What is it?
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| page 69 |
In their critical thinking exercise that concludes the reading "Risk-takers: Who are they?", Warwick and Rogers (2018, pp. 69-71) invite us to discuss a series of four follow-up questions related to the causes of risk-taking behaviour.
We will discuss the four questions in two sets of pairs.
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Questions
First, Warwick and Rogers' questions 1 and 4.
- Do you agree that young people take more risks than older people?
Why / why not?
and - How do you assess risk in your own life?
- Do you think you do this successfully, or are there things you should do differently? If so, what are they?
You have 10:00 minutes to plan and write a response to these two questions. I suggest you divide your time roughly as:
- planning = 3:00 minutes (Choose your topic. Get ideas. Organize your ideas.)
- writing = 5:00 minutes, and
- editing = 2:00 minutes.
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Second, Warwick and Rogers' questions 2 and 3.
- How do parents, schools, the government, etc., try to minimize the risk that young people take in your country?
- Is it their responsibility to do so? Why / why not?
- Whose responsibility is it to teach children how to calculate risk so they make safer decisions in their lives?
- Why? How can they do it?
You have 12:00 minutes to plan and write a response to these two questions. I suggest you divide your time roughly as:
- planning = 3:00 minutes (Choose your topic. Get ideas. Organize your ideas.)
- writing = 7:00 minutes, and
- editing = 2:00 minutes.
A useful strategy - as usual
Imagine you are writing for someone who has not read the question you have chosen to answer or the article that the question follows up. Your aim is to clearly communicate your response to that reader, so it might help to paraphrase the chosen question at the start of your response to it.
This is also a useful strategy in exams such as IELTS and TOEFL, where it's important that your independent writing response makes sense independently of the question to which it must respond.
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Reference
- Warwick, L. & Rogers, L. (2018). Skillful 4: Reading & Writing, Student's Book Pack (2nd. ed.). London: Macmillan Education
Do younger people take more risks than older people? I think most people would agree that they do, and my personal experience supports this. When I was teenager and had just gotten my licence to drive a car, I was a bit reckless about following the traffic rules. And if one of my high school classmates and I came across each other on one of the country roads around the town where our high school was, there was a dangerously strong temptation, not always resisted, to see who could go the fastest. When I look back, we were really stupid. Really, really stupid. We could easily have killed ourselves or someone else. Luckily, there were no fatal road accidents involving anyone in my year. I guess the explanation could be that we were young, 17 or 18, and that our prefrontal cortices (the plural of cortex) had not developed, and there was peer pressure. I don't think either of my parents passed on genes particularly favourable to risk-taking, although when I think about it, my father did take business risks fairly often. And although he always drove very carefully when I knew him, my aunts and uncles told stories of his risky motorbike riding when he was a teenager in the late 1940s.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry, I ran out of time, so have not covered the other question we are supposed to be responding to.
Wow, interesting life story, and it obverse that young people takes more risk than the adult, I totally agree with. Dopamine always drive us crazy!
DeleteAfter I read your comment here, I've change my mind and agreed with you that young people take more risk than old people. Perhaps they are careless and don't think too much. I used to be careless and would want to have fun. When I was at high school, I used to love swimming and since I had practiced swimming for many years, I was confident about my ability. There was one time that I went on vacation at Pattaya with my friends during school break, and we wanted to go wild so we arranged a risky swimming competition. It was rainy season in Thailand, but we didn't think about box jellyfish in the sea. In the end, three of my friends got bitten for the box jellyfish and we ended our school break by staying at hospital.
DeleteBy the way, in my example below, the definition of risk in investment is different from the definition of risk in general situation. My aunty's stock broker uses standard deviation, a statistical method, to explain risk on investing a stock. In the method, the stock broker said that risk is both of the possibility of gain and lose from investing in a particular stock. Whether or not it is a good or bad investment, it depends on how willing on taking risk investors are. If investors want to gain higher return on investment, they must take higher risk on losing their investment. For me, people are irrational and not good at calculating risk. In my aunty's case, she is more confident than me in the situation, even though I am younger than her.
DeleteEmma, your story about swimming with the box jellyfish reminded me of fun times I had with my friends in school at the beaches nearby, and playing in the creek along one side of our sports grounds. At the beach, my friends and I would fearlessly explore tunnels, even without a light. I have a feeling we didn't always wear shoes, either. Looking back, it horrifies me. We very lucky, but not all. The young son of our neighbours died in a horrible accident at the same beach we used to play at in similar ways when sand tunnel collapsed on him.
DeleteI agree with this statement because I think that children have a good health which can play or try every risk activities and they do not have more responsibilities than the older people who think about their life, their family and their health. Therefore, the older people have a limit activities which they can do in their comfort zone.
ReplyDeleteIn my life, I do not do a lot of the risk activities because I do not like it. I think I do not success to do the risk activities but I want to try in the future because I think that everyone should try take some risk in life such as playing bungeejump. Nowadays, I try to invest in the stocks that is very risk for me.
When I was young, I really wanted to do bungee jumping. I think it’s really exciting and challenging, but now I’m grown up and don’t want to do anything exciting anymore. I don’t really like to do something that is risky for me.
DeleteJam's idea that older people are more likely to stay in their comfort zone sounds right to me. I am certainly less inclined to do new things now that I'm no longer so young as I was when I first packed a bad and left Australia to work and study overseas.
DeleteBungee jumping, huh?
DeleteI used to love visiting Sydney's Luna Park amusement park for nights out with friends at university. The rides were scary, especially the roller coaster. Would I have given it a go had they also had a bungee jump? I'm not sure. My inclination is to say, "No way," but that might just be the me I am now talking. With a group of friends all pushing each other to do it, and after a glass or two of wine with dinner, I very likely would have jumped. But we'll never know. These days, I would probably not even join the trip to the amusement park.
From my perspective, young people are likely to take more risks than other generations due to their lack of information and experiences. However, there are many ways to minimise the risks. One of the successful methods that I use is to learn more information and then think of the consequences from each decision. After that, I will weigh the positive and negative impacts and choose the best choice.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Pream which young people can take more risks than older people and learning information is a good idea to minimise the risks.
DeleteI do not agree that young people take more risks than older people because I think older people can have more risks about health problems, and if older people leave their job, it will be hard to start work again because of age and less energy than young people. I think if I’m getting older, I can’t ask for money from my parents, but if I am young, it’s easy to ask for money from them. Now, I assess risk by checking my money that I have for savings and checking my health and my parent’s health.
ReplyDeleteIn this aspect, I agree with you that older people taking more risk in health and working risk when they get old. Very strong opinion! love it
DeleteWhilst I agree that older people have greater health risks, I'm not sure that is the same as taking greater risks, unless they eat very unhealthy food or otherwise take risks that can lead to worse health.
DeleteAlthough some people say that young people take more risks that older people, I disagree with them. I think older people are more willing to take risks than young people because older people have more life experience than younger generations. A good example is my aunty and I. When we invest in stocks, my aunty are willing to take risks than me, because of her experience, she feels more confident than me.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, I agree that young people take more risks than adults because children lack of experiences and the brain is not fully developed. For example, All people might think fried eggs are quite easy, but not for a 3 year old kid. So, that why I agree that your people are more likely to take more risks than an adult.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Pingpong which children are lack of experiences and information ,so they should learn and find more information such as, on the internet.
Deletein my opinion, young people want to try now thing and like to into exciting situation , they always take your health for granted to do something adventure or do something again law. But in adult they must do something risky because necessary.
ReplyDelete(I cheated for this comment: I copied the same one I had written on Monday. I realized I had made a mistake in today's slide presentation, and it took me a few minutes to fix that, so I didn't have time to quickly write a new response here.)
ReplyDeleteParents certainly worry about their children taking risks, and I think that pushes parents to push both schools and the government act to minimizer risk. Parents in Australia try to minimize risk by setting rules for their children, such as that they must come home straight after school, or that they may not attend some types of events, such as music concerts, where the parents worry that they will encounter dangerous situations or be under peer pressure to do dangerous things, like taking drugs.
In Australia, there are also legal limits on what children can do. They cannot, for example drive cars until they are almost 17 years old. But I'm not sure that this is to prevent the children taking risks, and my own experience is that when my friends and I started to drive, we tool risks, even, I have to confess, breaking speed limits. That was extremely stupid when I look back now: we could easily have killed ourselves or others in an accident. Luckily, no one at my school did do that. The lower speed limits for young, new drivers are to minimize risk, and although my friends and I did break those laws when we were on country roads where police were unlikely to be met, we always followed the speed rules in town (I think).
Another way that the government minimizes risk in response to political pressure from parents who vote is by banning the sale of alcohol and cigarettes to children under the age of 18. Again, children often get around these laws, most often perhaps by taking the drugs from their own parents wine or beer stores.
Another way that society seeks to minimize risk to children is by including sex education and similar material in school. That was very badly done when I was in school because the old, conservative teachers were often embarrassed to talk about it, but I think it's much better done these days for my young nieces and nephews.
On the whole, I agree with the responsibility that parents, schools ad the government take to minimize risk-taking by children in Australia.
In my country, Thailand, one of the serious risks that your people have been taking is risk on their employment after graduated. Although most of us believe that going to school and getting a degree can enhance the your people's employability, they still have high changes of being unemployed. However, the government and the employers realized this issue and are trying to reduce the risks by arranging internship programs at their organizations.
ReplyDeleteAs children will exposure to risks, I think it is parents and schools to educate that your generation to calculate risks.
I really agreed with Emma. Many people have high chances to be unemployed, especially in this covid situation. If some companies have a very low income and a very bad situation, maybe their employees must be out of work. It’s unpredictable and risky. Nowadays, I found some companies that reduce employee's salary, and it really affects many people.
Deletethere are widely talk about how to reduce risky of young generation, their have a lot of risky because parents don't have time and they can find every thinks on internet , it is hard to control them away from bad people , and we should give them understanding about risk in their life and try to be their friend , make them trust and take whit them a lot , it make reduce risky of their life.
ReplyDeleteI think the risk that young people take is about jobs when they are getting older. Many parents and many schools try to minimize this risk by making young people study hard, attend good universities with good faculty and have a stable job. I think it’s their responsibility to do so because they want young people to live their life easily. Parents always worry about young people.
ReplyDeleteI think parents should teach young people to calculate risk by telling them an example for young people and giving them suggestions that make them think.
Several of the comments suggest that educating children about risk or providing examples helps to reduce risk-taking behaviour, but I'm not sure I agree with that. I think when I was a child, my friends and I had been well-warned by parents and teachers about risks, but we still tool them. And everyone knew that smoking caused cancer long before smoking rates started to decline. And everyone knows that alcohol is an addictive drug that kills people in road accidents, causes fights and domestic abuse, and so on, and yet people still keep drinking, and feeling awful the next day, and then repeating it! I sometimes suspect that the education alone is greatly overvalued as a means of changing behaviour to healthier habits.
DeleteIn my opinion, parents, schools and the government think that children do not have enough information to decide about the risk. Sometimes, they may do someting that can be dangerous for them, so all of older people do want their children to face with a bad situation. For example, at schools, the parents of students trust that teachers and schools can protect their children with danger. For all of this, I think that it is a respomsibility of schools, parents and governments to protect young people.
ReplyDeleteI think parents should teach their children first because they grow up with their family. Example is a good idea to teach them about risk situation or activities because they can think following the example so they will recognize or remember in order to avoid it.
In Thailand, parents usually make sure that their kids are away from risky things by preventing those situations or using punishments. Likewise, teachers in school often teach children what they should and should do to prevent risks according to the lessons from the ministry of education. However, in my opinion, parents are responsible for teaching children how to calculate risk because they are able to forecast the possible risks for their children and can advise them with their own experiences. However, their responsibility is only to guide not control as children must learn how to take risk from their own actions.
ReplyDeleteThere are many things that parents or schools are trying to mitigate risks for kids. Firstly, at home or at school they should provide an appropriate facility for kids in school. Secondly, parents and teachers should teach the kid about the risks in life and how to deal with it.
ReplyDeleteHowever, we can't prevent the 100 percent risk on the kid but we can do something to reduce the risk for children.