Should teachers ban violent video games?

THE decision by headteachers in Chester to send parents a letter warning that they’ll be reported to police and social services if they let their children play 18-rated video games is offensive (Mail). Who gave heads the right to dictate to parents how their children should spend leisure time? Redefining abuse to include such trivial matters helps no one. Meanwhile, the Government is planning to make reporting suspicion of abuse mandatory. Police and social workers must be groaning at the prospect of more reports of alleged ‘abuse’ based on nothing more than that people don’t like others’ lifestyles. Sanctioning public servants to act as state snoopers into private lives characterises an authoritarian, rather than a democratic, society. Yet teachers are meant to promote ‘British values’, such as a love of democracy. The message is that democracy is fine — if you think and do like us. The Chester heads should abandon the interfering initiatives and get on with their jobs. ALKA SEHGAL CUTHBERT and

SALLY MILLARD, London E4. NANTWICH Education Partnership is threatening to report parents who let their children play violent video games (Mail). As a leading U.S. researcher on this topic, I was part of Vice President Joe Biden’s hearings on video games after the Sandy Hook school shooting in which 26 people died. I’ve no doubt the authorities’ intentions are positive, but evidence is rising that linking violent video games to ‘harm’ in young people is misguided. However offensive some games might be, evidence that they actually make kids more violent is increasingly in doubt. And as video games have soared in both violence and popularity, youth violence has plummeted cross-nationally to historic lows. I don’t believe this effort would help children. The danger is that it would only contribute to historic cycles of moral panic over new media. Prof CHRISTOPHER J. FERGUSON, Department of Psychology, Stetson University, Florida.