Teens getting out of hand.....

Article: Teen crime getting out of control in Britain
Author: PAULA MCCOY
Publisher: The Straits Times
Date: 27/08/2007
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The above article was talking about the teenage crime rate rising and non-stop. According to the experts, the problem had been building for 20 years in Britain. Also many examples were given in the article. I do agree with the author that this issue is important and must be addressed immediately. Since teenagers are going to be the future of our world, hence such behavior must be stopped and fast.

It is universally acknowledged that young people go through a phase of rebellion when they grow up. Not only in Britain, around the world, people are facing such problems. The teenagers want to express their individualities and they seem to think that the best way of doing this is to be rebelling. They range from arguing with parents to committing crimes. Many of their criminal behaviors are to attract attention to themselves and to impress their peers. Although most of times their action were harmless, but now that it seems their action are getting them into trouble with the law.

As what the article had stated, parent background had been one of the main factor. Most of the teenagers commit crime due to their childhood. This had been proven through analysis of the teenage offenders. Most of them grew up in a violent background and were abused by their parents. Their parents’ act of violence often had a huge impact on teenagers’ life. A lot of the crimes committed by teenagers are copied from what they seen in the movies or television. Upon seeing violent acts on television and violent behavior from their parents, often makes them think that such behavior is acceptable. And all such acts were learnt in their childhood at home.

Besides home, the environment also plays a important role as stated in the article. I too as a student tend to be influenced by those around me. It is the tendency of parents today wanting to earn more money by constantly working. Hence we have a situation of children being along since from young age. Left on their own they often feel resent and abandoned. This makes for a lack of control and guidance to the growing child. One at this point of time will be lost without the parents’ guidance. And before long, they goes closer to their peers who most of the times share the same situation. Here we have ourselves a group of teenagers with no guidance of adults whatsoever and left on their own to decide what is right or wrong. If one commits the crime and gets away with it, he soon will find the thrill in it and continue on usually with the support of his so called ‘friends’. One good example is Kenneth, one of Singapore's youngest drug traffickers. Due to lack of parents' care and guidance he committed a serious crime. He thinks that drug trafficking is a common crime and feels that what he had done is nothing. This is due to lack of parental guidance and also due to bad influence. One usually changes after being caught but some were left with emotional scars that will remain with them for life.

So it still ended up home being the most important factor. Parents must be prepared to sacrifice their time to guide their children. They must not only concentrate on their work and must allocate sufficient time with their children. The parents must always remember that violence is not the solution to everything, if the child did something they should try to talk to him instead of physical punishment. With proper guidance and love from the parent, the child will surely grow up to be a caring and responsible adult.

Also the school plays a role too. After the parents, what can influence one’s thinking is the school. As I had mentioned earlier, teenagers nowadays tend to listen to their peers more than the adults. Hence the school must ensure that their way of education should be more emphasis on character building than on filling one with knowledge. Ultimately what shapes a person’s future is his or her character and not much about knowledge. Schools have to take action immediately if one shows sign of committing crime or there had been bad influence. With proper guidance by the teachers and input of moral standards, students will be able to think for themselves and know what is right for them so they would not be influenced by their peers.

In conclusion, I feel that if both the parent and school do well in guiding the children in their growing years, teenage crimes will decrease significantly. As a student too we all must do our part in building ourselves up into morally upright citizens and leaders of the world.

Happy Teachers Day.......

"Does democracy create stabilty" SS Essay

I agree to a great extent the democracy creates stability. Firstly I would like to define stability, as in which type of stability such as political, economical and social. These will be discussed separately in this essay. Moreover the criteria for stability would be that the country is able to function without the need of dictatorship and that the people are satisfied. Secondly I would like to define democracy even though there is no perfect and justified definition of 'democracy’, there are two criteria’s that any definition of democracy is required to have. The first criterion is that all members of the society have equal access to power and the second that all members enjoy universally recognized freedoms and liberties.

One of the most important aspects to a countries development would be the economical sector. So I will be elaborating on economic stability. What is economic stability? Well if the country is a democratic one whereby they fulfill the two main criteria’s stated above they would be stable. As all members have equal access to power and have their own freedoms they will all have equal job opportunities. Thus enabling everyone to have a job rather than being denied access resulting to labour shortage. So as a result the country excels in the economic sector and achieving economic stability. Now on to political stability. Political uncertainty, no doubt, is an investor’s nightmare. It does disturb the flow of foreign direct investment plans both into the private sector as well as the government owned public sector units and that surely affects economic growth. However economic stability can also work its way to stabilize the political sector too. The political sector in many third world countries such as Myanmar today can be very unstable even though they may be democratic ones as corruption is on the high and many seek for the own material gains. Resulting to the loss of the interest of the masses or the minorities. However a certain type of democracy, representative democracy which is being utilized in our nation Singapore has been able to surpass this. As by representing the minority their interest and kept at hand in decision making. However in countries like Sri Lanka when the minorities were neglected, given no equal access to power they resulted in armed conflict and the conflict has affected many areas such as economical as companies fear to invest in the country due to its instability, socially, innocent people are killed every day and curfew’s are put into place disrupting daily life. So as a result due to insufficient representation of the minority, the overall stability of the country is compromised.

So from this we can see that democracy does help create stability to a great extent in many various sectors such as economical, political and social. However the disadvantage of democracy would be corruption as one the representative is corrupted the people who he is representing will lose out greatly.

Is Our Culture Being Lost Over Time?

Many a times it has been speculated that our generation is drifting away from our roots and cultures. Is this really what it looks like?

In today's modern 21st century many prefer to be hip and cool, and more importantly to be accepted by their group of friends. Due to this many are neglecting the essentials that make them unique and bring out the diversity in our society. The only thing that today's teens care most would be about their friends. Even when they buy bags,clothes,hand phones and even pens they want it to look cool and hip so that their friends would look up to them. They are practically living the lives off other's amusement. Due to this many teenagers neglect their culture as they label it as uncool and unnecessary. Moreover this label is induced in them by the western customs that are very prominent today. Firstly many teenagers watch English movies which all star western actors and their ways of life. After watching the many movies they tend to grow a liking for their way of life. As they say the grass is always greener on the other side. So they too try to get accustomed to the western customs neglecting their primary roots and customs.

Wanting to get to now a new culture is no crime but first you have to know your own culture. According to the survey in The Sunday Times' straw poll on Chinese New Year traditions. Only 17 out of 100 respondents aged between 13 and 19 gave the right answer – which it was because of a Chinese saying, “good things come in pairs”. Some teenagers mistakenly thought that the tradition was meant to help singles find partners, while others thought that it was simply easier to give out bank notes that way."There are more notes in even numbers than in odd numbers," said Beh Hsiung Wei, 14, a student at Naval Base Secondary School.The respondents were asked 10 questions, including the reason for wearing red, why oranges are exchanged, and why sweeping the house on the first day of Chinese New Year is not allowed. Many teens were aware of the practices but did not know the reasons for them. They could name the animals in the zodiac but could not answer further questions. Most teenagers knew that wearing red during the festival that celebrates the coming of spring is auspicious and that red is considered a lucky colour.But what 69 of them didn't know was that the tradition originated from a legend about wearing red to scare away the New Year monster, Nian. Some teens pay little heed to the traditions. Grace Soon, 15, has worn "every color, even black" during Chinese New Year. Many also take wearing their traditional clothes in front of friends is a punishment to embarrass them. Some don’t even know what their traditional clothing is!

I myself take a certain liking to the western cultures and their way of life. However I still keep in contact with my roots and culture, striking a balance. Even if my friends think that your culture or religious beliefs are un-cool. I don’t see the need to befriend them. A friend is one who accepts you for who you are as an individual. That is what I believe in.

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