The Academy and its students - how come their parents are prepared to abandon them?
POSTED BY: Aliasse
UPDATED: Sunday, April 26, 2009 08:07
VIEWED: 5631
PAGE 2 of 2
Didn't the River Tam Sessions allude to River asking, once she was at the Academy, to advance to another level of study, and that was when things started to go very badly for her? I don't want to rewatch, it was really dark, but that is my recollection. What if the Academy (or network of Academies) as a whole was a legitimate educational institution, but there were "eyes on the inside" looking for students with the necessary qualities. And we might be talking about a handful of children out of many billions of people. Maybe once a candidate is selected, there is some kind of psychological control over them such that when they do go home, they are less and less connected with their families. I can see the "handlers" of the students calibrating every communication so that the child is more and more alienated. He or she stops coming home, the messages the family receives are full of frustration and rejection of the family, until finally the child - maybe a young adult by now - cuts ties. Maybe River was the exception in the program in that she actually reached out for help. The other commenters have offered very plausible scenarios as well - a combination of flawed judgement, political pressure, sinister events. This question is wide open...and we don't know that boarding school isn't the norm for families like the Tams. Maybe Simon's school just happened to be located close to his parents' home.
The Tams could also have felt terribly over their heads, for years, trying to raise a child like River. A child who by virtue of her intellectual gifts might be one in a billion. A child who devours every challenge a parent puts in front of her to try to hold her interest. She is, in her way, a special needs child, as different from the normal population as a child with a severe handicap. Can you imagine raising a child who is nothing like anyone you have ever met? Then along comes the Academy, the experts, who know how to give their daughter what she needs. I can envision a story in which the Tams are persuaded of all kinds of things, including infrequent visits and communication.
As I said before, the question of how the Academy students were separated from their families is wide open. I hope this has been helpful :)
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by GillianRose:
What if the Academy (or network of Academies) as a whole was a legitimate educational institution, but there were "eyes on the inside" looking for students with the necessary qualities.
B]
Yes, I think this would be part of how they scouted for candidates, and that the legitimate part of the Academy wouldn't be aware of what was going on, helping it to maintain its reputation. Or there might be individuals among the staff who were aware and were part of the underground that Simon mentions in the pilot. I'm also thinking the recruiters would take a special interest in the Verse's most vulnerable children - those in homes, care and so on, because they'd have no-one to look out for them at all. In fact this idea made me think of your 'Orphan Train' story. Scary to think how they could exploit that situation.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME