Date: Friday, February 10, 2017

Participants:

(from 8 countries)

Teams

Panel PRO (Team A): Sara, Hanieh, Alireza

Panel CON (Team B): Djamila, Zivar, Saeed,

Audience (Team C): Johny, Rojhano, Seif, Boboty, Fangping, Merisa

Joined late: Altul, Jami

Host: Rick

Co-Host: Johny

Team A summary

Sara: Toys can be an obstacle for taking part of some sports. Playing with war toys can cause some violent reaction. Playing about how to kill people can condition them. They learn savage behavior. It’s better to teach other useful things like music and how to improve their body-health rather than teaching how to kill. When children play with toys, they learn about the activities that are involved with playing with their toys.

Hanieh: toys are the children’s world. Playing helps them get in touch with reality in terms they understand. It also gives them opportunity to learn how to interact with other children or people. When we buy them toys, we want to help them because we know they have emotional and mental impacts. Toys are also tools of education. They can have a variety of toys but we should make sure the war toys should not be the predominant type of toys they have.

Alireza: don’t know what effect they can cause to their lives. Children should have more toy options. Children can also “act” according to the toys they are playing and it could be dangerous, for instance, playing with guns pretending they are killing other people.

Team B summary

Djamila: The best option is not to make toys a big deal. Having a wide range of toys can help the children to find his/her personality. It may be important to see how your kids behave when playing with certain toys. Banning may not be a good idea. In many cases children don’t know how to play with them and we need to teach them how. It’s not up to us to say that their kids are aggressive or that they will become like that. Too offensive to say children can make their option but it can be the right thing to do. Drawing too much attention to toys – for, example by banning them or refusing to buy them – can actually make your child want them more.

Zivar: Not to purchasing will not guarantee that the person will not behave wrong when they grow up. Maybe paying with them and talking with them will make them understand that it’s just a game. If the kids are aggressive them the best thing to do is to let them play a little bit less with those toys. Toys can have both positive and negative effect but it does not depend on the toy and it also depends on the way we teach them how to play with them.

Saeed: Movies have a big influence on kids; they can feel attracted to what they see in movies and may insist parents to buy them something like what they saw in the film. Children may not see the real application or the real effect of guns so this fact can be used to rest importance to the matter.

Team C summary

Johny: (just voted, did not give any opinions.)

Rojhano: I agree that children should have choices but it’s not what the topic is about. Both teams made it clear that children have needs but team A could defend their arguments a little bit better.

Boboty: Both teams agreed that toys have influences on children’s future. However, I agree that we should only buy them things that will be useful for their future and that we should avoid exposing them to dangerous toys. Even though team B argues that it’s important to let them have experience with different types of toys, the argument does not convince me enough; because when they are young and unstable, allowing them to play with certain type of toys can have a tremendous consequence for their future; even if it doesn’t seem to be the case. One point neither team talked about is that if there are toys that can cause negative impacts on children, these should be allowed to be sold or manufactured in the first place.

Merisa: When children are born, they come into life without any experiences and parents have no rights to limit children on what they can experience because when they grow older, they need to know how to interact with other children and parents are supposed to provide their children with as many possibilities as possible. “Let children experience everything.”

Votes:

Johny: Team A.
Rojhano: Team A.
Seif: Team A.
Boboty: Team A.
Merisa: Team B.

Team A won this debate.

Rick’s take away: A lot of this depends upon the child. We cannot look at all children as the same. Though there are some children who have some problems, we cannot put a ban on all toys. There are some children with some of those problems who should not be around these toys and parents should make a choice; but saying that we should teach parents not to purchase these toys is an absolute statement and I don’t agree with absolute statements because it all depends on the children and on the environment the child is in.

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