Kid Nation - Episode 11

We open with Taylor and Leila in the chicken coop. Ten year old beauty queen Taylor, never one to keep an opinion to herself, tells Leila which breeds of chickens (she doesn’t know the name of the breeds, mind you) are pretty (the Rhode Island Reds) and which are ugly (all the others). She suggests pet make-up would be a good invention, so ugly pets, like ugly people, might be improved. If there is an argument to be made that child beauty pageants warp the child, Taylor is it.

Town councilors Greg and Blaine pull/push a large, two wheel cart loaded with garbage down the street, headed for the dump. Sophia, in the apron she is almost always wearing, stops them to suggest they slaughter enough chickens for a town feast. The boys are in favor of the menu suggestion and they agree to kill 10.

Greg and company go to the chicken coop to gather dinner. Savannah (who, as we know from the episode in which the decision was first made to butcher chickens, is protector of all things fowl) rallies her troops, namely Taylor, Kelsey and Leila. A confrontation ensues. The girls are adamant that no brown chickens (i.e., the Reds) be killed. Greg thinks the criteria should be which ones look like they’d be good to eat (makes sense to me). The girls physically attack Greg and Blaine. The older boys show remarkable control and refrain from acting in kind. This infuriates Taylor and Savannah even more. Finally Sophia intervenes and, in her wise way, suggests to Savannah’s troops that they be the ones to select which chickens will be dinner. A brilliant move in that it gives the chicken lovers what they are really fighting for: a sense of control.

Dinner is selected according to Taylor’s criteria, which seems to have infected her friends, as well. After the boys remove the chickens that will be butchered, Taylor yells out “Ugly chicken’s deserve to die,” and is cheered by her friends. Score 1 for Festinger’s views on the mechanics of dissonance resolution.

Morning, Day 32. Alex, Anjay and Jared discuss pi and other topics of interest. Sanjay knows pi to 5 decimal places, Alex knows it to 10. He calls this “most of the numbers of pi.” Jared asserts that the existence of extraterrestrial life in our solar system in the distant past is an accepted scientific fact. It’s interesting that Jared and Alex both state their facts as absolutes. In fact, pi is an irrational number, meaning its decimal expansion is infinite and does not repeat, so it’s impossible to know “most” of the numbers (Alex may know this and simply meant to say "the most numbers of pi), while the life-on-Mars interpretation derived from the Allen Hills meteorite that Jared is thinking about is one of many possible interpretations of a single, interesting but tiny, unsupported bit of evidence. Do all children need to frame facts as absolutes in order to get them into long-term memory, or just the smart ones?

The town council gathers for its regular reading of the pioneer journal. Today the journal comes with 4 copies of a booklet entitled A History of Bonanza city, which the districts are encouraged to study. DK advises the others to go along with it because, “Sometimes the journal has to do with the challenges.” The others consider this insight. Four-fifths of the way through the Kid Nation experiment, the light goes on. They reluctantly agree they must tell the town that it will need to spend time studying. They fear this will not be a popular development.

At the town meeting, the council’s fears are proven to be well founded. The council (average age, 14) gets beaten to the punch with their rationalization about why they should study when 10 year old Sophie tells the meeting they should do it because “Most of the time what the journal says has to do with what the showdown is about.”

After the meeting, Jared tells the camera, “Education is the root of civilization. If a person’s uneducated, they’ll be flipping burgers at the supermarket.” They flip burgers in supermarkets in Georgia?

While everyone else is in their bunkhouse, studying, Taylor once again bails on doing something she doesn’t want to do, Leila once again follows Taylor’s lead and once again there is a confrontation in the chicken coop (where Leila and Taylor are hiding). The councilors confront the girls and tell them that if they don’t study, they will not be allowed to share in any reward the town gets after the challenge. Leila caves, Taylor does not.

The challenge is, of course, a quiz on the history of Bonanza city. Results: Green – Upper Class, mainly thanks to Hunter’s dead-eye with the sling shot they must use to pop balloons that have wrong answers on them, Blue – Merchants, Yellow – Cooks, Red – Laborers. At the end of the challenge they have enough sling-shot ammo left to fill a large jar, meaning they win the group reward.

The choice this week is between a library (actually, more like 2 bookcases) and a free arcade with air-hockey, foosball, pool and video games. Before announcing the decision, Greg informs all that Taylor cannot share in the reward. To the delight of most, the council for once chooses the fun prize.

In the aftermath of the decision, work comes to a halt save for Taylor, who spends the better part of a day doing dishes in an effort to get the council to allow her into the arcade (they do), and Hunter and Sophia, who don’t care for arcades. The situation gets so bad that the council threatens to padlock the arcade at the gold star meeting. After some discussion, it is decided that the arcade will be padlocked until each person has done their daily chores. Interestingly, Sophia is appointed by the council as the “sheriff” and charged with enforcing the edict.

Hunter is awarded the gold star, continuing the amazing dominance of the Greens.

Things are winding down now. Only 2 episodes left. Is anybody else getting bored?