Discussions on contemporary issues

There are many things that are happening around the world every second.We cannot ignore the facts that our children would need to face these issues sooner or later.

Rather than having our children blindly believe whatever they hear or read, we want our children to develop their own judgement to decide the right or wrong on these issues.

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As parents or teachers, we need to facilitate discussions on contemporary issues carefully to lead them in making the right judgement.

This article provides some ideas on how to facilitate a discussion on contemporary issues with our children.

Starter

A good way to initiate a discussion is through possible news sources like articles, videos or even blog posts.

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By doing so, we can naturally move into a discussion with our children about the facts and context of the issue.

We can lead them to identify who are the ones being affected by these issues and what are the impacts of these issues.

We can also discuss what is the main issue about what they have read.

The issue

With the identified issue, we can let our children to analyse and form their initial opinion based on the fact that they read.

We can also lead them to decide whether what they have read may have certain degree of manipulated fake information to hook readers to read the article.

Before forming judgement, they should look at different perspectives as well as the possible underlying reasons.

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Through our facilitation, our children can have a deeper understanding of the issue and form better judgement rather than jumping into conclusion based on what they hear from others.

Facilitating the conversations

We should regularly clarify the facts with them and ask them why the issue is important.

They should also consider how the issue can be related to them in certain way as citizen or againist their moral values.

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They should be led to share their feelings about the issue and how others may feel about it.

If the issue affects everyone, we can even ask our children what they can do about it after knowing all these facts.

They can learn how to think beyond the issue and the implications of it.

Why discuss about contemporary issues?

Through discussions, our children can have the space to understand the facts and try to make sense of different perspectives related to the issue.

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They can construct their own judgement as well as broaden their minds. Through these discussions, they can decide on their own stand especially against issues that can lead to negative impacts to society.

They can also learn from them to avoid making the same mistakes.

Disclaimer: This is my personal reflection and I am not in any position to instruct anyone what they should do. I am not responsible for any action taken as a result of this post. My post can only be a reference for your further research and growth. By reading this post, you acknowledge and accept that. All images and pictures were taken from google images that are free from copyright under labelled for reuse.

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Posted from my blog with SteemPress : http://fun2learn.vornix.blog/2019/03/10/discussions-on-contemporary-issues/

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