Tuesday, August 19th class

CURFEW FOR STUDENTS.

If you do not know what a curfew means, the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary provides the following definitions:

1.- A law which says that people must not go outside after a particular time at night until the morning; the time after which nobody must go outside.

2.- A time when children must be home in the evening.

This debate was in charge of Marlene R, Clara and Claudia C.

They gave interesting information as well as important facts about why adolescent curfews are gaining popularity among parents. Overall, they made a reasonable presentation.

In Chile curfews for teenagers are not legally aproved or are not part of the complete family routine. In some cities like Baltimore teen curfews are typical; kids under 17 must be off the streets after midnight on Friday and Saturday and during week nights they have to be indoors by 11 pm. Many parents took this decision to protect their children from drug-related fights. In addition, there was a curfew study in the United States Mayors.org done in 347 communities with populations of at least 30,000 people in 1997. The 80% of the communities imposed a nighttime curfew on teenagers, and 26% also implemented a daytime curfew. These curfews were applied to decrease crime, reduce juvenile victimization, increase parental involvement, and to allow police officers the ability to stop people involved in suspicious activities.

I consider the topic is very engaging because it made think about if it is beneficial for teens or not. First of all I believe that under some extreme circumstances teen curfews can provide a good method to prevent teens envolvement from drug-related events. It might happen that a teen is not participating in drug dealing or is not doing drugs but sometimes inocent people get hurt on drug-related events. On the other hand, I do not consider that a teenager must be late at night by his/ her self, and when I say late I mean 11 pm or earlier depending on the age. If there is no one who can pick him/her up from a party, mall, sports activity, or any other kind of activity teens like to do during their spare time, they should follow a conscious curfew provided by his/her family, caretaker or school in order to realize that is applied for his/her own safety.

I also consider that it is important to consider a cultural shift; from the family, school through the whole community because community involvement is the key to solve juvenile crime or drug dealing, etc. Curfews can be applied as a tool to fight against these facts that damage our society and younger generations.