TV show Boys and Girls Alone under fire for leaving kids to fend for themselves

News.com.au ^ | 2/04/2009

[kingu]

A TV station has come under fire for a Lord of the Flies-style documentary examining how children as young as eight would cope without their parents for a fortnight.

Boys And Girls Alone has drawn comparisons with reality TV show Big Brother and William Golding's novel, Lord of the Flies, in which a group of schoolboys stuck on a deserted island try to govern themselves with disastrous results.

The British program shows children crying because they miss their parents, fighting and splitting into factions where some are bullied.

Broadcaster Channel 4 defended the program, which it said featured bickering, disagreements and "the kind of tussling you'd get in any playground" but no physical violence.

In the four-part series, 10 boys and 10 girls aged between eight and 12 experience life without their parents for two weeks.

[kingu]

For those who saw Kid Nation, this is a far different experiment. Whereas Kid Nation used teams, leaders, team building exercises, as well as specific goals and tasks assigned, this is about as anarchistic as it gets. Ten boys and ten girls were basically taken to separate small country estates, and basically told see you in a fortnight. They're not completely unsupervised; crew is on hand to break up any serious violence, and the parents are on site watching everything. In fact, during the first episode that aired, the parents basically decided to step in and try to straighten out some of the issues and conflicts.

In a lot of ways, I see such a show as this as really a strong insight for parents as to what their children are experiencing, and perhaps a wakeup call for how little their children actually know about how to care for themselves, or even those around them. Inevitably, the 'bullying' complaints are starting to pour in, and while the show is scheduled to run for four weeks, it might not even make it that long.

[chuck_the_tv_out]

ABUSE.

it’s people like this that chopped off a little boy’s penis in the 70s & brought him up as a girl “for science”

[DogBarkTree]

Reminds me of Democrats.

[Flycatcher]

What kind of immoral twisted mind would want to make a reality show out of Lord of the Flies?

That was rhetorical. Sadly, I know the answer.

[KarlInOhio]

The British program shows children crying because they miss their parents, fighting and splitting into factions where some are bullied.

Here in the US we call that C-Span (with Senator Voinovich providing the crying).

[kingu]

http://www.newsshopper.co.uk/news/4097417.BECKENHAM__Mum_defends_Boys_and_Girls_Alone_TV_show/

Supposedly one of the girls in the show (incidentally, one of the biggest bullies as well) has been commenting on the show, down at the bottom. Umm, yeah, /very/ much like the Democrats. Once they reach their utopia world of universal equality without the ‘ruling class’ of adults, the first thing that most of them realize is that - hey, who’s doin’ the cookin’ and cleanin’?

[montag813]

I see this show as a metaphor for all Britons, who have themselves been abandoned to chaos by their willful destruction of Christ.

[Titan Magroyne]

I sure hope the money given the parents for installing their children in a petri dish is wisely invested. I’m sure the children’s good futures are utmost in the parents’ minds.

/s