It sounds like the "challenges" weren't necessarily intended to teach you what you learned, and you just happened to have a mind and mindset that responded well to the situation, so it isn't even an instance of "competently executed dangerous teaching methods". Nevertheless, do you think there's a safer approach that would have had a high chance of teaching you and the other kids those lessons?
I don' think the author intended the readership to see Battle School as an ideal form of education.
Uh, I remember it as Ender having been tricked into it. He thought he was still doing simulations to prove his tactical ability, with how the scenarios kept getting more difficult, and did things he never would have done if he knew it was real.
You may need to dwell some more, because there's some higher order practical and moral contention there. Guilt over things done in pursuit of survival is the victor's luxury. If you lose, and die anyway you don't have that problem. This is one of the sharp divergences that tends to exist between the soldier and the pacifist. One fights today to repent and atone tomorrow. The other risks destruction, robbing one of a future in which one may possibly avoid making the same mistakes or committing the same atrocities as one's forbearers. In this sense, the weight of being a mass murderer is shared equally by the warrior and the poet. One through action, the other through inaction. No matter the outcome, somebody's hands are covered in blood. Ender did what he was uniquely equipped to do in the moment where it was necessary for him, and those under his guidance to do it. We live not only under our own instrumentality, but under the auspices and obligations to which we are bequeathed by accident of our own existence.
Ender's Game is an exquisite portrait of how the central theme of human existence is suffering. If you live to fight another day, you suffer those fights in the future, and the scars of the past you carry with you. If you acquiesce to destruction, your suffering stops, but the world moves on regardless.
To be human is to struggle and suffer. The trick is coaxing some positivity out of the entire affair while we're around to do so. This applies at all levels of human endeavor. We all struggle against our own adversities perpetuated upon us by the "other". The biggest difference from one bit of suffering and struggle to the next, is how you define the "other".
It's weird, but Ender's Game made a lot more sense after a reading of the Bhagavad Gita. I do not know if Card set out with that intent, but the two mesh with, and complement each other in ways few texts written at different time periods have. There's also good resonance with Martin Heidigger's thoughts on the nature of man being inextricably linked with the act of becoming or Being, the characteristic quality of Dasein. You cannot change your past, you can change the future, but only in as much as the road that has lead you to where you are allows.
The Philosopher is left to wonder if it could have worked out any other way, the Faithful have their answer even if they didn't know it, and even a Free Agent, determined to sail their own way must navigate the waters pushed by the natural forces around them.
The book is a critique, but more about wether it is good enough to be shaped by society, or how people shapes and make up society. When the latter is nearly non-existent, you end up with results such as in the first book.
I went through US military training in the early 90s. A lot of it was bullshit but the intent was clear to weed out those who cannot handle an incredible amount of stress while you get little sleep or rest. There was no physical or verbal abuse. The intent of the training was to get people to keep performing and getting along with your team while everyone suffered the artificial stress created by the instructors.
I saw a guy piss himself from the verbal abuse in front of 100 other recruits in the squad bay. Another recruit vomited bile from being spurred to exhaustion by our "Kill Hat", again in public view of the rest of us and to the protests of the medic who pleaded with the Kill Hat to stop. He seemed a deeply sadistic man. There were so many of us for so few DIs it was possible to avoid their attention: my teenage self with a head full of fantasy called this the "eye of the malefactor".
I've never seen so much evil in my life but I also never made it to a conflict zone.
> After a third spin, Bourmeche said, he feared for his life and renounced his religion. The drill instructors then let him out, he said.
He only got 10 years for that? What a farce. He should hang. That's a depraved attack on the core values of the nation he's supposed to be protecting.
Another comment here talked how Canadian indigenous children were subject to this treatment for over a century https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27559649 and this wasn't made in the best interest of the victims.
And anyway, I don't believe in having institutionalized "tough love" could ever work. This kind of institution often attract sadistic people, that enjoy making the kids suffer.
Being strip searched does not fixes mental health issues. Really.
https://acoup.blog/2019/08/16/collections-this-isnt-sparta-p...
Also, you might be interesting in Cult of the Badass:
https://acoup.blog/2021/02/19/collections-the-universal-warr...
A model of obedience and desensitization achieved through abuse followed by committing unspeakable atrocities is not a great formula for making good citizens.
What kind of twisted mental gymnastics convinces the creators of these programs that their programs are anything but harmful?
There is something appealing about tough no nonsense solutions to people with authoritarian tendencies. And there is ignorance about how bad it can get in isolated communities where weaker individuals have no where to escape.
That event changed me. In the weeks and months ahead, anger and shame in my response led to a focused and intentional mental and physical development. I started exercising, eating better, and learning how to fight. I developed social responses that helped me become better respected and less manipulated, and changed from a rotund pushover to a normal male.
Our society has changed massively over the decades, and one of the biggest changes I've seen is that it's become significantly more feminized, but I think it's important to acknowledge that some things that work for feminine young women won't necessarily work for masculine young men. I think that tough love programs exist because many men who go there and run the place went through similar experiences as me. If the stress is handled adaptively and not maladaptively, it can be a motivator for positive change while dealing with our weaknesses.
While I appreciate that you turned this into a positive, I don’t think violence and tough love is something we should promote, celebrate or even tolerate as a society.
Here is a crazy thought: how about we strive to create a space where everyone feels valid as they are, where they feel that have a space where they can contribute, rather than make people feel like they have to toughen up in order to “take charge” or forcefully “making space” for themselves by forcing others to follow their will.
The guy hitting you was not an appropriate response, neither is you possibly disrupting class by cracking jokes. The solution is communication and respect. Getting buff and letting a culture of “boys will be boys” prevail is not.
Your premise of "everyone feels valid as they are" written directly alongside "[we should not promote] violence and tough love" betrays the contradiction. What you actually mean is we should strive for everyone to change themselves to be feminized and noncompetitive, and the people who are already this way should feel valid.
"The solution [to dealing with a bully] is communication and respect" is not based in reality. No bully has ever responded to communication. What they do respond to, and what society responds to, because we have had it ingrained in our brain stems for millions of years, is masculinity and assertiveness, backed by a (perceived) threat of violence. I'm sorry that you don't like this, but it cannot and I argue should not be changed, short of chemically poisoning everyone's testosterone levels with microplastics.
Speaking anecdotally, I feel most fulfilled when I embrace my masculine side and focus it on positive pursuits. Competition, pursuit of status, and power can all be good things if focused. This event unlocked that in me and helped me live a more fulfilled life I'm the long run.
In fact, your response is exactly what I'm talking about. Productive masculine behavior is shamed nowadays. That's sad to me.
[1] https://carraghermethod.com/the-hard-truth-for-men-declining...
Can you list some examples for that? It just doesn't match my experience. When people complain about masculine behavior, it's never the productive kind.
It doesn't really help the student all that much since they go from hyper, attention-seeking and not paying attention to stagnant, inhibited and disinterested (and still not paying attention).
I believe it does work for its purpose, but the dose is usually much too high and had to be taken often enough (it only lasts 3 to 4 hours) that the kid is pretty much constantly peaking then coming down.
Eventually they did create "extended release" tablets that probably fix that issue, so my experience may no longer apply.
Perhaps I am reading this wrong, but it sounds a lot like you want a return of pederasty? Let's assume you mean relationships and sex with people of similar ages, what ages should we imagine when you say "young boys"?
I think it's great that he managed to positively channel his masculinity, but I have my doubts at considering getting punched in the back of the head a good or acceptable thing, even though it may have had a positive outcome in his case. Perhaps I'm too feminized.
Any gender preference school systems may or may not have aren't really a factor when the bully has 180 lbs to ones 100 lbs.
https://www.kansascity.com/news/special-reports/article23820...
You see, if you look things up you will find that psychology is good at exactly what you'd expect it to be good at if you look at their methods: describing behavior "in the large". Think "Of 100 drug addicts, 10 will commit crimes due to drugs", those types of statements. Or "100 kids with IQ>130, 10 will develop severe autism".
It can also often describe what people here call a "funnel". 100 kids go into kindergarten, 10 will fail, of those 10, 5 will get into youth services ... and so on and so forth. Problem is that this makes people always focus on the worst possible outcomes (when reality is that the vast majority of psychological problems (and "problems") go away after a relatively short time, very short time in kids (think months, a year at most), and attempts to treat them make them worse rather than better for the large majority of clients. 3 main reasons are that, especially in kids, psychological problems exist outside of the kid, they're generally the result of repeating very bad experiences at school. Obviously nothing can be done to "fix" the kid that won't be undone 2 weeks after they rejoin school. Second reason is that treatment, especially residential, takes away the information the client needs to fix their issue, and thirdly treatment takes away the need to fix the issue. But ignoring such considerations has been how psychiatry has grown)
Like any statistician knows: predicting numbers can be done extremely accurately. Predicting one concrete situation, also known as "diagnosing", with incomplete situation and everyone lying about it, is utterly impossible.
This means that attempts to change these situations ("help these kids") fail spectacularly and often work extremely contra productively (I mean, everyone knows the reputation of CPS, who do nothing BUT this. Saying they don't produce healthy kids just doesn't do justice to HOW bad these organizations are for kids. Just the suicide numbers alone ...). Psychologists, orthopedagogues and even psychiatrists often CAUSE mental health issues in healthy kids because they interfere, against the wishes of kids and often parents too, without having any ability to make accurate diagnoses.
And of course, the worst of it are the incentives. Especially with kids, the problem is the environment. Generally not the home environment, but the school. However, CPS, psychologists, orthopedagogues have to keep in mind that they get "referrals" (against the wishes of children and parents) from schools, school-related (sport clubs), even sometimes police. So problems in schools grow and fester, because these professionals can't react to problems in schools, they would lose all their business. That even goes for CPS.
Because it is unfortunately not hard to explain why organizations, perpetually short of money and paid per-child (VERY short of money in the CPS' case), refuse to use the "leave them alone and in 6 months 2/3 issues go away" paradigm that research suggests to be used.
Some social worker (and there's lots of them) complains that they've refused necessary help. Of course, kids refusing help has direct financial repercussions for these people.
That's over 80% of placements (and let's not forget close to another 15% are kids getting arrested for crimes). Kids actually having seen physical abuse are very rare IN CPS. Hell, these days the proportion of kids that have gotten abused is higher in "Juvie" than in CPS institutions (most of these institutions will refuse kids who have "trauma as a first problem". Likewise they'll refuse addicts, anorexic, outwardly or inwardly agressive kids).
Issue is that what is never mentioned is the success rate of these social workers. Most often they're there to fix autism (and not autism like you've seen in documentaries, "autism" like refusing to listen to parents/teachers on occasion). Almost without exception problems exacerbate with these treatments (one simple reason that these kids are often smart enough to coast through (often primary) school. However, if they are denied school attendance (because social workers work during school hours, of course, so treatments happen during school hours), obviously they start failing more and more.
Given social workers' education (ie. high school, a VERY low course level in high school, sometimes not even having finished it) they are also incapable of helping out with most problems. You can't help a kid with math problems if you don't know math. So they should have a level of every subject given in high school, at least the level of teachers. To put it very mildly, they don't.
A bunch of these kids understand what is happening and start fighting social workers. This then leads linea recta to CPS involvement, mostly because these are very young kids. Violence works against them (read on), but these kids are too young to effectively use violence against an adult. Instead they cry and refuse to go or run away or the like.
Of course, the net effect is that CPS starts protecting their real clients, the ones who provide them new business: those social workers. Attacking the kids who asked for help, then refuse what they got. With threats, which doesn't work well, then, via youth judges, with violence.
And, the other side of the coin CPS becomes actively hostile to kids with real problems, whether that's abusive parents, drugs, criminal involvement or school problems.
They are very often accused that they do not protect kids. If the parents and/or the kid is really violent, CPS and social workers will keep their distance. Again some kids use this to "fight free" from CPS. The problem with that this that these kids are inexperienced, but trying to systematically escalate violence against adults, because that's the only thing that can get them out (and often back into a good school: CPS gets extra money if kids go to "special needs" schools). Issue with that is that "dosing" violence to the right level is hard for people who've done it as police agents for 20 years. Kids regularly use too little ... and too much violence, both of which have essentially the same consequence: getting locked up in isolation 23h per day for a period from 2 weeks to several years. And of course, this affects CPS employees: only the worst of the worst remain.
Yeah, no. I'm not living in the US so maybe you really have a weird bully culture like it was showed in TV shows ten years ago, but no, generally its the home environment. Some children DO have issues with schools and schoolwork, but the broken children i took care of when i was a youth camp counselor were broken at home. Wether it was rape, daily violence (acid on the face was the worse, luckily one eye was saved) or sometime just psychological torture (fun time when a father prostitute his wife and his child until she loose it and put him in a hospital). Oh, and the trucker stepfather taking his 11 year old stepdaughter in his truck for short haul because he needs company, and the mother keeping her daughter from speaking about it?
I'm sure in some cases, the psychologists are overzealous. But i took care of placed children every summer for 6 years, and yes, mistake were probably made for some, but for the vast majority? I'm sure even hearing about half their life would make you ask why they were not taken away sooner. The eleven yo girl i talked about, do you know how it was detected? She started blowing guys in the school toilet. Probably a "shool issue", yes, obviously. Without the school, i wonder how this would have been detected.
This has been researched and the answer is largely no.
I would also like to point out those kids are repeating what social workers tell them to avoid trouble. At least half of it isn't true.
I want to repeat what I said before. It isn't because home situations are great. It's just how bad youth services are.
https://sci-hub.se/10.1257/aer.97.5.1583
Or it's popular summary "Troubled homes better than foster care":
https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-07-02-foste...
And let's not forget just how bad the reputation of CPS is where it comes to getting things wrong. Some studies claim that false accusations of child abuse, because there is no standard of proof for taking the kids away (only for locking up the perpetrators), that the false diagnoses and false accusations far outnumber the true ones.
And like anyone who's seen an orphanage (they don't like to be called that anymore) and half of all foster homes knows. Seeing damaged kids in those places is perfectly normal: those places damage kids. These places are not hospitals, where patients come in damaged and get fixed. These places damage kids, they don't fix them. They're more like the ragged pillow at the bottom of a half-pipe, a catchment area for broken bones, doing MUCH more to protect the reputation of the rest of the system than preventing or helping with injuries.
And the horrible thing about such places is that they effectively prevent the kids from having a future (they have extremely bad schools, no alternatives, limited learning materials, ...), but throw them out at 18 years (and please: 21 years or even something ridiculous like 45 years would NOT be better). Please stop pretending that after 10 years where crime (from stealing from other kids to dealing drugs) is the only way to get even a trivial little extra, no-one would remain clean.
That only happens in protected settings. And the sad truth is that even very bad parents still provide a very protected setting for kids.
Besides, these places, for the large majority they don't even try: treatment, though often the very reason kids get taken away, effectively doesn't happen in such places. Just 1 underpaid person, often without any qualifications, per 15 or 20 kids, and some director "handling" 20 groups. That's all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_Term_12
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Crasher
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_Family
Please note: "System Crasher" is the more realistic of these movies (especially "Instant Family" is extremely toned down, I can guarantee a kid doesn't just shout 2 sentences if they fear everything they have will be taken away. They fight and scream and cry and kick and ... for 2 months).
If you watch "System Crasher" 5 times you will even start to see WHAT is happening. This kid made a mistake. Mistake lead to reputation (ie. to school teacher at the very least pestering her), which escalated matters. Help, effectively meant using violence against the child and more and more fear. And of course, the kid never gets any say, and therefore never learns WHY one needs control over oneself. This escalates and escalates and escalates BECAUSE OF YOUTH SERVICES. If they refused to intervene in the beginning of the problem, the odds of it just blowing over were very, very high, as the kid and parents would be forced to self-regulate their relationship. That would have happened, and at that point there would no longer have been a problem. And, frankly, it's hard to argue that any tactic, other than what was done, was worse, given the outcome.
And that would be this CPS:
https://www.kansascity.com/news/special-reports/article23820...
The idea that justifies the power of CPS, that these sorts of "measures" are taken in the interest of the child, are totally ridiculous upon inspection. Not because there aren't any problems, but because these "solutions" are so much worse.
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Problem is, it does “kill”* some people.
(*) Sometimes literally, but probably more often figuratively.
In a similar vein, with respect to "there are no atheists in foxholes", A three-tour-of-duty-in-Vietnam captain in the US Army (Harry McMenamin) said, "I was an atheist when I was in Vietnam, and I was in a lot of foxholes. There are atheists in foxholes."
My family is forever destroyed from "tough love." I'm in my 50's and we still don't talk except for exchanging cards with the parents at various appropriate times throughout the year. They've apologized, but the scars are very deep.
We grew so distant that it is no longer repairable, and so we at least maintain that very distant relationship. I don't communicate in any way with the siblings since "tough love" taught me to despise them. Obviously I don't despise them any more, but the damage is done, and quite thoroughly.
I'd argue that the key word here is "trauma"; I think _adversity_ can make you stronger (more disciplined, and more focused), but I think that Dr. Bernstein is using the word "trauma" in its technical, medical, sense, i.e. "Psychological trauma is caused by an adverse experience, or series of experiences, that result in an injury that changes the way the brain functions, impairing neurophysiological, psychological, and cognitive functioning." [0]
There is large heterogeneity in the reaction of individuals to the sane exact experience, and sometimes what initially appears damaging ends up doing the opposite.
There is a circular definition here. If we define trauma in terms of harmful outcomes, it's bad by definition, but that's arguing semantics and not psychology. The slipperiness comes in when we switch definitions mid-paragraph.
You'll also see virtually everyone 300 years ago was exposed to things which would be considered traumatic today. It's how we evolved.
We've got a bad theory of trauma and resilience.
The problem is, it's hard to define where the line is - and the line is different for everyone.
That's why, I think it's important the people who need to go through that should know and decide they want to do it.
As a parent, I would never force my kids to go through that, unless they understand what it implies and they want to.
2. It's called post-traumatic growth, and there's an emerging mass of research on the subject.
To be fair a lot of them had pretty deep substance abuse issues and probably needed some kind of organized help although I doubt very many got any of that at this program.
There's something about your story that really, deeply fucking bothers me. I think its the part where you're taken from your home in the middle of the night. I can't adequately describe how that makes me feel, and I wonder why. I'm sorry that happened to you.
Regarding the silver lining, as it were, do you think your parents could have arranged another sort of intervention or experience to give you those benefits, with resorting to institutionalized abuse? Would a better sort of "camp" have worked for you?
In terms of the other ways to produce my experience without the downsides, absolutely yes and if I have kids I intend to try to do exactly that. They would have the final decision on it and it wouldn't be a surprise but basically some kind of intensive month or two outdoor survival training or something like that. Maybe I'd even just do it myself with them.
I think that doing it yourself (or participating at some capacity) is so much better than letting a third party you don't even know take custody of your kids for some months. The possibility for abuse is staggering.
But perhaps just joining boy scouts is cool?
Why do we have rules. Who should get to make and enforce rules. When should I follow a set of rules that are laid out for me. I don't think many 23 year olds have too many deep thoughts on stuff like that but I had a more intuitive sense of my own answers to those questions at that age after having the sense of losing my freedom and being treated in a manner that I perceived as deeply unfair.
There's an interesting interview on youtube of the comedian Adam Eget about his experience in a similar school.
This sentence is so ignorantly woke that it has come full-circle and it is blatantly racist.
Latin America is much, much more than drug-ridden slums, war hasn't torn apart all of Africa - and many countries have recovered from such strife -, and many people in the Middle East live under moderate versions of the Sharia that don't entail gruesome "daily executions" like in ISIS-controlled territories.
About 700M people in the world live in absolute poverty nowadays, compared to about 80% in the 1800s [1]. There is no factual evidence that the "majority" of people in the world live in the abject conditions that you describe. In fact, many people now live in relative material poverty compared to Western standards, but in safety, dignity and prosperity.
We can argue all day about how there is a lot of work yet to be done or how at the extremes wicked expressions of evil continue to exist, but this savage and false interpretation of the world is completely out of place.
I've also travelled across Africa, and have seen plenty, and I mean plenty, of happy people. They lived in material poverty compared to my cozy European living standards, but in relative safety and prosperity.
Your interpretation of how most people in the world live in absolutely abject and violent conditions is not only wrong in my opinion and experience, the data is also there to back it up. Massive improvements in healthcare, education, policing have happened all across the board in the world.
There is atrocious violence in too many parts of the world, but not "most" of the world like you describe. For each example you describe in Latin America or Africa, I could come up with one hundred counter-examples of towns that live in pretty safe and prosperous conditions.
The world still needs a lot - and I mean a lot - of work, but an utterly bleak and defeatist vision of things does not help the cause.
Donnie, is that you?
I think you haven't traveled widely enough or looked at the data and as a result are makinf broad and innacurate generalizations that do qualify as racist.
If you don't want your communication to be compared to that of the crudest politician in recent memory, you shouldn't communicate like he does.
They are saying it is mostly that, which I believe is blatantly false.
Individuals' life experience isn't the average of a regions, or defined by headlines. For the most part, it's family and immediate community that define childhoods. A lot of good childhoods is otherwise dysfunctional places. A lot of bad childhoods in otherwise wealthy places.
The school was burnt down by the students a few years after I left and I got a couple thousand dollars in a class action lawsuit when it came out that they were hiring unlicensed therapists and admitting students who should have been in intensive psychiatric care and were an immediate danger to others around them.
I look back on it as one of the most valuable experiences in my life, not because there was any validity to the program but because it just confronted me with a lot of intense challenges at a young age that really developed my critical thinking and mindset at a young age.