Reality Show Based on a Best Seller

Kid Nation

Here's CBS' summary: "Forty over-achieving kids are given free reign to create their own society in this new reality-based offering from CBS. Forty kids are given forty days free of adult supervision in an abandoned New Mexico town to build a new world. At the end of every episode, the kids have a town meeting. At the meeting the kids award one child a gold star worth $20,000. The finale will end with the biggest test, the biggest awards, and a special surprise."

While it's obviously staged, and they've been given much more possibilities of succeeding, this isn't original. "Lord of the Flies" by William Golding was an amazing, award-winning book about just such a situation, only these boys were a)British, and b)marooned, not just placed there with the tools to succeed. Here is an excerpt of the description from Penguin Great Books: "Golding's aim, to 'trace the defect of society back to the defect of human nature' is elegantly pursued in this gripping adventure tale about a group of British school boys marooned on a tropical island. Alone, in a world of uncharted possibilities, devoid of adult supervision or rules, the boys attempt to forge their own society, failing however in the face of terror, sin, and evil." While I doubt if the kids on TV will truly be without adult supervision (who's directing, producing, and running the equipment, afterall, and don't tell me their parents aren't nearby for liability's sake), I do wonder if they could truly make it work, or if they would have, eventually, the same outcome as the boys in Golding's book. Overall, I expect that, without the script, every show like this would come to Golding's same conclusion (though I don't know if he turned to the spiritual aspect): As it is written:
"10There is no one righteous, not even one;
11there is no one who understands,
no one who seeks God.
12All have turned away,
they have together become worthless;
there is no one who does good,
not even one.
13"Their throats are open graves;
their tongues practice deceit."
"The poison of vipers is on their lips."
14"Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness."
15"Their feet are swift to shed blood;
16ruin and misery mark their ways,
17and the way of peace they do not know."
18"There is no fear of God before their eyes."
Romans 3:10-18
I will be interested to see how this turns out, or if it even gets far off the ground (read: viewers are interested). I may even need to watch it myself, at least the pilot. This is one reality show that may turn out to be worth watching, or maybe even assigning to the students, with discussions about pride, jealosy, greed (there is money involved, of course), and such afterwards.