Yesterday we had the key stage 4 debate: "Should people be screened before being allowed to have children." The year 11s, who were against the motion, won. The year 10s, who were for the motion, were fighting an uphill battle and eventually lost. It was a spirited and closely-fought debate and all the debaters spoke eloquently and persuasively. Both sides had some cogent arguments and thought-provoking rebuttals.
What are your thoughts on the debate topic and the debate itself? - Should people be screened before being allowed to have children just like we screen people before allowing them to adopt?
5 comments:
My thoughts on the topic? Its ridiculous to think anyone is going to enforce anything like that.
But I dont think its the topic thats the main point of concern. Its the fact that we can even ask a question like this that worries me, that we could doubt the responsibility of some people in our society so much that we think they shouldn't have offspring? What has our world come to?
Therefore the question should not be concerning screening, it should be related to WHY we seem so fearful to let some people have children, identify those problems in our modern societies and maybe then these silly proposals wouldn't come to mind.
On the debate itself, I thought it was quite good. My only concern would be the equality, I'm sure it was randomly picked which team would take up for and against but honestly, it was one heck of an 'uphill' battle... Maybe even a vertical wall.
Duwane,
Why does it "worry" you that the question asks whether people should be screened? I agree it will never happen, but it is a legitimate question to ask and the students had a healthy debate on it. Why is it assumed to be right and proper to be screened when one adopts other people's kids but not when one decides to have their own?
Naturally, as a victim of child abuse myself, I sincerely hope such a system where people are screened before before being allowed to have children is put into effect one day. Newsflash Anderson, people really are that irresponsible nowadays.:) To make the concept even better though, educational institutes should be established where people who fail the screening can be trained to handle children. Admittedly, such a system will probably never even be considered for enforcement but if it ever were, I would be very much in favour of it.
I think that screening is a good idea and that the government should definitely consider it, you get so many irresponsible adults pregnant these days, some people just pop babies out like that and they don't know how to take care of them or they don't have the sufficient financial back up to sustain the needs of their child.
And about the debate, I thought the years 10s were going to win :P
but it was a good debate :P
Its not a sense of worry for the debate topic. Academic topics are much more interesting and engrossing than current-event related ones, its just that we as a society, as intelligent human beings shouldn't have come to this stage where we are worried if parents could take care of their own children.
On the topic of adopting a child and being screened, I'm not all that sure of the process one has to go to to adopt a child. But I think that type of screening process when adopting is ineffective, probably because there are few people in the world who actually care for the rights of orphans.
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