Fei Yu, Dong Hao, Shiqah, Marliyana (08S33) ©

Question:
The opposition team in a debate on the topic: “Young people today are
so fortunate.” Is this true?

Teacher’s Comment:
Good range of examples and content. However, some points need to
be further elaborated (the point on education in developed nations),
otherwise, it may seem irrelevant.

Marks: 7/10

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"Young people today are so fortunate."

Subject: Young people.
 Teenagers aged between 13-21.

Relationship Cluster: fortunate or unfortunate.

 Privileged.
 Lucky.

Context: Today.
 Speedy.
 Competitive.
 IT savvy.
 Space-shrinking technologies.
 Environmental problems.

Estrange relationship between parents and teenagers

• No longer rare for married women to work full time and not become housewives.
• Men are no longer the only breadwinner of the family.
• Parents too career minded.
• Both parents tend to spend too much time at their workplaces.
• They do not have much time to spend with their children.
• Hence, teenagers nowadays experience lack of care and attention from their
parents. This results in a strained relationship between teenagers and their parents.
• Also, this nuclear family structure has caused the widening divide between
working parents and their children.
• Young people have no one to look up to in their family for advice or as role
models
 • Experience a lack of love and care from adults resulting in them feeling unwanted
and will stray.

Example: According to U.S. Department of Labor Statistics, in 2005, nearly 71 percent

of women with children work. And, since 2005, the percentage of women returning to the
workforce after having children has been on the rise.

Example: The suicide rate climbed 18% from 2003 to 2004 for Americans under age 20,
from, 1737 deaths to 1985. Most suicides occurred in older teens, according to the data –
the most current to date from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Increase in vulnerability of teenagers straying.

• Internet has become a very important part of a teenager’s life.
• It breaks down boundaries to communication such as distance.
• However, it is very destructive to a teenager’s life;
• Teenagers easily gain access to undesirable contents such as pornography.
• Easily manipulated and influenced as they are still in the process of maturing.
• With parents spending lesser and lesser time at home, there is no one to monitor
the teenager’s online activities.
• Increases social ills among young people.
• They would be daring enough to turn what they see into practices.
• As a result, more and more young people stray from the right path.

Influence of Technology
• Young people have a great attachment to the Internet, computers and mobile
phones
• Technology allows young people to remain connected and learn themselves
through such technologies like the internet
• But young people will move away from the real life and lesser interaction
between children with their parents.
• Exposed to undesirable materials containing sex and violence from websites and
television.
• Long term exposure to these materials may be of negative influence to their
impressionable youth who lack the maturity and discernment to distinguish the
right from the wrong.

Juvenile delinquency increasing

• Young people get influenced by their surrounding or their immediate environment
easily
• Peer pressure and temptation are other main causes.
• Without proper guidance from the older ones will also lead to such negative
behavior.
 • Thus, many young people wasted their youth time doing unnecessary things that
cause them valuable time.
• Also, some of the young people are school drop-outs (inadequate education) and
lack of leisure-time activities.
• These are some of the factors that make them vulnerable as well as to involve in
criminal and other deviant behaviour.

Example: In UK, 29% of young people said they had committed at least one act of anti-
social behaviour in the previous year.

Lack of Education in developing countries

• Parents in developing countries are unable to send their children and young
people to schools
• Insufficient money
• Education is vital to improve their standard of living and ensure employment.
• Without education, the vicious cycle of poverty will continue on.

Example: 115 million children are not in school – 56% of them are girls and 94% live in
developing countries. 133 people cannot read or write. And only 37 of 155 developing
countries have achieved universal primary school completion.

Apathy for the less fortunate

• Young people have little knowledge on how poor and how homeless people’s
livings are.
• Those living in developed countries will not experience major poverty in their
lifetime.
• Lack of emotions and only care about themselves
• Without thinking of how life is like for young people like them in the third world
countries.
• With lesser young people having such feelings, the world will have lesser future
leaders who have apathy for the less fortunate.

Education in Developed Country

• In the past, young people have more free time to pursue their dreams.
• However, now, young people are restricted
• They must complete a certain amount of years on compulsory education resulting
in lesser time to pursue their dreams.
• No human rights, 1/5 of our life is fixed.

Example: Newton only compelete his primary school that is why he have the free time to
sit below the apple tree and think earth have gravity ; Beethoven started to play piano
when he was five and he even never attend primary school , but he still become one of
the greatest musician

Example: In Singapore, Singaporeans must complete at least 10 years of education.