Does television play a positive or negative role in the modern world?
For
1. Television is now playing a very important part in our lives.
2. Television is not only a convenient source of entertainment, but also a comparatively cheap one.
3. Television keeps one informed about current events, allows one to follow the latest developments in science and politics, and offers an endless series of programmes which are both instructive and entertaining.
4. A lot of television programmes introduce people to things they never thought of before and have never heard of before.
5. Television series have done a great job in popularizing many literary masterpieces.
6. Television has been good company to those who do not work, like housewives and lonely old people, etc.
7. With television, people are still free to enjoy other “civilized pleasure”, or even more.
8. There is a considerable variety of programmes on television. The viewer is always free to choose whatever he wants to see.
9. Television provides enormous possibilities for education, like school programmes via closed-circuit television.
10. Television provides special broadcasts for those in TV university, or open university. It also offers specialized subjects like language teaching, sewing, cooking, painting, cosmetics, etc.
11. Television does the job of education in the broadest sense. Instructive programmes achieve their goal through entertaining the viewers.
12. Television provides an outlet for creative talents.
13. People all around world are no longer distant and isolated from each other. The most distant countries and the strangest customs are brought right into one’s sitting-room.
14. Compared with the radio, everything on television is more lifelike, vivid, and real.
15. Television may be a vital factor in holding a family together where there are, for example, economic problems and husband and wife seem at breaking point.
Against
1. Television is a great time-waster.
2. People who do not watch television are happier than those who watch it, because television goes with the kind of life which leaves the viewer nothing to spare, nothing left.
3. Television makes the viewer completely passive because everything is presented to him without any effort on his part.
4. The very danger of watching television lies in the fact that the viewer takes no initiative. He makes no choice and exercises no judgement..
5. Television passes on to children the corrupting values of a corrupt society.
6. Television is to blame for the fact that children take longer to learn to read these days and barely see the point at all of acquiring the skill.
7. Television takes up too much of our time. We no longer have enough time for hobbies, entertaining activities, and other outside amusement like theatres, cinemas, sports, etc.
8. Unfortunately, all our free time is now regulated by television.
9. People rush home, gulp their food, which is often as simply as a sandwich and a glass of beer, and start watching the TV programmes.
10. The monster, i.e. television, demands absolute silence and attention. No one dares to open his mouth during a programme.
11. People have grown addicted to television, often neglecting the necessary and more important things like meals, sleep, and even work.
12. A lot of parents use television as a pacifier for their children. They put their children in front of the set and don’t care whether they are exposed to rubbishy commercials or spectacles of violence, so long as the children are quiet.
13. Most of the television programmes are bad and they do not keep pace with the high demand of viewers and do not maintain high quality.
14. The wide coverage of television programmes has reduced society to the conditions in pre-literate communities: we are utterly dependent on the most primitive media of communication: pictures and spoken words.
15. What the viewer receives from television is nothing but second-hand experience. He is completely cut off from the real world.
16. The more the viewer watches television, the lazier he becomes. He is glued to the set instead of going out.
17. Television prevents people from communicating with each other. It has done a lot of harm to the relationship between family members.
Are pets good for mankind?
For
1. The great virtue of pets is that they can keep us company.
2. An animal in the family helps to keep us human.
3. A pet is kept as a companion that makes us feel happy. It’s suggested that pets should be sent to astronauts in a spacecraft to help reduce the loneliness of space flights.
4. Besides providing mere companionship, pets invite us to love and be loved.
5. Often a cat or a dog can comfort us at times when human words don’t help.
6. Pets give us a sense of being important and needed because they depend on us for a home, food and drink.
7. Pets are of particular importance to children in this Plastic Age when most of us live in large cities.
8. A pet in a family keeps people in touch with the more natural, animal world.
9. Watching the everyday activities of a pet helps a child to understand nature and cope with problems.
10. Learning to care for a pet helps a child to grow up into a loving adult who feels responsible towards those depend on him.
11. Animals can communicate with each other in their particular way. They communicate with human beings, too, for they are quick to sense anger and sorrow.
12. People keep pets for emotional rather than economic reasons.
13. A pet dog brings its master a sense of confidence, for he can see in the dog that faithfulness does exist and he does have something to trust.
14. Sterilization of pets is utterly cruel. If there is a large number of pets, then the more, the merrier.
Against.
1. Keeping pets is just a waste of time and resources.
2. Pets are humanized by those who keep pets. Owing to their need for a home, for food and drink, pets are tamed and idealized by their owners.
3. Pets and children often fight over care and love in the family.
4. People nowadays are so crazy about pets that they even neglect caring for their own children.
5. A campaign should be launched against the overpopulation of pets.
6. The growing number of pets has caused serious hygiene problems that cannot be solved.
7. The earth will no longer be a world of human beings and animals but a world of animals only if we don’t take measures to stop the increase of pets.
8. Pet dogs and cats of both sexes should be sterilized because the animals themselves are in danger of becoming the first victims for the simple reason that their owners don’t have enough time for too many of them.
9. As a matter of fact those who keep pets don’t always treat their pets with kindness. They sometimes abandon their pets when they go away on holiday and are unable to take the pets along with them.
10. It’s a shame that many animals eat much more better food than we human beings do.
11. It’s really against nature to cage birds, chain dogs and keep cats within the house.
12. Pets are animals, they should be seen in their natural habitat rather than in the homes of human beings.