Band 6+: Some people think that parents have an powerful influence in child's life, while the influence from outside the home plays a bigger part of child's development. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

It is obvious that our educational structure is rapidly changing today. Therefore, the debate of what contributes more to children’s growth has been a widely discussed topic. For some people, they may say the family still takes charge of the development of children, while there is also a voice from the opposite saying that today the outside environment plays a more crucial part in children’s growing. As far as I am concerned, the outside environment has been the most

critical part of children’s life.

One reason is, it is self-evident that by the widespread of compulsory education, now teachers and peers are playing a more positive part in children’s lives. Since primary school, children have to spend about 40 hours a week in school. They take part in activities arranged by the school and make friends there. By the development of self-awareness, children will be more active in playing or chatting with their peers than their parents. By comparison, the time parents and children get together is too short. Only before about three or four years old can children completely get together with their parents.

The other reason is, children are more likely to take information from the outside world than before. Before 2000, due to the poor development of the internet, children had limited methods to communicate with the outside world. So the majority of the information they learned was given by their parents and teachers. At that time, we can say parents had an undoubted power in children’s lives. But today the situation has changed. For instance, my cousin learned how to cook meals and how to clean up his room only by the internet, while these kinds of work were taught by parents in 1990. Because of that, the outside world is playing a more crucial role in children’s development.

At last, I fully admit that parents still have a powerful status in children’s growing, but now, the outside world is going to have a greater influence on children. We should recognize that phenomenon in a proper way and balance the relationship between family and the outside world.