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Notes -
The purpose of the beatings is to get the child to behave well, for the parents' values of what constitutes well behaved, without having to constantly fight and renegotiate. In GKGW that's defined by instant, unthinking obedience without negative repercussions rebounding on the trainer. The program is to only do one beating if they get the proper level of deference, so the winning strategy is to go with that (and it sounds like Aella did most of the time, and also relates that to her unusual tastes in drugs).
Inconveniently, that doesn't work all that well on people, or at least the children of the sort of people who defy social norms to homeschool their kids in a weird cult in a time and place where that isn't really done. Also it's bad. There may be people it does work on, though one of the several misjudgments of the program is that unthinking obedience, once achieved, isn't actually valued all that highly in the civilization these kids belong to, anyway. It doesn't even seem to be all that highly valued by the Biblical God (c.f. Jacob wrestling with the angel/God, Abraham bargaining with the angels/God, Jesus sweating blood in the garden, etc), so even from a traditional strict Christian perspective, they're very fringe in not just their methods, but also their aims.
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