Date: Friday, February 19, 2016

Participants

(from 12 countries)

Host: Rick

Co-Host: Johny

Teams

Panel PRO (Team A): Jesson, Cadet Khan, Masato

Panel CON (Team B): Usman, J.A., Haary, Aliza,

Audience (Team C): Johny, Lala, Saifi, Seif, Ganaa, Grace, Rojhano, Perfect.

Team A summary

Jesson: In their search for their own identity, some teenagers can be very vulnerable to the influence of other people. If there are people who do illegal things during the night, they can influence negatively to these teenagers. This may happen especially if teenagers want to be accepted by those people. It’s easier to do bad things during the night.

Cadet: Curfews provide more opportunities to parents to watch out and control their children by staying at home. The more time children spent at home, the less likely they are to become drug addicts or criminals.

Masato: if children really obey the rule, then it might be effective, but it’s not always obeyed.

Team B summary

Usman: the more time the teenager spends at home, the less he/she will know about the outside, about what is going on in the society. He/she may lose first-hand experience and knowledge about certain things. One thing is to learn things at schools but another very different is to learn things from society.

It wouldn’t make any difference if the teenager stays at home after certain hour because whatever he/she will do it can be done at any other time. It all depends on the kind of education that teen had. If he/she was well educated, then he /she will not do bad things outside at nights. The night itself does not make teenagers do bad things.

It’s much more important for parents to know with who their children are. What kind of friends they have.

J.A: It essential to their knowledge and experience for teenagers to be exposed to the society. Curfews take away opportunities of doing so. If they encounter bad situations, they can seek advice from their parents.

Haary: most teenagers tend to be rebellious and don’t want to listen to almost anyone. They want enjoy their lives and imposing such rules may not be effective at all. Even if we forcefully keep them at home, if they want enjoy the outside they will find the way to break such a rule. It’s their lives and they will not get it back. If we want them not to do certain things, it’s better to just talk them out of them than forcefully imposing things.

Lala: Curfews for kids keep them safe from doing risky behaviors. Imposing curfews may reduce violence and keep gangs’ activities and criminal rate low. It keeps teens away from temptations such as sexual risks, drug use, drinking and other bad teen habits. It also improves teens learning by giving them enough time to do homework and enough sleep.

Johny: most criminal activities are done by adults, not by teenagers. Most teenagers are at home either way because they sleep early. They have classes in the morning so not all teenagers roam around all night. If we impose these rules to teenagers, we may show that we don’t care about people’s freedom and feelings. It’d be better if we rather talk to them and advise them when they are in difficult moments and not going about preventing them from learning by themselves just because we say so.

It’s important to all teenagers as it was for us to attend a prom, or to know what a sleep over in a friend’s house is. It is a good experience to have as teenagers. In addition, if we impose things to them, things they won’t like, and based upon their rebellious nature, we would actually encourage more negativity from them. Moreover, if they are engaged in bad activities, they will do it anyway in another time, either in the morning or in the afternoon, a curfew will not make any difference. The night doesn’t have a monopoly on negative activities.

Votes:

· Saifi B

· Johny B

· Ganaa B.

· Lala A.

Team B won this debate. Thanks everyone for participating. Below are the links to listen to this discussion.

Listen Online