Get your own Free Home Page"A child may be a mass of egoism and rebelliousness, but it has not accumulated experience to give it confidence in its own decisions."
As I agree with George Orwell in the above quotation, I must stand in opposition to the resolution that "An adolescent's right to privacy ought to be valued above a parent's conflicting right to know."
In order to clarify the grounds of this debate, I offer the following definitions: according to Webster's New World Dictionary, an "adolescent" is defined as "a boy or a girl from puberty to adulthood, a teen-age person." The American Heritage Dictionary defines "ought" as "To indicate obligation." and "parent" as "A guardian or a protector." Finally, Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary defines "valued" as "To rate or scale in usefulness, importance, or general worth."
Before I continue with this case, I must submit the following observation: OBSERVATION ONE : A parent, as defined earlier, is a guardian or a protector of children. If a parent is found to be abusing or neglecting their children in any manner, then they are no longer considered a parent, and fall outside the boundaries of this resolution.
In order to uphold my stance on this resolution, I shall utilize the value of the family and the criterion of rule-utilitarianism, both of which are expressed in the following two contentions:
CONTENTION ONE : In general, a parent can be expected to maintain an adequate balance of privacy with their adolescent, more accurately than would the adolescent, were they to manage said balance. and CONTENTION TWO : An adolescent's misuse of their right to privacy often isolates them from their family, resulting in the negation of the value criterion.
Now, allow me to discuss these contentions individually
First, let's consider CONTENTION ONE : In general, a parent can be expected to maintain an adequate balance of privacy with their adolescent, more accurately than would the adolescent, were they to manage said balance.
Many societies, including our own, view adolescents as unpredictable, troublemaking youths who enjoy little else but the wreaking of havoc on the world around them.
This is not entirely true, as nearly every generalization contains a degree of misstatement. However, drawing on more experience in matters of life than an adolescent, a parent can be expected to have better judgment in deciding whether surveillance of their offspring's affairs is appropriate. The possession of this better judgment, so to speak, is not necessarily correct when speaking of every parent, but, in general, it holds true. As Rita Kramer, author of In Defense of the Family wrote, "The family remains the chief agency--and the best one--for developing character in the individual and for transmitting the values of the culture."
Obviously, if adolescents are violating the law, or engaging in other dangerous activities, then it is up to their parents, and possibly the legal system, to ensure that these potentially injurious activities cease. An adolescent can not be expected to engage in self-incrimination, but if they are participating in activities that they ought not to, then it is up to the parents to make themselves aware of this.
Keeping those arguments in mind, let's move on to CONTENTION TWO : An adolescent's misuse of their right to privacy often isolates them from their family, resulting in the negation of the value criterion.
According to David Clark Esseks, "Privacy, taken to an extreme, leads to the isolation of individuals." Adolescents, who use their right to privacy to isolate themselves from their family, and commit illegal acts while in this 'informational detachment', disrupt their family as a unit. Their siblings, as well as their parents, are negatively affected, along with the adolescent in question. In this case, the criterion of rule-utilitarianism is not upheld, as no one affected benefits if the resolution is viewed from the affirmative point of view. In the words of Ferdinand Schoeman in Philosophical Dimensions of Privacy , "The right to privacy is seen as creating the context in which both deceit and hypocrisy may flourish: it provides the cover under which most human wrongdoing takes place."
However, if a parent's right to know is upheld, then the adolescent is more likely to be stopped by well-meaning parents before they commit an illegal or dangerous act. Though the surveillance imposed by the parents may temporarily negate the value criterion for the adolescent, in the end, all parties benefit. This is not to say that granting an adolescent the right to privacy will always result in illegal or dangerous actions on the part of the adolescent, but rather that such actions, if committed, cannot be prevented if the parent is denied the right to know.
Now, in conclusion, allow me to summarize the arguments I have presented.
In my first contention, I demonstrated that a parent could better judge the necessity of "keeping an eye on the children," so to speak, when compared to an adolescent. Later, in the second contention, I showed how negating the resolution benefits all parties involved, thus upholding the criterion of rule-utilitarianism, while the affirmative point of view does just the opposite.
Keeping these arguments in mind, I shall now turn to the negative case.
[Rebuttal]
I now stand open for cross-examination.
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