Recently in class, we have been reading the novella version of Ender's game, which follows the story of child genius Ender Wiggins through battle school and beyond. In the novella, gifted children are sent into space to train for war with an enemy lightyears away from earth. The enemy has superior technology and tactics, and earth is in need of an outstanding leader to outwit the enemy.
Today, the government spends billions of dollars on national defense and weapon development. War machines can now be operated by remote control, and new simulators (read post below) train soldiers for possible combat situations. However with these machines being easier and safer to operate, what would happen if the government began to act like the government in Ender's game and allow children to operate the equipment? Many children play video games modeled after war. What would happen if the consequence of killing a "virtual" enemy on a tv screen was killing a real enemy? Should the government start to train children to play virtual war games to create better soldiers? Would it be any different than real soldiers in real combat?
10 comments:
Children should not be involved in war. war isn't anything ANYONE should want to be involved in. i hope we never see the day where the government would even think about recruiting children for any military purposes. people everywhere would be very pissed off if there was a draft like that. Even though children become involved in these video games, there is a fine line between killing animated characters and real people, if it were to come to something where we had hovering guns everywhere and anyone could kill anyone with a little joystick, there would little to no need to send in troops and risk their lives, but it sure as hell shouldn't be little kids controlling these real guns.
Of course not. This isnt Sparta where they took kids away to train and killed there metally handicape because they were weak. Plus with all this techology we dont even need our commanders in the battle field. its really a question of when will these wars escolate to the point where countries flip out and start nuking one another. thats the real problem to worry about. it takes one insane man to start, just as Hitler started the attacks on the Jews.
We are a civilized country, there is no reason to use children to do our dirty work. Yes other countries give twelve-year-old kids guns and have them fight in war and that is terrible. Having them operating computers to kill people is comparable terrible. The government should not train children to become soldiers, we aren't communists. Teaching children to kill that young will really mess up their developing brain, even worse than some war veterans become. Children can't even see rated R movies how can they be allowed to kill, via computer or not. It would be different than real soldiers, because you aren't actually there, if you blow someone up you don't get splattered with blood or smell the sulfur of gunpowder. It kinda takes the reality out of it, but having kids do it is still wrong.
Children should not be involved in war what so ever. War isn't something that just anyone can handle even as an adult, and and I believe children wouldn't be able to handle real war at all. If we started to draft children America would go into an outrage because many people would not want their children involved at all. I don't even have a child yet and I know for a fact I wouldn't want my kid involved at an extent. There is such a big difference in children playing video games and shooting people and shooting an actual human being. You should never put a gun in the hands of a child. Children are still learning between whats wrong and right and putting a gun in their hands could mess them up and think that shooting any person would be ok. I agree with darkknight as he said "We are a civilized country, there is no reason to use children to do our dirty work"
This is a pretty crazy idea to even think could possibly happen. I don't know if you've ever seen it but there was a movie in the early 90's with Robin Williams in which he owned a toy company and he was pretty wacky. At the end of the movie however they tell a group of children that they are playing a sort of video game that is sort of like a wartime video game however what they don't know is that when they destroy a plane or a tank they are really killing a tank or a plane in real life and Robin Williams is bewildered by this idea because he believes in toys that are made for happiness not death.
I hope that this day never comes, but we really dont have a way of knowing. The future is only something we can predict and hope to contain. I think that kids should have no part in war efforts, but whose to say in the future they might get a head start? It isnt right in "todays" world, but in the future it might be an accepted thing. If kids were able to start training at an early age that may actually be a benefit. Im not saying I agree with the idea, but I also dont have a say 200 years from now. The way the world is going, I wouldnt find it hard to believe if some country were to put this into use. Its almost kind of a what do you have to lose situation. If people start to realize that kids are really good at video games and not at another skill, they will find a way to make the video game useful.
Anyone ever seen Toys with Robin Williams?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105629/
Exactly that!
cool movie, even LL cool J is in it.
They trained kids to fight by giving them video games of tank and fight jets unknowning to them they were actually piloting these plans and tanks
in a toy factory.
ha
The government should not train children for war. Children should never be a part of war. Ever. There is a certain innocence about children that adults do not have; the inability to understand morals or right from wrong or points of view. Adults do, which is why adults are the decision makers and not the children. Therefore, why should a child ever be a soldier?
It is beneficial to the Army to recruit using video games because it glorifies fighting and war. I don't think a video game should be used to recruit members because it gives a false reality about what a war is like.
I do not think that the military should begin to train children and I feel this way because in doing this children would not have a choice as to whether or not they want to be apart of the military or not. In Ender's Game it could be seen very well that he did not want to be in the military, but he had been in it since he was younger and all of the attempts he made to get kicked out failed. That's not fair.
I'm sure that anyone trained to be anything beginning at a young age might be better than adults coming into it, but anything concerning what a child will be spending the majority of his/her time on for the rest of their life should be determined by that child when he/she is old enough to make that decision.
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