Using NewsHour Extra Feature Stories

Overview: NewsHour Extra features stories can help students identify and interpret key issues in current events. This activity anticipates one class period, but the follow-up essay might be assigned as homework, or in another period.

Warm Up: Use initiating questions to introduce the topic and find out how much your students know.

Main Activity: Have students read NewsHour Extra's feature story and answer the questions on the reading comprehension handout.

Discussion: Use discussion questions to encourage students to think about how the issues outlined in the story affect their lives and express and debate different opinions.

Follow-up: Students can write an 500-word editorial on the topic expressing their views and send it to NewsHour Extra [extra@newshour.org] for possible publication.

Evaluation: Students are graded on their answers to reading comprehension questions and/or their editorial.

Story: As More Teens Gamble, Experts Urge Public Education, 04/25/05
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/jan-june05/gambling_4-25.html

Initiating Questions:

1. Where do you see gambling in your community? Who is gambling?

2. Have you ever bet on something like the outcome of a sports event? What did you bet?

3. Do you think gambling is dangerous for young people?

Reading Comprehension Questions: (click here for printout)

1. How many young people are gambling these days? How has this number changed from the past? What kind of gambling is most popular among teenagers?

Recent studies indicate that more than 70 percent of youth between the ages of 10 and 17 gambled in the past year, up from 45 percent in 1988.

Almost one in three high school students gamble on a regular basis, according to the National Academy of Sciences. Playing cards, the lottery, and scratch tickets as well as betting on sporting events are the most popular forms of gambling among teenagers.

2. When did legal gambling become more common in the United States? How much revenue is generated with legal gambling?

Nevada had a monopoly over legal casino gambling in the United States until 1978, the year casinos were legalized in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

New Hampshire introduced the first state lottery in 1963 and many states followed suit.

In the past few decades, gambling has grown into a giant corporate industry. Spurred by the legalization of gaming on Native American reservations in the late 1980s, gambling revenues grew from $8 billion to $15 billion from 1988 to 1994.

3. What are parental attitudes toward gambling according to researchers?

Researchers say parents do not worry about exposing their children to this habit as they might with alcohol or smoking.

"It is a situation where many parents still do assume that it's better for a kid to be gambling than to be out on the streets doing drugs or whatever," Dr. Rachel Volberg, president of Gemini Research, which specializes in gambling studies, told the Christian Science Monitor.

4. What is dangerous about gambling? How can it impact the body?

But gambling is addictive. Studies show that problem gamblers exhibit similar functional changes in their brain's decision-making center as drug addicts and alcoholics.

"The neurobiology of what happens when somebody is gambling is much the same as what happens when they are taking cocaine," said gambling addiction expert at the Center for Addiction and Substance Abuse at the University of South Florida Linda Chamberlain on MedicineNet.com.

Researchers have also found that the more exposure a child has to gambling, the more likely he or she will become a compulsive gambler -- as a teen and into adulthood.

5. Besides money problems, how can problem gambling impact teens' lives?

Researchers at the National Council on Problem Gambling suggest that teens with a gambling problem are more likely to engage in risky behavior such as unsafe sex, binge drinking, smoking marijuana and skipping school.

Gamblers also have the highest suicide rate of any addicted group. In 1997 a 19-year-old New Yorker killed himself, leaving a suicide note blaming a lost $6,000 bet on the World Series.

6. Where do many teens gamble? What does this mean for age regulation enforcement?

For underage gamblers, gaining access to gambling outlets is often easier than buying alcohol or cigarettes. The availability of Internet gambling sites makes age regulations increasingly difficult to enforce.

Discussion Activity (more research might be needed):

1. Should teens be able to gamble? If so, what kind of regulations should be in place? Explain your reasoning.

2. According to the article many states are legalizing gambling, especially through lotteries, because of the extremely large profits. Some of the money raised is spent on schools and education. Is this a good idea? Why or why not? Explain your answer with clear examples.

3. According to the article, with a growing number of teens at risk of developing compulsive gambling habits, experts are pushing the government to hold hearings to address the issue. They want public service announcements or warning messages to educate the public on the dangers of excessive betting.

Create a public service announcement that you think would appeal to teenagers and convince them of the dangers of gambling. Where would you show this announcement?

Write a 300-500 word essay on any of these topics providing clear examples. Send your completed editorial to NewsHour Extra [extra@newshour.org]. Exceptional essays might be published on our Web site.