Lord of the Flies, but with beanbags: the sociopathy of children

Children are a lot, lot smarter than we give them credit for

I have a vivid memory of a game we used to be forced to play at primary (elementary) school. There would be four types of small beanbag handed out to us in a circle; one each. Green, yellow, blue, red. I can remember this perfectly after being smacked in the nose with one so many times. The game was you had to throw your beanbag at someone holding the same colour as yours, and see how long everyone could go before someone dropped theirs or threw the wrong colour. If you failed to catch one, you were out. Naturally, the boys worked out almost instantly that they could lob a beanbag straight at the face of a child they disliked, and pretend that they had simply mistaken the colour of his beanbag. Suddenly, without any discussion, the game had changed. The game was now silently anticipating in terror who hated who, who had a vendetta against you, and who was about to lob a beanbag at your head. Who to eliminate first? Who could throw a beanbag the hardest? Half the class followed the rules: the other half was playing an underground war. The girls silently all teamed up to eliminate the most violent boys from the game by pelting him in beanbags. Then it turned into getting revenge for our fallen friends in the conflict. Then it turned into remembering who had betrayed us in the last game, and who we felt might return fire after our revenge. We were seven. The teachers never noticed: we were just being a…