Your task is to extract the thesis of an opinionated news article by selecting some of its text segments. The thesis is a summarization of what the author wants to persuade the reader of. Your answer should consist of segments of the given text. Note that you are not allowed to combine different sentences.

[Q]: Children in our towns and cities are being robbed of safe spaces to play. Where do the children play? Where can they run around unsupervised? On most of the housing estates I visit, the answer is hardly anywhere . A community not built around children is no community at all . A place that functions socially is one in which they are drawn to play outdoors . As Jay Griffiths argues in her heartrending book Kith, children fill the "unoccupied territories", the spaces not controlled by tidy-minded adults, "the commons of mud, moss, roots and grass" . But such places are being purged from the land and their lives . "Today's children are enclosed in school and home, enclosed in cars to shuttle between them, enclosed by fear, by surveillance and poverty and enclosed in rigid schedules of time." Since the 1970s the area in which children roam without adults has decreased by almost 90% . "Childhood is losing its commons." Given all that we know about the physical and psychological impacts of this confinement , you would expect the authorities to ensure that the remaining 10% of their diminished range is designed to draw children out of their homes . Yet almost everywhere they are designed out . Housing estates are built on the playing fields and rough patches children used to inhabit, and offer almost nothing in return . In the government's masterplan for England, the national planning policy framework, children are mentioned only twice: in a catalogue of housing types . In parliament's review of these plans, they aren't mentioned at all . Young people, around whom our lives should revolve, have been airbrushed from the planning system . I spent Monday wandering around the new and newish housing developments on the east side of Northampton . I chose this area because the estates here are spacious and mostly built for families : in other words, there is no possible excuse for excluding young people . In the places built 10 or 20 years ago, there is plenty of shared space , but almost all of it is allocated to cars . (You can see the photos on my website .) Grass is confined to the roundabouts or to coffin-like gardens , in which you can't turn a cartwheel without hitting the fence . I came across one exception - a street with wide grass verges . But they sloped towards the road: dangerous and useless, a perfect waste of space . This land of missed opportunities, designed by people without a spark of joy in their hearts, reifies the idea that there is no such thing as society . Had you set out to ensure that children were neither seen nor heard, you could not have done a better job . On the last day of the holidays, which was warm and dry, across four estates I saw only one child . By comparison, the Cherry Orchard estate just completed by Bellway Homes is a children's paradise . But only by comparison . Next to the primary school, with plenty of three- and four-bedroom houses, it is designed to appeal to young families . But in the middle of the development, where a village green might have been, there' s a strange grassy sump, surrounded by a low fence . It's an empty balancing pond, to catch water during exceptional floods . Remove the fence, plant it with trees, throw in some rocks and logs, and you'd have a rough and mossy playground . But no such thing was in the plans . Other shared spaces on the estate have the charming ambience of a prison yard : paved and surrounded by garden fences almost nine feet high . There were a few children outdoors but they seemed pressed to the edges, sitting in doorways or leaning on fences . Children don't buy houses , so who cares? Throughout the country, they become prisoners of bad design, and so do adults . Without safe and engaging places in which they can come together, no tribe forms . So parents must play the games that children would otherwise play among themselves , and everyone is bored to tears . The exclusion of children arises from the same pathology that denies us decent housing . In the name of market freedom, the volume housebuilders, sitting on their land banks, are free to preside over speculative chaos , while we are free to buy dog kennels priced like palaces in placeless estates so badly designed that community is dead on arrival . Many want to design and build their own homes , but almost no plots are available , as the big builders have seized them . In Scotland the government is considering compulsory sale orders , which would pull down prices - essential when the speculative price of land has risen from 2% of the cost of a home in the 1930s to 70% today . A national housing land corporation would assemble the sites and supply the infrastructure, then sell plots to community groups, housing associations and people who want to build their own . It goes far beyond England's feeble community right-to-build measures , which lack the muscular facilitation that only public authorities can provide . But it's still not far enough . What if people were entitled to buy an option for a plot on a new estate, which they would then help to plan? Not just the houses, but the entire estate would be built for and by those who would live there . The council or land corporation would specify the number and type of homes , then the future residents - including people on the social housing waiting list - would design the layout . Their children would help to create the public spaces . Communities would start to form even before people moved in , and the estates would doubtless look nothing like those built today . To the Westminster government, this probably sounds like communism . But as countries elsewhere in Europe have found, we don't need volume house builders, except to construct high-rises . They do not assist the provision of decent, affordable homes . They impede it . What is good for them is bad for us . Bellway, its brochure reveals, asked children at the neighbouring primary school to paint a picture of a cherry orchard, and displayed the winning entries in its show home . "Why not pop over to say hello, view our wonderful development and sneak a peek?", it asks . That's the role the children were given: helping the company to sell the houses it had already built . Why can't we shape the places that shape our lives?
[A]: A place that functions socially is one in which they are drawn to play outdoors


[Q]: Muslims in the news only when they're behind the gun. Ahmed Merabat was the first of the 12 innocents killed in Wednesday's targeted attack on the French satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo . The 42-year-old French Muslim policeman was executed on the sidewalk of Paris' 11th borough - the enclave where Charlie Hebdo's headquarters is located . Merabat was shot, point-blank, by one of the three assassins, minutes before they broke into Charlie Hebdo's offices, and slaughtered the magazine's top editor and celebrated cartoonists . The coverage of the "Paris shootings" centred almost exclusively on Stephane Charbonnier, Georges Wolinski, Jean Cabut and Bernard Verlhac - the prominent and unyieldingly provocative minds behind Charlie Hebdo . The first victim, Ahmed Merabat, was purged from the headlines . The political and representational ramifications that come with highlighting Merabat's victimhood cannot be ignored . First ,  it complicates the broader narrative that rigidly caricatures Muslims as terrorists, outsiders and marginals . And second, refutes the state-sponsored indictment of Muslims in France as perpetrators of subversion, instead of law-abiding citizens . Muslim and French . Apart from the obvious tragedy, the Charlie Hebdo killings manifest the baseline that Muslim identity is only relevant - and indeed newsworthy - when the subject is standing behind the gun. Not in front of it . In most everywhere in the world, but especially France - the architect of modern Islamophobia . Muslims comprise a considerable percentage of the French polity . Islam is the nation's second biggest religion , and figures place the Muslim population at 5 percent to 10 percent of France's 66 million citizens . Islam's size, and demographical rise, has spurred some of the most draconian policies against Muslims in modern times . The headscarf ban in 2004, followed by illegalisation of the niqab, or face covering, in 2010, codified core Islamophobic ideas . This legislation also functioned as a firm and fervent declaration by the state that Muslim and French identities were at odds and irreconcilable . The French laicite model provided the structural underpinnings to carry forward Islamophobic legislation . But more nefariously, guise it under the banner of state-sponsored secularism . Expectedly, the religious expression bans disparately impacted French Muslims . In addition ,  they chilled bodily and verbal expressions of Muslim identity . The state aim of compelling secularisation upon its Muslim citizenry was based upon the civilisational binary, and ultimatum, to choose between "Islam and the West", "Muslim lands or France" . Despite this ultimatum handed down from the state, the overwhelming majority of French Muslims exercised their faith amid pervasive bigotry . And simultaneously, embraced their national identities as Frenchmen and women . Extreme voices from within the state, and French civil society, looked to the three terrorists as representatives of the nation's 3 to 6 million Frenchmen and women . Collateral indictment of French Muslims, by politicians and media alike, infused with an already fervent culture of Islamophobia on the ground, will surely incite violent backlash against Muslims and Muslim communities in the country . Although unimaginable before Wednesday, French Islamophobia stands to become far more severe and strident . The conflation of the terrorist's acts with France's Muslim population, from the perspective of hatemongers, holds the latter vicariously liable . This connection, that links three deviant actors with an entire faith and millions of disconnected citizens, will fuel rabid backlash against Muslims in France, and more than likely, claim additional victims . Centring Muslim victims, instead of villains, would mitigate the backlash considerably . In addition , focusing on the heroics of Merabat, instead of the evil of the three terrorists, asserts - and inserts - a competing narrative that France's Muslims are everyday citizens : Citizens with jobs, families, and interpretations of Islam that condemn violence, and contradict the malignant caricature of the faith constructed by the state . Ahmed Merabat was more than a victim . He was far more than merely a Muslim . He, in both life and especially in death, stands as an archetype for the overwhelming majority of French Muslims . A law-abiding citizen, Merabat harmonised his religious identity with the responsibilities of being a Frenchman . He was both French and Muslim , an existential integration eviscerated by the longstanding Islamophobic discourse in France, and ignored by the media firestorm following the attack . Although the first victim of the attack, Ahmed Merabat's story was shot down from the news headlines . And his name and face absent from the ongoing stream of reports and narratives emanating from Paris on Wednesday . Inserting him into the story, and countering the barrage of vile Muslim representations with a rebuttal of victimhood and valour, will likely save lives in France . Most importantly, retelling the story from the perspective of Ahmed Merabat will not only reveal that Muslim and French identity are reconcilable, but also resilient .
[A]: The 42-year-old French Muslim policeman was executed on the sidewalk of Paris' 11th borough - the enclave where Charlie Hebdo's headquarters is located


[Q]: Do we really need to cancel Christmas? It's wonderful (and a good thing) to see the new emphasis on"giving over receiving" at Christmas time . It's become a trend this year with so many families because as parents we want to teach kids about generosity . Moms and dads everywhere are using Christmas as an opportunity to get their kids thinking about serving others and giving to the less fortunate , rather than encouraging them to create monstrous Christmas lists describing all the things they want this season . Some parents are even "cancelling" Christmas for their kids, not giving any family members any gifts . But do we really need to cancel Christmas in order to foster a spirit of generosity in our kids? Wednesday I joined Lisa Henderson on "Fox & Friends" to debate this very question . Lisa has "cancelled Christmas" in her Utah home because , she says, her kids have become too entitled,"acting so ungrateful" and "extremely disrespectful." So there will be no presents for Christmas , but , as she writes on her blog Overthebigmooon.com,"There is a good possibility that Santa will be writing them a letter of how proud of them he is and perhaps put a few pieces of hard candy and an orange in their stockings." While I have great respect for what Lisa wants to accomplish , I disagree with her approach . Christmas should begin, not end, at home . We are already under immense pressure to purge Christmas from our culture . First nativity scenes in public places were under attack, now it's Christmas trees . Even saying"Merry Christmas" has taken a back seat to "Happy Holidays." Cancelling Christmas and using letters from Santa to motivate our kids to be generous is not the answer . The answer is in putting the emphasis on the miracle not the material . And here's the good news . Even our gift giving can point to the miracle . So, yes, we give a few gifts to our kids . But we also give many gifts to the less fortunate . For example ,  we've taught our own kids that the gifts we give them at Christmas aren't based on whether they've been bad or good all year . The gifts we give them are free, unearned, underserved gifts , just like the gift of Jesus is a free, unearned, and underserved gift . This is a very tangible, concrete concept for kids to grasp . And when we serve and give to others, we teach our kids what Jesus said in Matthew 25:40 : "Whatever you do for the least of your brothers and sisters, you do for me." So we give gifts to Jesus on his "birthday" by serving and loving and giving to others! This is how parents can infuse real meaning into Christmas -- not by refusing to celebrate it all together . Cancelling Christmas is simply not the key to fostering generosity in our kids . The key to fostering generosity in our kids is by making giving something we do all year round. By making it a lifestyle . And a lifestyle of giving springs from a deep well of gratitude for how Jesus first gave his life for us . We have to be so careful not to teach our kids that Christmas is about doing more, trying harder, and being better to be worthy of gifts . Christmas is about anticipating and celebrating the greatest gift that has already been given-- the unconditional love of God in the birth of Jesus Christ . Our focus shouldn't be on whether or not we have a tree overflowing with gifts, but on whether we have a home overflowing with love . His love . And if that's our starting place , we have a pretty good shot at getting Christmas, and all the 364 other days of the year, right .
[A]:
It's wonderful (and a good thing) to see the new emphasis on"giving over receiving" at Christmas time