TPO18(independent)Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? Students are more influenced by their teachers than by their friends.

It is a highly debated issue whether students are more influenced by their teachers or by their friends and this topic can be approached from several angles due to its complexity. Apart from few people who hold the view that teachers are very influential on students' behavior, almost everyone would agree that students' friends play an important role on their future characteristics. Deeply deliberating over the issue, I believe that friends are more influential on each other and following discussion reveals my stand and justification.

To commence, my first subtle point requires to be mentioned is that, actually the duration of time when people are counteracting with each other has a direct effect on the amount of influences they would have on each other. As students spend most of their times with their friends, consequently they would have influenced each other to a large extent in comparison to teachers who have a limited time in class which has to be dedicated to all students of the class.

Other substantial reason that can be taken into consideration is that friends have a lot common with each other, for example they have similar ages, their situations are close to one another and sometimes their sexes are identical; therefore, they can understand each other very well. Notwithstanding, the teachers' duty is to teach some specific topics to their students and they cannot go beyond the related course subjects very much; moreover, seldom do they realize the students' problems, as most of the students are reluctant to speak about their personal matters with their teachers. As a result, friends meetings are always good situations for anyone to express his or her anxieties and receiving compelling recommendations from others, in other words they influence on each other prior to the step of deciding.

Finally yet importantly, having discussed the topic from that viewpoint, one would rather to look at it from other perspective. As some friends became everlasting, they influence each other as long as they are friends. But this situation is unlikely to happen for students' teachers.

To recapitulate briefly, based on the aforementioned testimonies, I am in conviction that our friends are more influential than our teachers. This is not to say, of course, that other points of view are completely false. However, I guess the reasons I provided in favor of my opinion are stronger.