Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps
bbc.com
bbc.com
The school was burnt down by the students a few years after I left and I got a couple thousand dollars in a class action lawsuit when it came out that they were hiring unlicensed therapists and admitting students who should have been in intensive psychiatric care and were an immediate danger to others around them.
I look back on it as one of the most valuable experiences in my life, not because there was any validity to the program but because it just confronted me with a lot of intense challenges at a young age that really developed my critical thinking and mindset at a young age.
To be fair a lot of them had pretty deep substance abuse issues and probably needed some kind of organized help although I doubt very many got any of that at this program.
There's an interesting interview on youtube of the comedian Adam Eget about his experience in a similar school.
There's something about your story that really, deeply fucking bothers me. I think its the part where you're taken from your home in the middle of the night. I can't adequately describe how that makes me feel, and I wonder why. I'm sorry that happened to you.
Regarding the silver lining, as it were, do you think your parents could have arranged another sort of intervention or experience to give you those benefits, with resorting to institutionalized abuse? Would a better sort of "camp" have worked for you?
In terms of the other ways to produce my experience without the downsides, absolutely yes and if I have kids I intend to try to do exactly that. They would have the final decision on it and it wouldn't be a surprise but basically some kind of intensive month or two outdoor survival training or something like that. Maybe I'd even just do it myself with them.
I think that doing it yourself (or participating at some capacity) is so much better than letting a third party you don't even know take custody of your kids for some months. The possibility for abuse is staggering.
But perhaps just joining boy scouts is cool?
It sounds like the "challenges" weren't necessarily intended to teach you what you learned, and you just happened to have a mind and mindset that responded well to the situation, so it isn't even an instance of "competently executed dangerous teaching methods". Nevertheless, do you think there's a safer approach that would have had a high chance of teaching you and the other kids those lessons?
Being strip searched does not fixes mental health issues. Really.
And that would be this CPS:
https://www.kansascity.com/news/special-reports/article23820...
The idea that justifies the power of CPS, that these sorts of "measures" are taken in the interest of the child, are totally ridiculous upon inspection. Not because there aren't any problems, but because these "solutions" are so much worse.
https://acoup.blog/2019/08/16/collections-this-isnt-sparta-p...
Also, you might be interesting in Cult of the Badass:
https://acoup.blog/2021/02/19/collections-the-universal-warr...
A model of obedience and desensitization achieved through abuse followed by committing unspeakable atrocities is not a great formula for making good citizens.
What kind of twisted mental gymnastics convinces the creators of these programs that their programs are anything but harmful?
There is something appealing about tough no nonsense solutions to people with authoritarian tendencies. And there is ignorance about how bad it can get in isolated communities where weaker individuals have no where to escape.
That event changed me. In the weeks and months ahead, anger and shame in my response led to a focused and intentional mental and physical development. I started exercising, eating better, and learning how to fight. I developed social responses that helped me become better respected and less manipulated, and changed from a rotund pushover to a normal male.
Our society has changed massively over the decades, and one of the biggest changes I've seen is that it's become significantly more feminized, but I think it's important to acknowledge that some things that work for feminine young women won't necessarily work for masculine young men. I think that tough love programs exist because many men who go there and run the place went through similar experiences as me. If the stress is handled adaptively and not maladaptively, it can be a motivator for positive change while dealing with our weaknesses.
While I appreciate that you turned this into a positive, I don’t think violence and tough love is something we should promote, celebrate or even tolerate as a society.
Here is a crazy thought: how about we strive to create a space where everyone feels valid as they are, where they feel that have a space where they can contribute, rather than make people feel like they have to toughen up in order to “take charge” or forcefully “making space” for themselves by forcing others to follow their will.
The guy hitting you was not an appropriate response, neither is you possibly disrupting class by cracking jokes. The solution is communication and respect. Getting buff and letting a culture of “boys will be boys” prevail is not.
Speaking anecdotally, I feel most fulfilled when I embrace my masculine side and focus it on positive pursuits. Competition, pursuit of status, and power can all be good things if focused. This event unlocked that in me and helped me live a more fulfilled life I'm the long run.
In fact, your response is exactly what I'm talking about. Productive masculine behavior is shamed nowadays. That's sad to me.
[1] https://carraghermethod.com/the-hard-truth-for-men-declining...
Perhaps I am reading this wrong, but it sounds a lot like you want a return of pederasty? Let's assume you mean relationships and sex with people of similar ages, what ages should we imagine when you say "young boys"?
I think it's great that he managed to positively channel his masculinity, but I have my doubts at considering getting punched in the back of the head a good or acceptable thing, even though it may have had a positive outcome in his case. Perhaps I'm too feminized.
Can you list some examples for that? It just doesn't match my experience. When people complain about masculine behavior, it's never the productive kind.
It doesn't really help the student all that much since they go from hyper, attention-seeking and not paying attention to stagnant, inhibited and disinterested (and still not paying attention).
I believe it does work for its purpose, but the dose is usually much too high and had to be taken often enough (it only lasts 3 to 4 hours) that the kid is pretty much constantly peaking then coming down.
Eventually they did create "extended release" tablets that probably fix that issue, so my experience may no longer apply.
Your premise of "everyone feels valid as they are" written directly alongside "[we should not promote] violence and tough love" betrays the contradiction. What you actually mean is we should strive for everyone to change themselves to be feminized and noncompetitive, and the people who are already this way should feel valid.
"The solution [to dealing with a bully] is communication and respect" is not based in reality. No bully has ever responded to communication. What they do respond to, and what society responds to, because we have had it ingrained in our brain stems for millions of years, is masculinity and assertiveness, backed by a (perceived) threat of violence. I'm sorry that you don't like this, but it cannot and I argue should not be changed, short of chemically poisoning everyone's testosterone levels with microplastics.
Any gender preference school systems may or may not have aren't really a factor when the bully has 180 lbs to ones 100 lbs.
https://www.kansascity.com/news/special-reports/article23820...
You see, if you look things up you will find that psychology is good at exactly what you'd expect it to be good at if you look at their methods: describing behavior "in the large". Think "Of 100 drug addicts, 10 will commit crimes due to drugs", those types of statements. Or "100 kids with IQ>130, 10 will develop severe autism".
It can also often describe what people here call a "funnel". 100 kids go into kindergarten, 10 will fail, of those 10, 5 will get into youth services ... and so on and so forth. Problem is that this makes people always focus on the worst possible outcomes (when reality is that the vast majority of psychological problems (and "problems") go away after a relatively short time, very short time in kids (think months, a year at most), and attempts to treat them make them worse rather than better for the large majority of clients. 3 main reasons are that, especially in kids, psychological problems exist outside of the kid, they're generally the result of repeating very bad experiences at school. Obviously nothing can be done to "fix" the kid that won't be undone 2 weeks after they rejoin school. Second reason is that treatment, especially residential, takes away the information the client needs to fix their issue, and thirdly treatment takes away the need to fix the issue. But ignoring such considerations has been how psychiatry has grown)
Like any statistician knows: predicting numbers can be done extremely accurately. Predicting one concrete situation, also known as "diagnosing", with incomplete situation and everyone lying about it, is utterly impossible.
This means that attempts to change these situations ("help these kids") fail spectacularly and often work extremely contra productively (I mean, everyone knows the reputation of CPS, who do nothing BUT this. Saying they don't produce healthy kids just doesn't do justice to HOW bad these organizations are for kids. Just the suicide numbers alone ...). Psychologists, orthopedagogues and even psychiatrists often CAUSE mental health issues in healthy kids because they interfere, against the wishes of kids and often parents too, without having any ability to make accurate diagnoses.
And of course, the worst of it are the incentives. Especially with kids, the problem is the environment. Generally not the home environment, but the school. However, CPS, psychologists, orthopedagogues have to keep in mind that they get "referrals" (against the wishes of children and parents) from schools, school-related (sport clubs), even sometimes police. So problems in schools grow and fester, because these professionals can't react to problems in schools, they would lose all their business. That even goes for CPS.
Because it is unfortunately not hard to explain why organizations, perpetually short of money and paid per-child (VERY short of money in the CPS' case), refuse to use the "leave them alone and in 6 months 2/3 issues go away" paradigm that research suggests to be used.
Some social worker (and there's lots of them) complains that they've refused necessary help. Of course, kids refusing help has direct financial repercussions for these people.
That's over 80% of placements (and let's not forget close to another 15% are kids getting arrested for crimes). Kids actually having seen physical abuse are very rare IN CPS. Hell, these days the proportion of kids that have gotten abused is higher in "Juvie" than in CPS institutions (most of these institutions will refuse kids who have "trauma as a first problem". Likewise they'll refuse addicts, anorexic, outwardly or inwardly agressive kids).
Issue is that what is never mentioned is the success rate of these social workers. Most often they're there to fix autism (and not autism like you've seen in documentaries, "autism" like refusing to listen to parents/teachers on occasion). Almost without exception problems exacerbate with these treatments (one simple reason that these kids are often smart enough to coast through (often primary) school. However, if they are denied school attendance (because social workers work during school hours, of course, so treatments happen during school hours), obviously they start failing more and more.
Given social workers' education (ie. high school, a VERY low course level in high school, sometimes not even having finished it) they are also incapable of helping out with most problems. You can't help a kid with math problems if you don't know math. So they should have a level of every subject given in high school, at least the level of teachers. To put it very mildly, they don't.
A bunch of these kids understand what is happening and start fighting social workers. This then leads linea recta to CPS involvement, mostly because these are very young kids. Violence works against them (read on), but these kids are too young to effectively use violence against an adult. Instead they cry and refuse to go or run away or the like.
Of course, the net effect is that CPS starts protecting their real clients, the ones who provide them new business: those social workers. Attacking the kids who asked for help, then refuse what they got. With threats, which doesn't work well, then, via youth judges, with violence.
And, the other side of the coin CPS becomes actively hostile to kids with real problems, whether that's abusive parents, drugs, criminal involvement or school problems.
They are very often accused that they do not protect kids. If the parents and/or the kid is really violent, CPS and social workers will keep their distance. Again some kids use this to "fight free" from CPS. The problem with that this that these kids are inexperienced, but trying to systematically escalate violence against adults, because that's the only thing that can get them out (and often back into a good school: CPS gets extra money if kids go to "special needs" schools). Issue with that is that "dosing" violence to the right level is hard for people who've done it as police agents for 20 years. Kids regularly use too little ... and too much violence, both of which have essentially the same consequence: getting locked up in isolation 23h per day for a period from 2 weeks to several years. And of course, this affects CPS employees: only the worst of the worst remain.
Yeah, no. I'm not living in the US so maybe you really have a weird bully culture like it was showed in TV shows ten years ago, but no, generally its the home environment. Some children DO have issues with schools and schoolwork, but the broken children i took care of when i was a youth camp counselor were broken at home. Wether it was rape, daily violence (acid on the face was the worse, luckily one eye was saved) or sometime just psychological torture (fun time when a father prostitute his wife and his child until she loose it and put him in a hospital). Oh, and the trucker stepfather taking his 11 year old stepdaughter in his truck for short haul because he needs company, and the mother keeping her daughter from speaking about it?
I'm sure in some cases, the psychologists are overzealous. But i took care of placed children every summer for 6 years, and yes, mistake were probably made for some, but for the vast majority? I'm sure even hearing about half their life would make you ask why they were not taken away sooner. The eleven yo girl i talked about, do you know how it was detected? She started blowing guys in the school toilet. Probably a "shool issue", yes, obviously. Without the school, i wonder how this would have been detected.
This has been researched and the answer is largely no.
I would also like to point out those kids are repeating what social workers tell them to avoid trouble. At least half of it isn't true.
I want to repeat what I said before. It isn't because home situations are great. It's just how bad youth services are.
https://sci-hub.se/10.1257/aer.97.5.1583
Or it's popular summary "Troubled homes better than foster care":
https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-07-02-foste...
And let's not forget just how bad the reputation of CPS is where it comes to getting things wrong. Some studies claim that false accusations of child abuse, because there is no standard of proof for taking the kids away (only for locking up the perpetrators), that the false diagnoses and false accusations far outnumber the true ones.
And like anyone who's seen an orphanage (they don't like to be called that anymore) and half of all foster homes knows. Seeing damaged kids in those places is perfectly normal: those places damage kids. These places are not hospitals, where patients come in damaged and get fixed. These places damage kids, they don't fix them. They're more like the ragged pillow at the bottom of a half-pipe, a catchment area for broken bones, doing MUCH more to protect the reputation of the rest of the system than preventing or helping with injuries.
And the horrible thing about such places is that they effectively prevent the kids from having a future (they have extremely bad schools, no alternatives, limited learning materials, ...), but throw them out at 18 years (and please: 21 years or even something ridiculous like 45 years would NOT be better). Please stop pretending that after 10 years where crime (from stealing from other kids to dealing drugs) is the only way to get even a trivial little extra, no-one would remain clean.
That only happens in protected settings. And the sad truth is that even very bad parents still provide a very protected setting for kids.
Besides, these places, for the large majority they don't even try: treatment, though often the very reason kids get taken away, effectively doesn't happen in such places. Just 1 underpaid person, often without any qualifications, per 15 or 20 kids, and some director "handling" 20 groups. That's all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_Term_12
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Crasher
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_Family
Please note: "System Crasher" is the more realistic of these movies (especially "Instant Family" is extremely toned down, I can guarantee a kid doesn't just shout 2 sentences if they fear everything they have will be taken away. They fight and scream and cry and kick and ... for 2 months).
If you watch "System Crasher" 5 times you will even start to see WHAT is happening. This kid made a mistake. Mistake lead to reputation (ie. to school teacher at the very least pestering her), which escalated matters. Help, effectively meant using violence against the child and more and more fear. And of course, the kid never gets any say, and therefore never learns WHY one needs control over oneself. This escalates and escalates and escalates BECAUSE OF YOUTH SERVICES. If they refused to intervene in the beginning of the problem, the odds of it just blowing over were very, very high, as the kid and parents would be forced to self-regulate their relationship. That would have happened, and at that point there would no longer have been a problem. And, frankly, it's hard to argue that any tactic, other than what was done, was worse, given the outcome.
I don' think the author intended the readership to see Battle School as an ideal form of education.
The book is a critique, but more about wether it is good enough to be shaped by society, or how people shapes and make up society. When the latter is nearly non-existent, you end up with results such as in the first book.
You may need to dwell some more, because there's some higher order practical and moral contention there. Guilt over things done in pursuit of survival is the victor's luxury. If you lose, and die anyway you don't have that problem. This is one of the sharp divergences that tends to exist between the soldier and the pacifist. One fights today to repent and atone tomorrow. The other risks destruction, robbing one of a future in which one may possibly avoid making the same mistakes or committing the same atrocities as one's forbearers. In this sense, the weight of being a mass murderer is shared equally by the warrior and the poet. One through action, the other through inaction. No matter the outcome, somebody's hands are covered in blood. Ender did what he was uniquely equipped to do in the moment where it was necessary for him, and those under his guidance to do it. We live not only under our own instrumentality, but under the auspices and obligations to which we are bequeathed by accident of our own existence.
Ender's Game is an exquisite portrait of how the central theme of human existence is suffering. If you live to fight another day, you suffer those fights in the future, and the scars of the past you carry with you. If you acquiesce to destruction, your suffering stops, but the world moves on regardless.
To be human is to struggle and suffer. The trick is coaxing some positivity out of the entire affair while we're around to do so. This applies at all levels of human endeavor. We all struggle against our own adversities perpetuated upon us by the "other". The biggest difference from one bit of suffering and struggle to the next, is how you define the "other".
It's weird, but Ender's Game made a lot more sense after a reading of the Bhagavad Gita. I do not know if Card set out with that intent, but the two mesh with, and complement each other in ways few texts written at different time periods have. There's also good resonance with Martin Heidigger's thoughts on the nature of man being inextricably linked with the act of becoming or Being, the characteristic quality of Dasein. You cannot change your past, you can change the future, but only in as much as the road that has lead you to where you are allows.
The Philosopher is left to wonder if it could have worked out any other way, the Faithful have their answer even if they didn't know it, and even a Free Agent, determined to sail their own way must navigate the waters pushed by the natural forces around them.
Uh, I remember it as Ender having been tricked into it. He thought he was still doing simulations to prove his tactical ability, with how the scenarios kept getting more difficult, and did things he never would have done if he knew it was real.
I went through US military training in the early 90s. A lot of it was bullshit but the intent was clear to weed out those who cannot handle an incredible amount of stress while you get little sleep or rest. There was no physical or verbal abuse. The intent of the training was to get people to keep performing and getting along with your team while everyone suffered the artificial stress created by the instructors.
I saw a guy piss himself from the verbal abuse in front of 100 other recruits in the squad bay. Another recruit vomited bile from being spurred to exhaustion by our "Kill Hat", again in public view of the rest of us and to the protests of the medic who pleaded with the Kill Hat to stop. He seemed a deeply sadistic man. There were so many of us for so few DIs it was possible to avoid their attention: my teenage self with a head full of fantasy called this the "eye of the malefactor".
I've never seen so much evil in my life but I also never made it to a conflict zone.
> After a third spin, Bourmeche said, he feared for his life and renounced his religion. The drill instructors then let him out, he said.
He only got 10 years for that? What a farce. He should hang. That's a depraved attack on the core values of the nation he's supposed to be protecting.
Another comment here talked how Canadian indigenous children were subject to this treatment for over a century https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27559649 and this wasn't made in the best interest of the victims.
And anyway, I don't believe in having institutionalized "tough love" could ever work. This kind of institution often attract sadistic people, that enjoy making the kids suffer.
Why do we have rules. Who should get to make and enforce rules. When should I follow a set of rules that are laid out for me. I don't think many 23 year olds have too many deep thoughts on stuff like that but I had a more intuitive sense of my own answers to those questions at that age after having the sense of losing my freedom and being treated in a manner that I perceived as deeply unfair.
Individuals' life experience isn't the average of a regions, or defined by headlines. For the most part, it's family and immediate community that define childhoods. A lot of good childhoods is otherwise dysfunctional places. A lot of bad childhoods in otherwise wealthy places.
This sentence is so ignorantly woke that it has come full-circle and it is blatantly racist.
Latin America is much, much more than drug-ridden slums, war hasn't torn apart all of Africa - and many countries have recovered from such strife -, and many people in the Middle East live under moderate versions of the Sharia that don't entail gruesome "daily executions" like in ISIS-controlled territories.
About 700M people in the world live in absolute poverty nowadays, compared to about 80% in the 1800s [1]. There is no factual evidence that the "majority" of people in the world live in the abject conditions that you describe. In fact, many people now live in relative material poverty compared to Western standards, but in safety, dignity and prosperity.
We can argue all day about how there is a lot of work yet to be done or how at the extremes wicked expressions of evil continue to exist, but this savage and false interpretation of the world is completely out of place.
I've also travelled across Africa, and have seen plenty, and I mean plenty, of happy people. They lived in material poverty compared to my cozy European living standards, but in relative safety and prosperity.
Your interpretation of how most people in the world live in absolutely abject and violent conditions is not only wrong in my opinion and experience, the data is also there to back it up. Massive improvements in healthcare, education, policing have happened all across the board in the world.
There is atrocious violence in too many parts of the world, but not "most" of the world like you describe. For each example you describe in Latin America or Africa, I could come up with one hundred counter-examples of towns that live in pretty safe and prosperous conditions.
The world still needs a lot - and I mean a lot - of work, but an utterly bleak and defeatist vision of things does not help the cause.
Donnie, is that you?
I think you haven't traveled widely enough or looked at the data and as a result are makinf broad and innacurate generalizations that do qualify as racist.
If you don't want your communication to be compared to that of the crudest politician in recent memory, you shouldn't communicate like he does.
They are saying it is mostly that, which I believe is blatantly false.
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Problem is, it does “kill”* some people.
(*) Sometimes literally, but probably more often figuratively.
In a similar vein, with respect to "there are no atheists in foxholes", A three-tour-of-duty-in-Vietnam captain in the US Army (Harry McMenamin) said, "I was an atheist when I was in Vietnam, and I was in a lot of foxholes. There are atheists in foxholes."
I'd argue that the key word here is "trauma"; I think _adversity_ can make you stronger (more disciplined, and more focused), but I think that Dr. Bernstein is using the word "trauma" in its technical, medical, sense, i.e. "Psychological trauma is caused by an adverse experience, or series of experiences, that result in an injury that changes the way the brain functions, impairing neurophysiological, psychological, and cognitive functioning." [0]
There is large heterogeneity in the reaction of individuals to the sane exact experience, and sometimes what initially appears damaging ends up doing the opposite.
There is a circular definition here. If we define trauma in terms of harmful outcomes, it's bad by definition, but that's arguing semantics and not psychology. The slipperiness comes in when we switch definitions mid-paragraph.
You'll also see virtually everyone 300 years ago was exposed to things which would be considered traumatic today. It's how we evolved.
We've got a bad theory of trauma and resilience.
The problem is, it's hard to define where the line is - and the line is different for everyone.
That's why, I think it's important the people who need to go through that should know and decide they want to do it.
As a parent, I would never force my kids to go through that, unless they understand what it implies and they want to.
My family is forever destroyed from "tough love." I'm in my 50's and we still don't talk except for exchanging cards with the parents at various appropriate times throughout the year. They've apologized, but the scars are very deep.
We grew so distant that it is no longer repairable, and so we at least maintain that very distant relationship. I don't communicate in any way with the siblings since "tough love" taught me to despise them. Obviously I don't despise them any more, but the damage is done, and quite thoroughly.
2. It's called post-traumatic growth, and there's an emerging mass of research on the subject.
One simple thing: it wasn’t authoritarian adults or teachers. If anything, they were AWOL. It was the students that really made each other’s life hell. Of course, we were teenagers. Much later, I stopped blaming the individuals and started blaming the institution.
Here’s a tiny anecdote. One guy, who I think was genuinely evil, took psychology as a minor subject. As an experiment, he decided to drive another, younger, vulnerable pupil mad. Gaslighting him, messing with his head, that kind of stuff. And he succeeded!
Robyn Hitchcock's view of the school he was sent to (I think Winchester) is stark. He tells a story somewhere of not being allowed to leave the school to go to his grandmother's funeral, who was the one person he had really been close to. So he went to some kind of art happening organized by Brian Eno, of all people, and released a balloon with her name on it instead.
I was the last year to be Army only, after that they opened it up to all three military services and civil service along with moving to a new purpose build facility - leaving behind the old abbey it had been based at for 50 years. I imagine that that cleared out any remaining vestiges of a less pleasant past.
He is very determined.
But the attitude of "ex-cadets" here is that of extreme pride, many consider it to be the best 6 years of their life. And this feeling is almost universal.
I have now several times come across criticism of British public schools by their own alumni, I wonder why there's so much difference in attitude.
Throughout, it was (often school-endorsed) tribal warfare and arbitrary justice at the hands of masters and prefects. Eat or be eaten. It churned out future politicians.
We had literal knife-fights in the dormitories. It was normal to drag someone out of bed at 3am and beat the shit out of them with doorknobs. My dorm-mates, aged 14, kept a friend of mine cocooned in duct tape, upside down in a wardrobe, for an entire school day. I found him that evening during prep, and took a cricket bat to the ringleader. The poor bastard got detention and satisfecit for jocking classes. I was suspended.
I once had septicaemia from an infected wound, and the matron’s response was to fling a mop at me as I lay on the kitchen floor in a puddle of pus and blood while telling me to “clean up your fucking mess”. I blacked out at that point, and the aforementioned friend saved my life by calling an ambulance - I awoke in hospital weeks later. She was actually, unbelievably, fired over the incident.
So much of my behaviour, two decades on, is still driven by my experiences there, and the same applies to those few of my cohort I’m in touch with or aware of the fates of. Constant paranoia that you’re going to be double-crossed or arbitrarily beaten, a complete lack of faith in institutions of any variety, and bitterness and contempt for those who did this to me (my parents, the bastards that ran the schools (some of whom are now gratifyingly in prison)).
They should be illegal.
It often gets taking down in the UK. You can search for Phoenix and aria abuse.
I’ve seen grownups engage in this kind of abuse too. It’s incredibly disturbing, almost a legal (or very hard to prove) kind of homicide...
But what can you do about it, other than try to encourage the victim to distance themselves from the abuser? There’s a lot of room for plausible deniability, and any attempt to prove it will look a lot like the ramblings of a mad man...
You would be surprised how often people react positively when you stand up for someone.
I’m also chocked by how many do not stand up for the victim / truth, even when the abuser is clearly exposed as a lier many people (with social incentives to do so) will just say “well, I didn’t see that” or similar. A disturbing aspect of it is that I can’t tell if those people are consciously laying, or just in denial on a deeper psychological level... Scary shit.
I had nightmares for years afterwards and still haven’t fully come to grips with what happened there.
(Clean and sober now.)
From an internet stranger that's been around others who have been down a similar path. I acknowledge how hard that must be and continues to be.
Keep up the good fight.
evergreen has been flipped by students partly a few years ago so seeing chaotic school with involvement of youngster reminded me of it
This is perhaps a place where internet culture has been somehow ahead of the curve in a positive way. Former residents have been organizing online and exchanging information for a few decades. I believe the longest-running forum for discussions is the one at fornits.com: https://www.fornits.com/phpbb/. This site has been around for about 20 years, and used to also have a wiki with extensive information about specific institutions. Alas, the wiki seems to be down for several years now, and the discussion board is a few years past its peak of activity too.
More recently, I believe reddit is the most active discussion forum: https://www.reddit.com/r/troubledteens/
Early modern prisons were designed to help/fix people. Some were designed by moral philosophers, experts in ethics. These became nightmarish, producing more psychological injury than many intentionally punitive models like "hard labour."
Because people have had intuition for all time, and they've never stopped using it, including herbal cure remedies for cancer. The option to go without institutional care is already there for anyone without enough money, and it's being exercised all the time, all around the world.
Even when you choose institutions you must exercise intuition.
Maybe "no faith" is closer to the mark. Reformatories with no ideals, just trying to stay open and make ends meet.
I suppose the canonical example is the Spanish inquisition, and the rest of the conquista culture. They were saving people from hell, barbarism, sin and such. Also Russian gulags, Canadian residential schools, and many other examples.
A "for your own good" mentality has often resulted in some of the worst institutions, or at least a distinctive flavour of bad.
Many of these "schools" were lovingly run by Christian churches in the name of the friendly government. The only "trouble" these kids had before most of them were forced to attend the schools was that their parents were messed up because they were also forced to attend the schools.
I've been in a ton of shitty situations - on the street, ect - and christians as a group are way more reliably kind than any other group - particularly compared to anything run by the state.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nauru_Regional_Processing_Ce...
Also during recent events, the Aussie government banned their own citizens from returning from India under penalty of jail time and huge fees.
I was genuinely surprised to learn this in high school (for me, 2017-2021 or so) - not because it's not a notable event in US history but because I was surprised my history teacher was allowed to teach it.
Many history text textbooks downplay slavery to such an extent that most high-school graduates think the Civil War was about “states rights” when it was really about several states committing treason in defense of slavery.
The genocide and ongoing mistreatment of Native Peoples is barely covered.
In some states, teachers are required to sign documents saying they don’t support the BDS (boycott, divest, sanction) movement against Israel.
But please, do go on about free speech.
1: Only 8% of students understand that slavery was the cause of the Civil War.
2: Here is a book that destroys the myth of the Alamo, and points out that the white people in Texas went to war twice to keep the institution of slavery.
3: There are lots results for problems with the way native history is taught in the US. I grabbed an interesting read as an example. As further evidence, until a few years ago, the Washington NFL team used a racist slur as its name
1: https://www.usnews.com/news/education-news/articles/2018-02-...
2: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/623832/forget-the-a...
I haven't checked in a bit but I think he's still releasing new chapters.
He's still releasing chapters, almost at the end of his stay in Elan.
Thank you for sharing this.
My experience at a boarding school in Australia was similarly themed, though nowhere near this extreme. I feel I ought now to write to my old dormitory master — my own Nurse Ratched — and remind him of some of the abuse.
As an aside, I wonder how these students got their hair cuts.
There are truly sick people doing truly sick things out there.
Thanks for posting this.
Anyway, at some point when I was 14 or 15 I ended up in some kind of troubled kids training thing, it was ran by two (older than average, maybe 35~) university students and it was about assertiveness and understanding yourself.
The course was only a couple days a week for 6 weeks, but honestly it completely changed my life. I didn’t even realise it at the time but some low level anxiety seemed to get washed away after that and I became a much less awkward, more outgoing person who could handle making mistakes.
I truly wish I had paid more attention to the course itself so I could refer to it now.
It was probably standard assertiveness training, but honestly I can’t put words on how much my life improved as a direct result.
A large part of it was acceptance of yourself, and acceptance of each other in the group, we told each other what we thought of each other, the bad and the good. Most people didn’t get that kind of feedback and never thought about themselves the way they are seen by Others. Or if they did, it was the negatives or the ego. A few people were perplexed at why their ego didn’t match how they were perceived; or that their negatives were barely considered at all or not brought up when discussing negatives.
EDIT: FWIW this sounds exactly like the training I had: https://www.abct.org/Information/?m=mInformation&fa=fs_ASSER...
I am reminded of this piece from a few days back:
A boy, his brain, and a decades-long medical controversy
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27509586
I first began blogging about twenty years ago to write about parenting. That never really gelled and I keep trying and failing.
We seem to have gone wrong somewhere really badly. It seems like you can't talk about the connections between physical health, social stuff and mental health anymore. It's verboten or someone decries it as "practicing medicine without a license" or (insert some other objection) or maybe people just no longer understand the connections.
"A sound mind in a sound body" is a very old saying, yet we seem to now think mental health is some distinct issue from physical health.
I am appalled that the parents thought they could help their child by deceiving her so terribly. I cannot fathom where people get such ideas.
It's crazy making when you can't trust the people close to you, doubly so when they have as much power over you as parents have.
I keep wanting to write about such things but my only real qualification is "I was a full-time mom for a lot of years and I'm a great mom" and how do you prove that? That was a private activity.
My sons think I'm a great mom and say so regularly, but you can't build an audience on that and ...there have been a lot of issues I have been trying to sort out, from how to write well to how to deal with privacy issues while writing about family life.
I don't know how to make the connections I need to make with people in order to get meaningful traction on what to write about, where to promote it, etc. And it just really upsets me to see articles like this and feel like good information on the topic of parenting is desperately needed and not know how to make that happen.
2. If you want to start blogging, the bar today is lower than ever. Choose a name that resonates, and at the lowest and easiest level just get a WordPress blog with a domain. If things go well you can always upgrade to something else.
3. Try rereading your own post and think whether that's something others would want to read. E.g. each (!) of your paragraphs starts with I/my and the entire post is rambling with little coherence. Cut down to what is essential, focus on a single thought and develop it - few authors can pull of an interesting 'stream of consciousness' text.
4. Consider working on your voice and style, e.g. buy the cheap, tiny, excellent & fun Strunk & White book for a great starting point.
The author and colleagues have set up a related website (welltrainedmind I think?) and forum which seems to be fairly active and with a diverse set of viewpoints.
Happy to answer any questions.
This might give parents the impression that they are kind of legit. The same people who psychologically torture the children probably will have great stories to tell to the parents, perhaps even other people are telling the parents, that these "institutions" are a great and good thing. The parents even might be pressured themselves by a community they belong to into this decision. And of course the true nature of these places is kept hidden.
Yes, submitting your child to abduction is obviously a total failure as being parents, but never underestimate the influence the environment can have onto your judgement. This applies to the children at the camps who get turned into tornmentors, this applies to the parents who might think it is a good idea to send their children there.
A few years ago, I might have considered all of this impossible, but recent years have shown me, how far off the judgement of people can be, considering the bubbles they are in. And I don't think these bubbles are an invention of the internet, though the internet is very influential in creating new ones. But the long history of these facilities show, these bubbles are nothing new. Especially if this thinking is influenced by the religious communities they are part of.
If people can be convinced that drinking bleach is good for their health, I am sure, some might buy into the lies about the benefit of those facilities. That doesn't take any bit of resposibility from the parents, but puts an equal amount of responsibility on the public to not allow these things to exist in the first place and to prosecute anyone involved in this.
Kids are "defiant" or have "bad behavior"? Just abuse them more. Even better, just hand them to institutional abusers.
> Cynthia says they eventually settled with the programme for an undisclosed amount on the condition they could speak freely about the circumstances of their daughter's death. She learned Erica had been pushed to keep hiking as her condition worsened throughout the day. She later testified to Congress about how her daughter's distress had been mistaken for teenage belligerence by staff.
But I think some kids really do need to get away and change environments and do some things on their own at an earlier age. Maybe a small town kid really needs a year in the city, or vice versa.
Maybe there could be more programs to facilitate that without it looking so much like a punishment.
That's how well tough love worked out for us.
Not to say humanity has collectively improved, but the age group which tends to "wonder" if corporal punishment should be brought back has always been very specific when I encounter it.
We can ignore the swiftly rising depression rates among children for the sake of the argument.
And, to answer your first 2 questions: yes.
Our entire society is quite literally based around physical punishment for law breaking, in that you go to jail. Society does not function with solely positive reinforcement. I'm sorry about this, and I don't like it either, but it's just a fact of life. I fail to see any justification for the strange idea that a child or adolescent should never be punished physically, but an adult should be. If there exist adults who are deterred from bad behavior due to the consequences, and they obviously do exist, why do you think that such adolescents don't also exist? For such adolescents who don't respond to gentler measures, a spanking may very well deter the bad behavior. I very seriously do not understand why this is debated.
In regards to the historical context, I find your opinion on that myopic and egoistic.
In this case it's impossible to think that you're not safe with your parents and then they hand you over to one of those camps.
In my own case, i've learned early that mum isn't safe and trusted dad more. Something was up, the body knew. When he split and didn't want me, that's when trauma occured.
I'm almost 40 now and only pulled my life together 2 years ago. Be honest with your kids. They can handle the truth, but never lies... it's okay to not love them, but lying about it... really sad.
Some thoughts - archive.org has most of fornits - hashtag breakingcodesilence on pretty much any social media platform. tiktok has quite abit - a SURPRISING amount of 'counselors' account for their time at these schools on linkedin. some are even licensed now (bravo?). - this individual who has since passed away did a great job at documenting CEDU - https://survivingcedu.wordpress.com/cedu-documentary/ - at a high level there was a literal cult known as the Church of Synanon which was disbanded in the 70's by the federal government. This cult's purpose/mission was to save people from addiction by brainwashing/abuse/prophets. These principles then created the concept of 'theraputic boarding schools'. It has since hydra'd as it is an unaccountable industry and certain states have laws create conditions for less oversight. - The school I attended, the headmaster was from a cedu school that was shuttered, his qualifications was a degree in creative writing. There were maybe 6-10 counselors from other schools who then taught the hired 'uninitiated' counselors who themselves were typically 18-25 years old, without any college education. Students that excelled at these schools sometimes became counselors themselves.
My sister, to this day, is intensely troubled. My parents, in their 70s, are raising her 7 year old. Immense amount of resources (time, love, medical care, psychological care, money) are spent every year helping her. Sometimes, there's just nothing that can "fix" these situations it's an ongoing process. My parents thankfully are well resourced in all the required ways to provide this level of support, and the siblings are onboard as well as this will continue past my parents time.
I guess I just think it's worth considering that there sometimes seems to be no real option in helping troubled kids / family members and it's a heartbreaking situation.
One of the hosts actually got sent to one.
https://www.romania-insider.com/projekt-maramures-german-tee...
It's about the same thing, German teens sent to some labour camp in Romania.
It’s just one data point, and there were many non-troubled kids who had non-involved parents. But I can’t think of many cases of the converse, troubled kids with parents who actively were invested in their kids’ success.
> Parent have little influence on that.
Depends if the parents can afford to live where they want. For me growing up, friends were people who lived close enough to bicycle or walk. Given where I lived this meant some were jocks, some were rich, and some were poor.
We were closer to the poor side, but having rich (basically both parents were doctors or some other professional) friends taught me a lot. Namely, there is a path to not being poor. My parents for better or worse put me in that neighborhood.
If only life were so simple in trying to make people feel ashamed...
Gee now that sounds familiar in this context. Perhaps it'll work great!
And when it comes to abuse, the result of being outed as abuser is shame generally.