IELTS Writing Task 2 Topic 08: Increase in violent crime

You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.

Write about the following topic:

Recent figures show an increase in violent crime among youngsters under the age of 18. Some psychologists claim that the basic reason for this is that children these days are not getting the social and emotional learning they need from parents and teachers.

To what extend do you agree or disagree with this option?

Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.

Write at least 250 words

Model Essay 1 :

In recent years, great attention has been paid to the topic of who should be the most responsible for the child’s behavior. Therefore, there is numerous discussions on this issue. Some people state that parents and teachers ought to be blamed for crimes committed by young children. However, some opponents disagree with the above perspective. In this essay, the argument will be carefully examined to support my opinion.

The first thing to consider is the fact that children’s surroundings drastically affect their growths. According to the recent report in Japan, about 80 percent of young children responded TV games or computer games were the most inspiring for them to make crimes. Thanks to advanced technology, young children can play violent games with extremely clear screens. This has drastically encouraged for children’s violent behaviors in real world. In addition, advanced technology didn’t give us only these harmful game, but also social network service so that people can be connected easily with even strangers. If young children meet bad people on website and are unfortunately related with them, young children might be involved in violent crimes. Therefore, I would like to argue that it is insufficient to conclude that teachers and parents should be responsible for children’s behaviors.

On the other hand, it is also true that teachers and parents are close to their children. Children have many things which they don’t know what they must not do and what they may do. Teachers and parents usually have many chances to meet their children and teach these things. However, the time children’s teachers and parents is limited. It is impossible to accompany with their children. Besides of this, children can have their own computers or games and it is difficult for their teachers and parents to intervene all the time. Therefore, as I mentioned in the second paragraph, what teachers and parents can do for their children is limited and children can make criminal even if parents or teachers educate them due to other surroundings.

In the final analysis, I would like to emphasize that this problem should be discussed by more various perspectives. It is too overlooked to conclude teachers and parents should be responsible for their children’s behaviors. In my opinion, other surroundings such as games play more important roles than teachers and parents when children commit crime.

(480 words)

Model Essay 2 :

Nowadays, an alarming problem is that violent crime rates have increased considerably, particularly among young people under 18. To me, I strongly agree that lack of educating from parents is the main reason of this situation. This below essay will analyse clearly my view.
The first reason that can be easily seen is that in modern life, parents almost spend their time on working to earn money. Obviously, there is less time to take care of and supervise their children carefully. In addtion, gap between parents and children have been expanded; so these children have rarely had chances to share their feelings to their parents as well as learned from family side. Moreover, there are plenty of negative items such as violent films, bad things from Internet of crime that survive around us; without parents’ control, children have been influenced on those things easily.
Another factor that needs to be mentioned is that unstable marriage life have led to a surge in divorce rates. Having a broken family and shortage of love from both mother and father have caused distraction of those youngsters in their study and some significant negative impacts of their psychology. As a result, children with immature character have become more aggressive, behave rudely and particularly imitated violent film or plunged headlong into social evils.
However, it is undeniable that parents is not the only factor that leads to increase young violent crime percentage. Since it depends on conceit of these youngsters about protecting themselves from harmful impacts, In spite of dealing with the above sitiuation, some of those children have lived positively. Neverthless, from what has been considered above, parents have played a vital role to prevent growth in crime rates.
In conclusion, personality development of chilren is unable to be perfect without supporting frome family side. Futhermore, a propriate nurture of parents not only has helped to drop crime in youngsters but also produced good citizens for our future.

(324 words)

Model Essay 3 :

It does seem to be true that parents find teachers have lost the authority they used to have, especially in the eyes of teenagers. They are no longer seen as models for behaviour: hard work, politeness and other positive qualities are seen as old fashioned. Many young people have no respect for these qualities or the people who represent them. In fact, I think when young people today are so rebellious that it’s possible that both parents and teachers are afraid to exercise their authority. However, I do not agree that this is the basic reason for the increase in teenage violence.

While I believe it is true that a lack of social and emotional learning contributes to the problem. Other factors are surely involved: economic factors, for example. If a child comes from a poor family and they live in low-quality housing in all undesirable area, this is sure to affect the child, however loving the parents are.

There is also the question of who your friends are. I believe that when you are in your teens your friends have more influence on you than your parents or teachers. At that age, you want to be part of a group, or even a gang, and this might lead to breaking the law in a number of ways.

In conclusion, while I agree that lack of social and emotional learning from parents and teachers is a factor in the growth of teenage violence, I do not believe that it is the only or main cause.

(255 words)

Model Essay 4 :

It appears that the youth crime rate in the modern world is increasing at an alarming rate. Although there may be many factors causing this issue, it is perceivable that the absence of suitable education provided by parents and teachers are the major problems behind this circumstance. This position will thus be analysed in the following paragraphs, supported by relevant examples.

Firstly, parents’ increasing occupational commitments have limited their opportunities to educate children on moral qualities. The current economic condition of the contemporary society requires parents to spend more time at work. This has consequently created fewer interactions between children and parents, precluding youngsters from learning basic emotional aspects such as love and affection from adults. An exemplary case can be seen from my cousin, who barely gets a chance to learn about a specific manner to talk to strangers or elderly people. Hence, it seems that such reality has disabled him to possess an ethical mindset, which might case behavioural problems outside home in the future.

Secondly, the modern education system enforces students to obtain tangible achievements, rather than ethical perspectives. For instance, there was a girl in my high school who performed well academically. Although she frequently offended other classmates’ feelings with foul words, she was continuously favoured by teachers because of her good grades. It is personally felt that such an inappropriate teaching motives of the teachers have left many students to focus on achieving material accomplishments, regardless of how badly one behaves.

In conclusion, the two aforementioned ideas clearly encapsulate how the lack of solid and ethical supervisions by adults leaves children to develop problematic thoughts and behaviour.

[ 272 words]

Model Essay 5 :

The 21st century has witnessed a sudden and consistent surge of criminal offences including physical, social and cyber-crimes by people, especially by youngsters who are under the age of 18 years. This incidence is not attributed to a particular gender or religion and this is undoubtedly alarming for the social harmony across the globe.

Many people, social activists including psychologists suggest that, these behavioral tragedies happen due to the lack of attention to the children from their parents and teachers. In my opinion, though the above said context is true and significant, there are obviously a number of other reasons contributing to it.

Nowadays, people have hectic lifestyle that they are engaged mostly to professional life and hence there is little room for family life and recreation. Compared to ancient days, family get together and involvement among family members are often seen rarely. Therefore children who are students, normally enjoy their freedom than they deserve and they are not given enough counselling in order to make them able to choose what’s best for them. Teachers are also majorly looking at the academic performances rather than social and emotional development.

On the other hand, there are so many other factors which could actually made the scenario worse. The use of cyber world, the addiction to online social media are arguably some of them. This enables pupils to experiment new things which were normally entitled to only adolescents in the early generation. Students and youngsters are also being influenced by the violent games and negative role plays in the movies. Moreover, the availability of drugs and narcotic materials have made the situation dangerous. For example, reports suggest that in India, the use of euphoric substances such as Marijuana has inclined leading to the rise in number of registered police cases. The lack of education to parents regarding all these topics are also a contributing factor.

In a nutshell. I certainly believe that day by day more youngsters are engaged in anti-social activities and this can only be prevented by a systematic approach by both parents and by the governments.

Model Essay 6 :

In the prevailing scenario, crimes are drastically increased all over the world, this is due to people valued for money rather than the values and relations. According to me, youngsters are not getting enough support from their parents as well as from the teachers, whereas some adolescents attracted to the bad habits through their friends.

To begin with, in this contemporary world, both the parents need to work to get an economical status in the society. So, they don’t have time to check and teach their kids how to behave in the society. For instance, in the US, most of the people are doing jobs by leaving their children in the baby care centres and they don’t have time to spend with them. Because of that absurd behaviours can be observed among teens and they don’t understand the moral values.

Moreover, teachers’ role is very important in a child’s life. They are the key persons in building a society. But nowadays, they are merely teaching the subjects like Mathematics, science and languages. They have to teach not only academic lessons which are useful for the future career of students but also the social and emotional qualities need to improve in a child. For example, in the developed countries, children are not respecting their teachers. I recently read news article about a child; the child went to school with a gun and shoot couple of his classmates and a teacher and then he Shoot himself and died.

However, adolescents also are getting attracted to their friends without any knowledge of the moral values. They don’t understand what is right and what is wrong. So, they are getting addicted to bad habits like drugs, smoking and spoiling their lives. In fact, during my secondary education, a person had a habit of smoking, and he encouraged other persons and some people learnt that habit. Some times without their knowledge they get addicted to other people’s bad habits.

In conclusion, children need to get an emotional bond with the parents. In my opinion, grownups should have the social values from their parents and teachers, however, sometimes, they need to know on their own to make decisions.

362 words

Model Essay 7 :

Today’s society has been pressured into resolving numerous tough and sensitive issues that have become stronger and negatively affected to all people, especially the young generations who are living in the information and digital age without necessary control and permissions from their parents and teachers. It’s undeniable that families and schools play paramount roles in children development in their personalities and psychology, which forces the under 18-year-old to walk on the criminal road unless having it. Nevertheless, a host of considerable reasons in relation to the constantly changing society, technology and education system is also regarded as the big contribution to the climb in young criminals.

Family is commonly considered as the most influential element on how a child is nourished and able to develop his characteristics in the future. However, there are more and more unexpectedly detrimental factors including parents-related relationship problems, unbeatably attractive modern gadgets and the hustle and bustle of the 21st century lifestyles, which results in parents’ less concentration and proper education on their children.

Additionally, the significantly increasing pressure on exam results stemming from the peers and the teachers at schools has been occupying most of attention rather than emotional and psychological cares for the students. Children under the age of 18 in this century are really facing a wide variety of social and emotional problems than their early counterparts, but it seems that they are standing alone against to most of the negative impacts from the exam-oriented education system, the serious lack of teachers’ instructions and orientation on personal development.

In conclusion, the rapid advancements of technology, the continuously changing living styles and the education systems discouraging individual and moral development together with deficiency in parents’ and teachers’ social and emotional teaching have been becoming some of the most concerned causes which lead the youngsters to be more violent and become criminals in the near future.

312 words

Model Essay 8 :

Some experts attribute the recent upsurge of violent crime rate among juveniles under 18 to the lack of social and emotional knowledge received from their families and schools. From my perspectives, however, those immature violent criminals not only get insufficient learning but also are negatively affected by computer games.

Apparently, the fact that adults leave children get away with themselves is one of the factors that causes youngsters get involved in violent crime. In practice, many couples of parents often shift their responsibility of teaching their children on teachers’ shoulders though a large fraction of time children spend at home. Such parents’ irresponsibility is likely to get children exposed to social evils including violence. In addition, at schools, not a few lecturers emphasize on students’ academic performance but their morality. As a result, students appear to encounter no barrier to involve fightings.

Similarly, the indulgence in computer games poses untold hidden mental hazards in children’s mentality in various aspects. In fact, nowadays numerous computer games contain brutal shots. Such violent elements seem to get teenagers accustomed to disturbances, thereby excite their uncontrollable behaviors. Besides, violent games are prone to create both actual and potential rivals among players. Consequently, young players who are hungry for success will fall out and even fight to each other eventually.

In sum, violence crime among youngster seems to become an increasingly annoying issue nowadays. Both parents and teachers should take proactive measures to curb this problem by paying more attention to nurture their children and hindering them from getting access to violent computer games.

(259 words)

Model Essay 9 :

The increase of crimes committed by young people is just one of the consequences of the way our society is evolving. In my opinion, the reason is precisely in the way children grow both at home and at school, where the lack of adults support often means to a child the need to learn by himself how to behave with people.

First of all, it is important to realize how the relationships between students and teachers have changed through the last decade, since the introduction of electronic devices in our everyday life. The massive use of such devices, like smartphones, is influencing not only the way a child behave with people, but also the way he thinks and approaches everyday situations. In this sense, a child using too much electronic devices could develop the idea that school is unuseful because he can learn whatever he needs from the internet, avoiding listening to the teacher.

Secondly, we should consider how the role of parents has changed after technology revolution. Before computers were created for leisure purposes, children used to spend more time with parents or relatives once at home after school lessons. Therefore, they used to acquire information mainly from other people they knew very well. Electronic devices have stolen time to adults and children, weakening the relationship they had among each others. The result is that many children prefer to learn new things by using the internet instead of asking to relatives and spending time with them, as it was for centuries in human history.

All these things considered, I strongly believe that the way people changed their approach to social relationships is badly affecting the growth of nowadays children. This lack of social and emotional learning will have really negative effects on tomorrow adults, with consequences difficult to predict.

(300 words)

Model Essay 10 :

There is a reason why there are separate set of laws and judicial proceedings for minors and adults. This separation stems from the fact that individuals under the age of 18 do not have the full-formed personal character, emotional repertoire, and awareness of law and societal mores that adults have.

It’s no wonder, then, that there is a common consensus to deem anyone under 18 a child.

The growth of a human being undergoes stages of different intensities and varying requirements. When a child is first born, he is completely dependent on his parents or caregivers for physiological functions and day to day activities. But as he grows from an infant to a toddler to an elementary school student, he begins to shed this dependency gradually and determinedly. At a certain point, he’ll be able to feed himself, or go to the bathroom on his own. This is the result of the cognitive powers of a child at work; children are impressionable, and they’ll pick up things real fast.

However, this impressionability is a double-edged sword. Because the discerning powers of a child are not fully formed, he or she needs constant guidance and counseling from both parents, school teachers and all the adults in their immediate support system. Because of the pervasiveness of technology and communications, children of today experience a higher exposure to daily news than they did fifty or hindered years ago. Especially with the ubiquitous internet, they can follow their idol singer more easily on social media, or get hooked to chat rooms and gossip boards. They may watch violent videos or read about upsetting events.

This constant hammering of information- as well as the traumatizing nature some of these events could have- these factors could lead the teenager to respond negatively. He or she will fail to understand the complexity of some events, or the moral dilemmas and the dichotomies of life. Only the presence of a loving, caring adult could enable a child or a teenager to interpret life events more correctly, and help him or her cope with the age of technology and the 24 hours broadcast of misery or platitudes on TV.

A friend of mine recently asked me: “is the world becoming worse? Look at the news, it’s all about disasters, natural and man-made.”

My reply way: “No, I don’t think the world is getting worse. The world has always been bad. But today we learn about its bad episodes faster”

To conclude, it is true that parents today are devoting less time to the upbringing of their children, but that’s only part of the story. The dynamics of information sharing are changing in our present-day society, and if adults are not around to help children understand it and analyze it correctly, they will not be able to grow their emotional capabilities to deal with conflict and adversities in their world.

(300 words)

Model Essay 11 :

It has been indicated by the latest researches that there are an increase number of violence crimes throughout the young individuals under 18 years old. The reason for this phenomenon as the psychologists believe is lack of emotional and social learning by the parents and teachers. Psychologically, there are two crucial factors that making teachers and parents careless about their young children and students ate the age of 18 in learning.

Parents and teachers treat adults in serious ways during the learning process for two points. First of all, they observe that these group of children do not need emotion and softness as younger children, and they really pay attention just on their academic studies and how to pass successfully from the school. Eventually, the relationships between parents, teachers and students become extremely hard without any love. Secondly, once the circumstance at the school or home is getting worse and under pressure for students, they start to hate every body around them and act negatively and violently against innocent. Consequently, teachers and parents cause people at age of 18 to be dangerous criminals in the society.

The other significant point is parents and teachers are less informative of excellent method of learning and teaching 18 years old students. Although there are several of resources that could teach people the intelligent approach of emotional and social learning for adult, these teachers are still not professional at it. In Canada for instance, Chapter, who is the famous library, sells the newest and easiest books of dealing with secondary schools students, yet criminal behaviors have reached the peak at schools, streets and public places. Lastly, this problem is difficult to be solved without increasing the awareness among teachers and parents of the importance of reading about emotional social learning.

In Conclusion, to decrease the number of crime violence among 18 years old individuals, parents and teachers should teach them in inspirational and friendly methods. I realize that strict communication and narrow education are the influential factors for making these youth criminals.

(338 words)

Model Essay 12 :

It is obvious that our modern lives today have experienced a considerable rise in teenage violence, especially for those under the age of eighteen. Some psychologists attribute this situation to the responsibility of teachers and parents. In fact, they do not provide children with necessary social and emotion knowledge.As far as I am concerned, I strongly agree with this opinion because of some following reasons.

Firstly, it is undeniable that many teachers are in favour of old-fashioned approach to student’s academic performance. This means that they only put emphasis on knowledge in main subjects such as literature, maths, history, biology and neglect to convey pratical knowledge in reality. For example, a large number of students may be outstanding in their disciplines but they do not have full awareness of violence’s definition, potential causes as well as severe consequences. As a result, lack of realistic perception creeps up on children to commit violent crimes.

Secondly, some parents does not give their children essential support in daily lives. Actually, the dizzying pace of lives makes parents be flooded with an enormous volume of work and robs them of time to take care of children. Being devoid of love and sympathy can make children be cruel and unsociable to others. Moreover, getting out of parent’s control may expose children to damaging websites including rebellious actions. They easily imitate what they see and behave in negative ways.

In conclusion, teachers and parents are largely responsible for the popularity of violence among younsters. In fact, they do not help chidren dig deep into knowlegde about violence and give them necessary attention. If these matters are still common, level of teenage violence is more and more escalating.

(281 words)

Model Essay 13 :

Nowadays, it is all but impossible to open a newspaper without articles on adolescent crimes. There has been a dramatic increase in their number and brutality. Some psychologists claim that it is the consequence of insufficient emotional and social teaching from parents and teachers, with which I strongly agree. It is a fact that emotional and social teaching plays a large part in the psychological development of a youngster. As a result, any education that leaves it out will result in emotionally insecure students who are likely to be wrongdoers. Halfway through the process of growing up, virtually every adolescent endures deep psychological changes which may cause depression, rebelliousness, etc. In some cases which those negative feelings are not sensitively handled, then comes a time when adolescents starts to feel disaffected to the society and resort to violating social principles, sowing the seeds of crimes. Teaching on emotions and social relationships will help young citizens be immune to such deeds by helping them control feelings and keeping them in touch with the community. At the same time, many a people argue that the causes of the growing number of youngster criminals are much more complicated as many factors are to blame: violent TV programs, bad materials on the Internet or even the adolescent’s personalities. Be that as it may, emotional and social teaching is meaned to help adolescents be immune to criminality. Will a bad-tempered boy kill someone in a fit of anger if he knows how to control his temper or it is a terrible thing to do? One example of IVS is included to support my point. IVS is a boarding school which has a reputation for making many bad students, potential criminals, turn over a new leaf. Its teachers give a simple explanation for its success: bad behaviours stem from the ignorance of surrounding people’s feelings and lack of care whose elimination will put an end to the students’ wrong attitudes and that is what the teachers give them by means of the teaching. All in all, the lack of emotional and social teaching explains the present wave of adolescent crimes. Let us hope when educational reforms with emphasis on educating good, rather than knowledgeable, students and parents are more aware of the needs of such teaching, crimes will reduce and our society will become safer.

389 words

Model Essay 14 :

There is no denying that the number of youngsters who commit crime is increasing sharply all over the world. Some people believe that the lack of social and emotional learning from parents and teachers has lead to this phenomenon; meanwhile, the others argue that there are different sides we need to take into consideration before blaming the problem on parents and teachers. In my opinion, I totally agree with the second idea because of the following reasons. To begin with, in a world full of modern and advanced technologies like ours, children will have more chances to be exposed to violent scenes. It can be said that TV and the Internet are the two most common channels through which children can view these scenes. For instance, wrestling shows on ESPN or Ten Sports as well as thriller and action films like the film “I know what you did last summer” can affect badly and directly children’s behaviours because they contain violent factors such as beating each other, using guns or knives to kill rivals, etc. If children watch and mimic these actions, violent thoughts will be gradually shaped in their minds and they will apply such bad things on people around them, starting with classmates, then, strangers. As a consequence, the probability they commit a crime to satisfy themselves is no longer an unpredicted outcome. Another reason is that peers may have a greater impact on the way a teenager thinks and behaves than their parents and teachers. Youngster under 18 tend to play in groups because they find the similarities and understanding when staying with those peers. However, if they make friends with wrong people, they can be induced to do wrong things easily, for example, skipping class, fighting, robbing money, etc. As a students, I have witnessed many cases in which high school students leave school early and join gangs of young people who play violent games and fight against other gangs all the time. Therefore, we cannot attribute it to parents and teachers as they cannot entirely control whom their kids are playing with. In conclusion, I strongly believe that the increase in violent crime among youngster does not totally come from the education method of their parents and teachers. This phenomenon can be explained partly by the development in science and technology of human and the influence of peers. However, parents, together with teachers, should spend more time on caring and listening to children’s confidences to contribute to protecting them from harmful things.

 417 words