Question 15
Read the passage below and answer the question that follows
Time was when boys used to point toy guns and say “bang”. Now they aim real guns and shoot one another. Nearly 4,200 teenagers were killed by fire arms in 1990. Only motor vehicle accidents kill more teenagers than firearms and the firearms figures are rising. The chance that a black male between the age of 15 and 19 will be killed by a gun has almost tripled since 1985 and almost doubled for white males according to the National Center for Health Statistics. Who could disagree with Health and Human services secretary, Donna Shalala, when she pronounced this statistics ‘frightening and intolerable? In the shameful light of this ‘waste of young lives ’ often asked questions seems urgently due to be raised again. Would less violence on television- the surrounding environment for most children and young adults-make violence in actual life less normal, less accepted, less horrifying? It may be difficult to prove an exact correlation between the viewer and the fantasized violence and the criminal who acts out violence after turning off the set. But if the premise of education is granted that good models can influence the young-then it follows that bad models can have an equivalent harmful effect. So, violent entertainment is harmful to society.
Time was when boys used to point toy guns and say “bang”. Now they aim real guns and shoot one another. Nearly 4,200 teenagers were killed by fire arms in 1990. Only motor vehicle accidents kill more teenagers than firearms and the firearms figures are rising. The chance that a black male between the age of 15 and 19 will be killed by a gun has almost tripled since 1985 and almost doubled for white males according to the National Center for Health Statistics. Who could disagree with Health and Human services secretary, Donna Shalala, when she pronounced this statistics ‘frightening and intolerable? In the shameful light of this ‘waste of young lives ’ often asked questions seems urgently due to be raised again. Would less violence on television- the surrounding environment for most children and young adults-make violence in actual life less normal, less accepted, less horrifying? It may be difficult to prove an exact correlation between the viewer and the fantasized violence and the criminal who acts out violence after turning off the set. But if the premise of education is granted that good models can influence the young-then it follows that bad models can have an equivalent harmful effect. So, violent entertainment is harmful to society.
In Secretary Donna Shalala’s view, the situation depicted by the statistics is
Objective