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Comment by girvo | Hacker News Reader

I have a question. Do these programs exist in other countries? A cursory search (I honestly am not sure what I should be looking for) couldn't find any here in Australia. Is this a uniquely American thing? Surely not, I assume. If it's not, do these programs have the same horrible stories coming out of them elsewhere, and if they don't, does that not paint a picture that the approach taken in the US isn't a good one?

I freely admit to being pretty ignorant about all this. I do not have the best view on these "programs" though, from everything I've seen.

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> Do these programs exist in other countries?

Yes, they exist in India. The usual purpose is to force kids to study.

India has coaching centres which are worse than jails for kids where they are coached to crack JEE (Elite college entrance exam) and other competitive exams.

You can find all sort of abuse happening in these.

Stack class ranking, subtle gender separation, and some verbal & physical abuse is common in most schools outside of few urban centres though.

Public stripping and getting kids dehydrated outside in hot temperatures was a thing few years ago but it might have stopped now, I hope.

A very common theme is the utter discard of any "growth mindset". And students are increasingly not only ranked within the same class, but thereon the classes themselves are ranked - where the best instructors are assigned to the best classes -> students. The ultimate incentive here for the school is to land 5-10 very smart students that will "top" the national exams bringing pride and most importantly, a lot of applications to the institution.

YMMV as the thread states, but it is undeniably a feature of these schools.

These are quite different in spirit to the kind of schools that OP posted. Parents aren't sending their kids to the coaching centres to straighten them out. They all want their kids to do well in studies, and unfortunately, this is all they care about. In some sense, these schools are like boarding schools; some kids shine, some get traumatised for life.

These institutions are nothing like coaching institutes. Read up a bit about these for ex: elan.

Found this within two clicks after searching "Troubled Teens Australia":

https://teenchallenge.com.au/our-program

Seemed scary at first to me (for example, they only allow a single 10-minute phone call per week to friends and family during your stay, and religion + teens makes me think of the Christian Brotherhood shit), but people swear by it on Reddit.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/10/18/the-shadow-pen...

The latest episode of Darknet Diaries[0] talks about Adam being sent to a Behavior School in Australia, so they do exist in Australia and this is not a US only idea. Therapeutic Boarding School[1] is also a term used to describe them.

[0] https://darknetdiaries.com/transcript/113/

[1] https://australian-children.com/therapeutic-schools/

I france, this allegedly doesn't exist, but we have some private schools that use some of the tactics GP and OP describe (especially isolement). Mostly highschools aimed to late teens, "luckily".

They might do better on test, so there is that, but they also have classes of 20 max, unlike most public and most other private but les stringent schools. I think this is 90% of their success (i can elaborate on that but this is personnal anecdata, not a all something to be taken seriously)

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