Becoming a dancer or singer should be encouraged just as much as a doctor or lawyer.

Thank you for posting but I fear that you may have misunderstand something. If you are going to argue that Higher-Educated careers should be suggested then I would definitely lose, this would be a one-sided, do you agree? I will clarify my position again, “I agree that a more archiving career should be suggested to a child at early stage to increase interest in that particular subject, however, if the person whom is subjected to your encouragement does not prefer going in that career path strongly or moderately, you should encourage him / her into the career of their choice, not only doctor, lawyers, etc.” I will now present my arguments. Again, please check my footnotes for further comments and citations. FROM LAST ROUND - Con’s arguments and rebuttals (1) Encouragement First of, con, mentioned that encouragement does not cause anxiety or stress, this is not always true. Although encouragement can give short-term effects and pleasures and often makes the subject overestimate their own abilities, even with discretion a person may find him/herself aiming for extraordinary high goals. THIS leads to depression when the objective goal is not archived. (2) Extrinsic and Intrinsic I believe you got your definition from this? (http://www.thefreedictionary.com...) [1] This is NOT the definition I am talking about, I apologize if I did not give a clear definition for this. This is merely a common definition and not a scientific one, here is the definition I am talking about: (http://psychology.about.com...) [2] Here, the author gives an explicit example of each and vividly distinguish their difference from common terms. (3) Unnecessary Doctors and Lawyers? I do not even have the word ‘essential’ in my previous post, and most definitely not “not essential” is said by me. I have no idea why you are accusing me of even thinking for a second that a doctor or lawyer is not an essential role to the society. As for the “British flag in our backyard” part, I am quite familiar with the revolutionary war and Lawyers play a minor role to American independence when compared to other roles that sparked the revolution. But this is irrelevant to the topic. (4) Next point “Sure, you've suffered stress. I'm sorry that your dad forced you into a good career. But it's not just you. I'm not sure if you picked this debate because it interferes with your personal life or not.” He did not force me, my motivations did that for me. Please don’t try to manipulate my words. What you are trying to say here is that that I struggled and got in Engineering and I should be grateful for it. However, this academic success and is a facade considering that I am struggling with it. “...Just for advice in the future, don't do that, you'll lose” Please give me some respect, I do not usually give personal experience to anybody. I only did this to clearly explain the Incentive Theory of Motivation with an understandable scenario. Since I assume that you do not take psychology I didn’t want to throw you vocabs and theories and sound like a snob. I will try to do a more definitive approach next time but thank you for reminding me. “Yes, I know that people are not created equally. Some people cannot rise to such important roles. Why not? Why cannot they not become doctors?” You mention at the next sentences that you would still encourage them towards careers such as doctors and lawyers and “along those lines” even when they show no interest in it. Actors require a lot of stress handling and skill potential, that is true, but it is incomparable with the amount of stress from being a surgeon, for example, all occupations require some level of stress, especially stress from expectations. “Students diagnosed with dyslexia have a disability that makes it difficult to read or write. Obviously they cannot be doctors.” Please understand that dyslexia is not a ‘off or on’ switch, “Dyslexia!” or “not Dyslexia!” there are different intensities to it, this means that one who has difficulties reading can also suffer from dyslexia but is not diagnosed with it. “You're being very rude for putting words in my mouth it makes you appear very self absorbed and sensitive. Simply make your points please with little or no hostility.” The only one being rude here is you, I meant no offence or whatsoever, I have said in the first round “...and I look forward to a respectful and productive debate.” and I have kept my promise so far. If “putting words in my mouth” means that I am shoving you vocabs to intimidate you, then you are wrong on this one. I did not mean any offense nor try to intimidate you, I simply though the term “dyslexia” is taught and commonly known. Here is a good article: [3] http://www.medicinenet.com... Con called me “self absorbed and sensitive,” manipulated my words, accusing me of “obviously plagiarizing” and disrespected me for giving an clarifying scenario. Is it me or is it the speaker who is being hostile? --- Here’s a friendly mini-break from the tension of this debate :) “Why is the scientist’s head all wet?” - Because he had a brainstorm ba-dum-tsss Now back to the debate. --- (5) “I insist that you stick on the topic. We're not here discussing if reading about doctors or actors is more interesting I am not going off-topic here. I am simply making an analogy from normal (private stage shows) actors from professional (hollywood) actors and actresses with books in the canon and regular, common books. In case you don’t know what a canon is, I apologize again that I did not provide a definition for this. A literary canon are a group of valued books and writings that are distinguishable from other books and is proved to have more literary value. For example, Of Mice and Men may be more valued than books like The Hunger Games. The way hollywood works is about the same, less famous actors are not part of the SAG-AFTRA community which consists of around 100,000+ performers (numbers are not exact). Are there more performers than a couple hundred thousand people? Yes there are, just like there are more books than ones in the literary canon. You requested that I explain what SAG-AFTRA is so here’s the link to their official website: [4] http://www.sagaftra.org... If you go a quick google search you will find it the same way I did, so please don’t denounce me as a plagiarist since this information can be easily found. “nobody needed the Kardashians” haha, good one :) “But it shouldn't be encouraged nearly as much as something that can guarantee support.” In fact, you mentioned that 2% of the United States population is an actor. I am actually quite surprised, actually that it is that high considering how many other occupations there is. The thing I forgot to mention in the previous round is about that particular statistic: where does blog gets its statistics from? Performers registered in the SAG-AFTRA is clearly less three hundred thousand (if even that much). Gathering the statistic for the total population of performers is as difficult as how many seashells are there in a beach. Then how did the source find out that it is 2%? “family members do have different strengths, and limitations. Why does this only apply to doctors? What about the limitations of acting? How demanding it may be, the different roles and request that are made?” This is similar to your argument to my analogy of performers and books. I only mentioned siblings to emphasize the diversity of people’s interests. Let me restate it, “even siblings have diverse talents and skills, then why should we encourage both to go in a career path that we expect them to choose rather than ask what they like to be?” Again, I am not here to argue that you should encourage people to become actors more than doctors and lawyers or less. My stance is that you should encourage people to go into careers that seems appropriate to their talents. If one have talent in drawing and no interest in maths, by all means encourage them to become an artist; you can suggest that person to become a engineer and you may convince him at first, but it would later psychologically harm him afterwards when he cannot achieve that goal. This works as well if you encourage mathematical geniuses to become actors. Encouragement should be done appropriately and not one-sided. #END OF REBUTTALS# If I have offended or disrespected you in any way, I would like to apologize for that. Some of my arguments may seem harsh or rude but it is unintentional! Round 2 arguments (1) Incentive theory and Encouragement This theory mentions inner motivations and external rewards. There are rules based on scientific observations such as: “Rewards have to be obtainable in order to be motivating” [5]. This means that if the objective seems unobtainable or suddenly realised to be more difficult than anticipated can lower intrinsic motivation. In this case, encouragement will derail their goals completely. For example, a student may be motivated to achieve all A’s at the beginning of the year (I’m sure we all can relate) this may be reinforced by parents’ encouragement. This however, have an equal and opposite subconscious reaction as well. If the student finds the new school year to be more much more challenging, their objectives will be undermined to a goal much lower such as “just don’t fail the semester!” What parents should encourage is to encourage self-actualization and identity, finding out what they are good at and let them fulfill their goals themselves. I am out of characters, I will post further arguments for the next rounds. Footnotes: [1] http://www.thefreedictionary.com... (bad definition :() [2] http://psychology.about.com... (better definition :)) [3] http://www.medicinenet.com... [4] http://www.sagaftra.org... [5] Sources from my studies or from the David Myers’s textbook