Kid Nation

As some of you may have heard, child abuse is running rampant on the television network CBS. Or, at least that is what we are told. Adding to my ginormous list of regularly watched shows, the new controversial hit Kid Nation has begun to climb the rankings.

The gyst of the show is a modified "Lord of the Flies" scenario in which 40 children, ages 8 to 15 are dropped off in the middle of the desert with the mandate to build a town of their own. They are given a ghost town, a warm, yet hands-off adult host, and daily tips as to how to coordinate this new civilization.

I have no idea how the producers pulled off such a bold legal maneuvering, but they somehow got the courts to agree to let them make millions off a social experiment with minors. And the television it has produced is, in a word, awesome.

In the first couple of days, life was chaos. The kids ran wild, soon succombing to the pressures of starvation and thusly beginning their work.

What has fascinated me about this show is the way that these kids have semingly replicated adult society. They chip in to wash dishes, create new recipes. Kids with certain gifts rise to challenge and cover for the inadequacies of the others. In fact, now that I think about it, they function better than adults.

One episode shocked me and in some ways rang quite true. Every three days the kids are brought togther in their teams and compete with each other for a better class rank than the others. If all the teams complete the challenge within a given amount of time, the whole town is given a choice of two rewards. Needless to say, when you bring a bunch of starving who are desparate for a bit of fun - they work hard. In this particular challenge, the choice of the two rewards were either to turn the town into a giant miniature golf course (hey, an accidental oxymoron - yeah!) or a small collection of religious texts. Almost to a kid, they chose the library.

Why do you think this is?