Social science offers intriguing findings regarding minors’ understanding of civil rights, citizenship and the vote. What we will discover is that minors, even very young children of eight or 9 years, are often keenly aware of their second-class citizenship and exclusion from the political process in general and not just in regards to the vote. We will consider the potential implications of these findings for civics education and human rights education in the schools, as well as the implicit lessons for the struggle for the vote at 16.