The world, on the 22nd of April, commemorated a very special and noteworthy event called the Earth Day, and this article joins the celebration as it tackles about a milestone in the life of humankind and in the future identity of Mother Earth. Some might say that this article is posted late for four days had already passed since the event but the Earth Day isn't about a specific time and date. Meaning, whatever the date is, saving the Earth must always be included on the main concerns of the people. Taking an action does not follow a particular time and a particular event for the wrath of Mother Earth, if neglected, likewise does not follow a specific time or date.
Though the ones who remembered our Mother Earth as we felt their concern were only the little population of those who really care for the environment and those who are enthusiastic enough to rescue the drowning Earth from the catastrophe they foresee in the future. I am glad to see some advertisements on TV telling the people that today is the time to act for the sake of the environment, for the Earth's sake, and for the sake of the future generations. Many have neglected this matter and made the firm opinion that all of these are not true, although the events are already eminent. There were some channels in the television who showed documentaries and movies tackling about the failures of humankind in caring for Mother Earth and the consequences we are now experiencing with the objective to awaken the concerned spirit of the people. But it seems so ironic to think that the inheritors of this land, of the Earth in the near future are the ones primarily and mostly causing these grave problems - the youth. Saving the Earth is not an action of isolation and of disunity. The future condition of the planet lies within our hands grasping each other firmly in teamwork and outmost unity. It is therefore not only the adults who shall work on, not only the environmental advocates, not only the goverment but most importantly the youth - the heirs of the hush Mother Earth. So here are some measures on how children and teenagers could join the campaign against the issue we fight for, Global Warming:
1. Digging up the REAL use of blogs. Many teenagers nowadays are hooked up to one of the generation's popular medium of expressions, blogging. But blogging could also be of great help. The youth may post some infos and editorials stating their opinions on Global Warming and on protecting the earth. In those ways, blogging would not hurt other people's feelings but would motivate them to rescue Mother Earth.
2. Playing With Plants Pals. Instead of spending the time of many kids pressing cheats codes as quick as they can to prevent their character from death in a computer game, they could rather be addicted to a different kind of stuff - planting trees (and this addiction is never harmful). Imagine the world if a child on the right age would learn the value of plants in saving the Earth and plant even a single tree. Oh how lovely. The youth is on the rise and trees could also be!
3. Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. Children may engage themselves in a world of environmental concern. Many shops located in malls were supporters of the fight against the big problem, and visiting such is absolutely not a waste of time. Children could be trained as in a workshop to work on their crafty minds. Researches say that creativity is at its best during childhood so why not practice this innate talent to rescue the environment? Trashes and old materials, as children reveal their creative minds and capabilities, could transform a dull material into a magnificent decorative and useful one, and eventually transforming a messy and lonely planet into a place of delight and happiness.
4. Sacrifice, Sacrifice, Sacrifice. Watching DVD movies, playing game consoles for hours, and other activities involving the use of electricity have been the common trend in most teenagers. But isn't it time to sacrifice for the sake of our future life? Lessen the hours on playing with the computer or with some other game consoles, and watching movies on your DVD players. My previous article "A virtual Poison" has discussed about the dominating bad side of this matter. Now as you read the article and looking at the situation of the surrounding, two options arouse from our minds: Entertainment or Earth?
5. A Dynamic Leader of Youth. Responsible enought to hold a very serious task? Well, everyone can! And being a leader is a very good experience especially on saving your future world. With the consent of your school administration, start and form groups or clubs discussing about environmental issues and doing some actions to diminish the impacts of those disasters. Organise some specialised activities for your school such as a clean-up drive, seminars, symposiums, and workshops about the environment. Surely this one honours your school and of course honours our dear planet.
6. Trimming May Help As Well. One of the many little and effective ways on saving the earth is for children to trim and lessen the thickness of their margins they make using red ballpens on pad papers. These margins were spaces for the date (such that in notebooks) as what Philippine schools do. Teachers may well change the curriculum on how they instruct their students in making margins. Usually, pupils are measuring an inch for the margin and still, an inch on a one-half lengthwise paper. It is suggested by the advocates to diminish the margins by half-an-inch so that students may have additional spaces for their answers, computations, and essays during quizzes. In this way, less papers are consumed in a test or exam and therefore would also lessen the production of papers coming from trees which in turn may just be used instead for taking away carbon dioxide in air. But wait a minute, why still place margins while spaces above could be used for writing the date? No more margins at all, that's the perfect way!
These six tips on saving the world are not as extensive as using biofuels, purchasing energy-efficient bulbs, establishing solar power plants, and voicing out to the government. But though these are not like those of what adult environmentalists do, the youth must still take a great part in this advocacy that even in our little hands, we can help solve a big problem. We are the heirs of Mother Earth and it is threfore true and proper for us to take hold of that lasting and honourable reputation.
Saturday 26 April 2008
A Virtual Poison
While most business establishments come to suffer in the middle of their bankruptcy and struggle just to rescue their drowning stocks and profits, and to gain back their popularity, one firm stands towards its goal and showers their earnings on their heads, one firm prospers as they play ear-shattering rock music inside their shops, one firm... got the answer now? Right, that firm perfectly describes a computer shop or in other aliases they are called as 'Internet Cafe' and dubbed as "Today's Most Awesome Hang-out". Well the question now is will they even reach bankruptcy or even experience a downfall in their gross earnings? From what I can witness nowadays they won't even have a day without huge earnings.
What alarmed me of these computer shops is how they greatly influence a child's innocent mind towards a mind full of violence, action, and wickedness. This is also the reason why I've thought of writing this blog that would also serve as a tool for our awakening although this message might just be very simple and might just pass through our ears and push its way to the other. Here I want to establish my point on the popularity (a popularity even increasing) of on-line games such as DotA and Ragnarok. Those online games commonly have a main objective of destroying a fortification or a citadel in order for a player to win the game, or in a parallel view, to achieve his goal. From the definition itself, what makes it to have a negative feedback in some or in a few? Let me establish my first question adressed to the 'gamemasters' out there who mostly fail to prioritize education please ponder upon this statement, Is it correct or appropriate for a child to be taught of destroying and annihilating something in order to achieve his goal? In my perception, that is what the game implies. Psychologically-speaking, a goal shall NEVER be achieved by any means of destruction, by any means of harming innocent lives, murdering other people, and ruining anything that comes to block your way. Is that what those on-line games try to implant on children's minds?
What advantages and benefits these kinds of games can give or can influence children and teens? Is there even one? Once, I asked a child who is an avid fan of one online games the same question and answered me sarcastically saying, "It's fun, and it's a form of enjoyment." On-line games can be a form of entertainment but it's somewhat like an entertainment that poisons others minds and brings out the negative trait among those who patronage these games. If they are seeking for entertainment and fun, playing on-line games is not a solution. Furthermore, there are several other forms of entertainment without destroying our minds but rather can hone and enhance our mind and our holistic being with activities such as reading, studying, engaging ourselves in sports like basketball, being a lover of art by writing journals, novels, painting, or playing musical instruments.
Any other advantages? Well if can't give any, let me turn the question upside-down and face the opposite view, what disadvantages can these games give children who glue themselves on the computer chair? On-line games truly have several disadvantages that may harm a child's well-being. Here are some of them:
An Disaster on Education. Education is said to be the foundation of every child but in today's matters, that foundation might just be a piece of crap. On-line games unquestionably destroy a child's education. In most Philippine schools, this has been a very uncontrollable problem in part of intermediate elementary levels and all levels of high school students where massive on-line gaming comes from. Instead of seeing a student attentively listens to a teacher's lecture and actively participates in class, he is very well-active in a different manner, he grins in front of the computer screen while doubly asking for an extension to the computer shop facilitator. On-line games are temptation to most pupils choosing to cut classes just because they want to reach a level and compete with his other classmates. The worst thing is, this so-called 'cutting classes' are gradually becoming more and more rampant and are even done in groups doing such unscrupulous things as climbing over a school's fence just to reach their destination. Games teach the child how to neglect their studies and to ignore their education. As a matter of fact, those who are inclined in these on-line games are said to be harvesting a very poor grade or in Leyman's terms, they usually get a failing grade.
Prodigality and Dishonesty. Online games lead children and teenagers to a life full of wickedness and wrongdoings such as lying and disobeying their parents. Most scenarios depict a child asking money from parents and telling them that he will spend it for food or for school projects but the truth lies behind his wistful grin that is, spending the money for an hour in the computer shop bonding with the online game. This is obviously a product of online gaming and what it gives and injects in a child's mind, lying.
Jumping on some other disadvantages, I tried to search for people who also have a bad feeling towards such games and ended up with finding a writer in "The Times Online" and a parent named Giles Whittel. She said, "A significant vogue in video-games, however, is to put the player not in the role of a character who combats wrongdoing, but of the wrongdoers themselves: the mass murderer, the torturer, the street thug, drug dealer or pimp. The selection of protagonist is no doubt ironic, with these strutting miscreants representing the fantasies of nerdy little middle-class boys, but when one considers the prevalence of gangs, drug dealers and teenage violence on the streets the irony doesn't seem quite so amusing." And the most remarkable and eye-catching of her statements was that games are a "colossal waste of time".
Actually these harmful things that on-line games give children and teenagers are just a percentage of a whole bunch of disadvantages like the unwise use of money, failure to accomplish more meaningful stuffs, being irresponsible and disrespectful, and other bad effects that they can give. This essay aims not to attack a particular on-line game or to annoy and to disappoint some who love to play these games, but rather to give you an idea of what these games can cause us if we embrace it too much. Let us always learn how ro moderate and to balance our ways of life still prioritizing those which can cause us goodness and can give us lasting benefits. For we shall always keep in mind that all things too much are truly a nuisance and a disaster.
What alarmed me of these computer shops is how they greatly influence a child's innocent mind towards a mind full of violence, action, and wickedness. This is also the reason why I've thought of writing this blog that would also serve as a tool for our awakening although this message might just be very simple and might just pass through our ears and push its way to the other. Here I want to establish my point on the popularity (a popularity even increasing) of on-line games such as DotA and Ragnarok. Those online games commonly have a main objective of destroying a fortification or a citadel in order for a player to win the game, or in a parallel view, to achieve his goal. From the definition itself, what makes it to have a negative feedback in some or in a few? Let me establish my first question adressed to the 'gamemasters' out there who mostly fail to prioritize education please ponder upon this statement, Is it correct or appropriate for a child to be taught of destroying and annihilating something in order to achieve his goal? In my perception, that is what the game implies. Psychologically-speaking, a goal shall NEVER be achieved by any means of destruction, by any means of harming innocent lives, murdering other people, and ruining anything that comes to block your way. Is that what those on-line games try to implant on children's minds?
What advantages and benefits these kinds of games can give or can influence children and teens? Is there even one? Once, I asked a child who is an avid fan of one online games the same question and answered me sarcastically saying, "It's fun, and it's a form of enjoyment." On-line games can be a form of entertainment but it's somewhat like an entertainment that poisons others minds and brings out the negative trait among those who patronage these games. If they are seeking for entertainment and fun, playing on-line games is not a solution. Furthermore, there are several other forms of entertainment without destroying our minds but rather can hone and enhance our mind and our holistic being with activities such as reading, studying, engaging ourselves in sports like basketball, being a lover of art by writing journals, novels, painting, or playing musical instruments.
Any other advantages? Well if can't give any, let me turn the question upside-down and face the opposite view, what disadvantages can these games give children who glue themselves on the computer chair? On-line games truly have several disadvantages that may harm a child's well-being. Here are some of them:
An Disaster on Education. Education is said to be the foundation of every child but in today's matters, that foundation might just be a piece of crap. On-line games unquestionably destroy a child's education. In most Philippine schools, this has been a very uncontrollable problem in part of intermediate elementary levels and all levels of high school students where massive on-line gaming comes from. Instead of seeing a student attentively listens to a teacher's lecture and actively participates in class, he is very well-active in a different manner, he grins in front of the computer screen while doubly asking for an extension to the computer shop facilitator. On-line games are temptation to most pupils choosing to cut classes just because they want to reach a level and compete with his other classmates. The worst thing is, this so-called 'cutting classes' are gradually becoming more and more rampant and are even done in groups doing such unscrupulous things as climbing over a school's fence just to reach their destination. Games teach the child how to neglect their studies and to ignore their education. As a matter of fact, those who are inclined in these on-line games are said to be harvesting a very poor grade or in Leyman's terms, they usually get a failing grade.
Prodigality and Dishonesty. Online games lead children and teenagers to a life full of wickedness and wrongdoings such as lying and disobeying their parents. Most scenarios depict a child asking money from parents and telling them that he will spend it for food or for school projects but the truth lies behind his wistful grin that is, spending the money for an hour in the computer shop bonding with the online game. This is obviously a product of online gaming and what it gives and injects in a child's mind, lying.
Jumping on some other disadvantages, I tried to search for people who also have a bad feeling towards such games and ended up with finding a writer in "The Times Online" and a parent named Giles Whittel. She said, "A significant vogue in video-games, however, is to put the player not in the role of a character who combats wrongdoing, but of the wrongdoers themselves: the mass murderer, the torturer, the street thug, drug dealer or pimp. The selection of protagonist is no doubt ironic, with these strutting miscreants representing the fantasies of nerdy little middle-class boys, but when one considers the prevalence of gangs, drug dealers and teenage violence on the streets the irony doesn't seem quite so amusing." And the most remarkable and eye-catching of her statements was that games are a "colossal waste of time".
Actually these harmful things that on-line games give children and teenagers are just a percentage of a whole bunch of disadvantages like the unwise use of money, failure to accomplish more meaningful stuffs, being irresponsible and disrespectful, and other bad effects that they can give. This essay aims not to attack a particular on-line game or to annoy and to disappoint some who love to play these games, but rather to give you an idea of what these games can cause us if we embrace it too much. Let us always learn how ro moderate and to balance our ways of life still prioritizing those which can cause us goodness and can give us lasting benefits. For we shall always keep in mind that all things too much are truly a nuisance and a disaster.
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