Child Soldiers The 4C's

Connections:  I can't really connect my life to Ishmael Beah's because I haven't been through the hardship he faced as a child soldier, but I can relate my life style to his before he joined the military. As just like Ishmael I too like playing soccer and listening hip hop music and I know how it feels to lose a family member. Otherwise his story reminds me of a movie I watched called Blood Diamond in which a kid named Dia Vandy who lived a simple life with his family in Sierra Leone, similer to Ishmael, had his town invaded by the rebels and was kidnapped to become a child soldier. In this movie I saw how they manipulate children by giving them drugs and weapons to kill enemies just as Ishmael said. From the reading "Teaching Kids to Kill" I found some similarities and differences relating Ishmael Beah's life. As the concept of the article "A Case Study: Paducah, Kentucky" where  a young boy named Micheal Carneal shot 8 people in his school is similar to Ishmael's life as he was a young boy who also was involved in shooting people. But the difference was the influence that caused them to get violent because Micheal got motivated to shoot the people by playing video games, whereas Ishmael had no option except joining the military. In "Killing Unnaturally" it states that many soldiers are trained to kill, as many of them don't or can't kill anyone likewise to Ishmael. There was a line in " The Methods of in this Madness: Brutalization" which said "In the end you embrace violence and discipline and accept it as a normal and essential survival skill in your brutal new world."(Article :Teaching Kids to Kill, pg-2) This line can be related to Ishmael's hardship in the process of becoming a killing machine and in the end the violence becomes his way of life. Furthermore in text "Classical Conditioning" Japaneses made there young soldiers kill innocent prisoners by stabbing just like Ishmael killed his prisoners only he did it by shooting them. Ismael wrote a book to cause awareness about child soldier issue just like the text which states methods to fight against child abuse in " Fighting Back: Education, Legislation, Litigation". Few differences in most of the articles were that they said that children get forced in to violence by media in contrast to Ishmael as he was forced in violence because of his families death and the civil war.

Challenges: Understanding the fact that he didn't have an option about joining the military and had to do what they said , but when he got the weapon and was sent to war couldn't he had ran form the war to somewhere far when no was looking or couldn't he had killed the leader when he got the weapon. Also why did Ishmael think of the leader as father figure even after the leader made him kill many people.

Concepts: From this text I found some concepts really important that Ishmael stated about his experience. At young age he was separated from his family as his family was killed by the rebels in Sierra Leone. He was forced to join the military and become a child soldier. Child soldiers were drugged and given weapons to kill who the leader told them to. Ishmael was rescued by a UNICEF group. Now he writes books about child soldier issue in USA and is causing awareness about what is going on in Sierra Leone.

Changes: From the text and from listening to what Ishmael said I understand that it is very hard for children that are turned into child soldiers in different countries. They are separated from their family and are turned into killing machines as they are still not mature enough to understand what they are doing. Also that all these kids are put into war whereas they could have many talents that they could offer to the world because kids are the future.