Boot Camp or Prison
Prison is the last place a child should be, yet many people spend a good amount of their childhoods locked up in these containment centers. Some of the teenagers are even sentenced by their own parents to be taken away to Boot Camps. These camps are designed for troubled teenagers whose parents believe there is no other option besides having other adults force their children into thinking the same way their parents do. However, most parents do not know everything that goes on in these camps. They are filled with physical and mental abuse and use any method necessary in order to achieve these results. The novel, Boot Camp, written by Todd Strasser shows how these private institutions should not be legal throughout the world given all the problems they have with them. Strasser illustrates why these camps should be illegal as they teach teenagers the opposite lessons they promise, have them undergo brutal conditions for long periods of time, and how as a privately owned company, rely on doing whatever the can to get the wanted results rather than teaching the teenagers what is actually good for them. The first example of how Strasseer discloses her beliefs of why these camps do no good and should be outlawed is simply the fact of how hypocritical they are. They say they will teach your child respect and how to go about life as a genuinely good person. But in reality, the people involved learn how to survive the camps. Whether it takes learning how to manipulate anyone or threatening others so you can get ahead, the lessons taught at these places are not what they promise. As Garrett says in the novel, “I may not have known much about manipulation then but I've learned plenty of it since”(103). This is an example of how the children sent to these camps have two options. Either truly change their beliefs or learn how to fake it as much as possible and do whatever it takes to make it through. And for those that are sent for the wrong reasons, the second option is all they can choose. Along with teaching these negative characteristics, the camps also heavily rely on intense punishment in order to progress. Everyone has a breaking point, and these camps are designed to be able to find it. It takes a large amount of adversity in order to get someone to completely change their way of thinking and that is exactly what they have. Through extensive beatings, time in isolation, and just an overall low standard of living, these camps will do anything in order to achieve their results. In the novel you can see how much of an impact these punishments have when Garrett says, “In a bizarre way, the distraction of the pain is almost a relief from the worst torture of all-the hours alone with nothing to do but think”(113). When a person has been tortured long enough that pain can be seen as a distraction, that is an extreme. Not only are they being put through this abuse, but most of the time they are not even sent there for an acceptable reason. Maybe the worst aspect to these camps that Strasser describes for us is the fact that these are private institutions focused solely on making the most amount of money. And like most businesses, the company with the best product will make the most profit. Because of this reason, these camps do not care about actually helping these teenagers through their difficulties or even deciding if they are actually serious problems that need to be addressed. Instead they will try to brainwash the teens into believing whatever their parents want that way they can be seen as successful and continue to grow as a business. These can be considerably profitable companies as we can see when an employee says “that’s why they’re paying four grand a month to send him where he’s going” (4), which is about what these camps actually cost. These camps do not care about whether the teenagers actually progress morally. They only care about getting the parents to give them high reviews in order to generate more revenue for their company. Boot camps are a reality that still continue to plague the United States and other countries around the world. While on paper they may seem like an effective way to to help a teenager get through a rough part of their life, in practice they do not work. As Strasser extensively points out throughout the novel, they are hypocritical and cruel forms of punishment driven by making a profit and not by the well being of their customers. These places should not be allowed to continue in their current state. While in most cases, parents have the best interest for their children, sending a child away to be dealt with by others is a mistake that should never be made.
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