Brat Camp

Apparently my inspirations to write can potentially come by watching the television.

Well, as the above paragraph suggests, I was watching an interesting documentary from the National Geographic channel entitled “Brat Camp China”. I was interested in it mainly because it concerns on certain issues which verily do not always possess a clearly black and white area.

In “Brat Camp China”, it tells us the story of children in China who misbehave to the extent that their parents would send them to the Marching School to have them reformed with the hope that their children will return home after turning into a new leaf. Initially, I thought that it was a documentary that was meant to tell parents that when disciplining their children, sometimes it is just necessary to use force rather than honey-like tones. However, I believe that the National Geographic channel meant the documentary to be something to provoke the mind. It does not tell us whether this Marching School should be encouraged, nor does it tell us that it should be discouraged.

Children who have extremely poor attitudes are sent to this Marching School where they will endure various forms of training, be it physical, mental or emotional. Children who come to this school usually have problems such as being overly lazy, being disrespectful to the elders, love fighting, etc.

Many of these children come from families with better backgrounds. Some of them would even take their children to the school in luxurious cars, a constant reminder that these children live in a world full of luxury. Many would put the parents on task for spoiling their children, and there are also people who blame the one-child-per-family policy for the increasing numbers of “spoilt brats”.

What attracted my attention particularly was that the camp was effective in moulding the personality and character of children, especially the younger ones, although they are put on extremely vigorous training that would require them to march for 60 kilometres in a day, and would travel by foot for about 1000 kilometres in total by the end of their training programme.

Nevertheless, National Geographic also highlighted some of the children where the training programme bears no fruit whatsoever and that the children are just as difficult to handle. However, all this came not without its reasons.

While children who are lazy and disrespectful to parents can be taught through harsh methods and eventually realise that laziness, procrastination and disrespectfulness bring only trouble to themselves, there are children in this brat camp who were being rebellious not because he was spoilt, but perhaps due to lack of parental guidance and love.

One of the participants named Zhang Tao, in particular, caught my attention. In camp, he had tried countless times to escape the Marching School with the reason that he did not ask to be sent to the school, and that he missed his mother. The fact that his parents did not come to visit him in the school, or even correspond with him through letters demotivated him even further, and he had, during the course of the documentary, kept questioning if his parents still cared for him.

I thought that his parents did not want to communicate with him lest they cannot keep a hardened heart and go to take him back from the school without completing the whole training programme, but when I saw tears coming from him upon reading just a simple text message from his father (which was sent to Zhang Tao’s instructor) and embracing his instructor passionately, it was soon clear to me that he was very much a son who was thirsty for love and attention from his parents. Perhaps all the unbecoming things he did was for the sake of getting attention from his parents.

Shortly after receiving the message, he adopted a more positive attitude, but it was apparently short-lived when he managed to escape from the Marching School once and for all. His parents were notified and they came to the school. Instead of being worried about his disappearance, I was immensely surprised at the father’s attitude when he said that it was not his first time escaping; after all, his son once ran away from home and did not return for two months.

Their son’s disappearance did not baffle them – it was not surprising. However, they could not be bothered to even lodge a police report for his disappearance, which lasted for a month already. Instead, his father went to claim back all the training fees and deposit that were expended into the school on the grounds that the school did not manage to keep an eye on his son well enough such that he was able to escape from the school. The refund was made immediately, with Zhang Tao’s father making a remark that he could not be bothered whether or not his son returns home, as he has got a lot of business and work to do. In fact, he had chosen to disown his son.

In my opinion, it is no wonder that Zhang Tao has chosen to run away. In fact, reports stated that three months after he escaped, he made an appearance in Guangzhou, working in an Internet cafe. He has not returned home since; his father has disowned him anyway.

Zhang Tao would have obviously been greatly deprived of love to the extent that riches meant nothing to him. His parents were obviously wealthy, but perhaps he has reached a stage where money does not make him happy, or that money does not enable him to buy a pound of love. If both parents are so absorbed with work and business, how is the neglected child going to feel belonged at home?

We may never know if Zhang Tao leads a happier life in Guangzhou. What we know is that despite the efficiency of the Marching School to reform children with poor attitudes, I am quite certain that the Marching School will not be able to mend a broken heart due to lack of love. As some of the instructors of the school said – all this training may show positive results for the first few months, but the long-lasting results have yet to be assessed.

There might be a lot more children in Zhang Tao’s predicament. All that I can say is that at times, the Marching School is not the solution to the children’s misdemeanours. To mend a broken heart, the initiative must come from the parents. If parents continue to put money and wealth above their children, hoping that their children will understand that all that their parents are doing is for their sakes, then these broken hearts will remain shattered. After all, the value of love is priceless.