resources; both domestic and overseas. One of the components behind the Young Adult Leadership Program is the student-led learning programs; where students learn to lead themselves into the proper answers for life and leadership skills.

From the time that is person is born to the age of 23 months, a Japanese person is considered to be an infant. After reaching the age of 24 months, the child becomes a junior follower until he turns 7 years of age. Once he/she has turned 7 years old, the junior follower becomes a senior follower until he is old enough to attend the Leadership Program at the age 13. As a junior leader, he/she starts to learn leadership roles until his/her 17th birthday when he becomes a senior youth leader.

While senior youth leaders can have a rented apartment in their own name and drink milder forms of alcohol (beer and wine are permitted but harder drinks like vodka and mixed drinks were prohibited), adulthood doesn't legally come until his/her 20th birthday. Along with voting rights, adulthood comes with the right to own real estate in his/her own name. Japanese people cannot get married before their 17th birthday if the marriage is heterosexual. Homosexuals have to wait until their 20th birthday to get married despite the equality measures made in North America, Brazil and in the United States of Europe. Even with the greater gender and racial equality that exists in Japan starting in 2050, equality of sexual orientation is harder to accept than in Western culture.