Book #2 ----- Post #2

Related current situation in the world? How?

Over my life, I've had a couple of friends that had been abused by their parents and mistreated by others. This book, the story of Ender's life, and the lives of all the kids at the battle station brought back all those horrible memories back in to my head. While I was reading, I couldn't believe how the students were being treated at the Battle School, but then I remembered my old friends in America, who used to go through the same things these kids went through in their own homes. In the past, I almost wanted to scream at the abusive parents of my friends to make them stop hurting my friends like that. I felt so bad for them that I even sometimes told them to run away, when I knew that nobody should run away from home or their problems. Even in just the story, the people that go to the Battle School were kids, and none of them over the age of 14. How could anyone, especially 'responsible' adults, treat kids of that age in those ways? I saw that Ender was the kid I was mostly worried for, because of all the abuse from his brother, Peter, in his past life at home, and the continued abuse of the students and teachers there to him.

During the freshmen geography classes a few weeks ago, the teachers had us learn about Africa and its problems in the past. We looked at articles, worked on worksheet, and watched movies about Africa. I learned something about Africa from before in middle school, but didn't realize what it really meant, until in high school. I heard that the kids in Africa were being tortured, not abusively, but in different ways. Many kids in Africa were being forced not just to work for people, but work for the military. I couldn't believe in the beginning as I heard that small kids, even at the age of 7 or so, were being forced to take arms in the army. I mean who could ever make little kids sacrifice their small and fragile lives to fight in a war or battle? Who could bear to see them suffer like they would? Who could even just imagine their innocence decaying away as they held an AK47 in their small hands? I think people of this world need to understand that not all people in this world are what they are supposed to be. That is partly the reason i put those quotes on the work responsible, when I talked about responsible adults. In society, we learn that as you grow older and become adults, you are SUPPOSED to mature and be responsible for your actions and such. If that is supposed to be true, then how could the government and people of Africa let this kind of thing happen, when they have to see their own kids holding a gun shooting at people in intention of harming and even killing others? Just like Ender and the kids in the Battle School, the kids' innocence is being twisted and turned in to hatred and anger for others. Their sweet little hands, made for arts and crafts, would be forced in to killing and taking of others' lives. Just like the story, the kids are growing up to become tools of destruction for others.