Saturday 6 May 2006

Death of a young man

baynews9.com - News : Autopsy: Martin Anderson suffocated is an item about the death of a barely-teenaged youth at an American boot camp.
I have watched a couple of tv programmes about these establishments. Totally out-of-control teenagers from UK were selected and then shipped out to undergo the treatment offered. The camps seem to be located in those wild and remote areas that America has a plentitude of. The kids are shown that their days of laissez-faire are gone and that rewards and comfort come from doing what they are told. Seems to work but I have reservations about the stick-ability once the cocky horror show gets back to their former environment.
Seems that youth may have been in the resist stage. An inquiry is running. I see another of my hobby-horses here.
I invariably reject the calls we hear about going for a replay of National Service as a way of sorting out problem kids. I underwent National Service and freely admit I went into it with some personality problems. The system ground me down and I came out after six months as a regulation hamburger not much different to the other lumps of meat that went through the mincer. However, with the current attention to rights and prohibition of conduct now called bullying, NS would not work today. Seems to me that what happened here is that irrestible force of a camp met an immovable object of kid.

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