On 2006-04-21 08:27:00, TheWho wrote:
"Yes, I agree, Many parents do read here more and more. I have talked to parents who have moved their kids to different schools. One parent who removed their child altogether and several (who I met in a group I attend) who used this board to choose the best fit school, based on feed-back they received reading posts at fornits. My personal belief is that this trend will continue to grow due (in part) to the decline in the safety of the public school system (bullying, suicide rates, personal threats, Columbine type plans uncovered in the news, excessive drug use, drop outs etc. which contribute to the kids becoming "at risk") more and more parents will be looking to place their kids in a safer environment and fornits is becoming part of their search and education.
The negative feedback from kids who attended the schools is a natural occurrence and expected, how many kids did any of us know that enjoyed the school they attended (at the time)? Most of us considered it abusive! Parents are typically more interested in feedback from other parents, studies that refer directly to the schools they are considering and alternative schools that they had not heard of and can research off-line.
But no doubt fornits has a strong voice and has become a part of many people?s decision processes.
"
Nice try at reverse psychology. Didn't work. We're not going to quit speaking out that sending your child away to facilities that engage in coercive mind control is a horrible mistake.
However, there are parents who *do* find the good schools by coming on Fornits. The good schools, if your child needs to get away from a town with lousy schools, are to be found in Google under "college-preparatory boarding schools." "Boarding schools" almost universally gets a search page with loads of coercive mind control facilities with inferior academics and deceptive marketing practices.
Parents can't go wrong with a traditional prep school that appeals to the mainstream of students and has been in business for more than a decade.
http://www.boardingschoolreview.com/school_overview.php*Most* of these schools won't be reform schools in disguise. YMMV on the military schools. Some military schools are good when the kid already plans on a career in the military or (perhaps) law enforcement.
I say that on military schools because my husband and brother in law were military brats, were in JROTC in their public school and just loved it. It's not for everybody, but *they* would have been as happy in military school as Brer Rabbit in the briar patch.
So the parents whose children want boarding schools who *don't* want to sucked into a deceptively marketed nightmare *can* find some help on Fornits for identifying reputable prep schools.
For kids who are in therapy or see a psychiatrist for something, any reputable prep school will understand if the kid goes into town to see a reputable, private, independent therapist or psychiatrist just as much as they'd understand if the kid needs a dermatologist or a dentist.
Real prep schools are terrific experiences for some kids. Snake oil coercive mind control facilities are for nobody.
Personally, I wouldn't take a chance on the military school in Missouri--even though they may be being tainted by association, I suppose.
The first questions I would ask if my daughter wanted to go to prep school and we decided we could afford it are: What percentage of your students graduate? What percentage of your graduates go on to attend Ivy League schools? What percentage of your graduates go on to attend post-secondary schools that are in the top ten in their US News and World Report area? What percentage of your graduates go on to attend post-secondary schools listed by USN&WR as having selective admissions? What statistics, if any, do you have on your graduates GPA at the end of their first year of college or other follow-up measures of college success? Which of your graduates feature notably in "Who's Who in America" or other, similar "Who's Who" compilations, or have made other notable public achievements?
If I was sending my kid to prep school, I'd pick the one with the best reputation she could get accepted to and we could afford. She has bipolar (probably--at this age the specific diagnosis is likely but not certain, so the doctor just prescribes meds that aren't contraindicated for the other possibilities), so I would arrange for her to attend regular appointments with specialists independent of the school at whatever town was nearby. Obviously, transportation arrangements for follow-on specialist care for a child's medical conditions, from diabetes to allergies to asthma to orthodontics to broken ankles to bipolar, get made all the time.
So perhaps you're right that parents find the good schools on Fornits.
But you're not right in the way you meant.
By the way, I loved my high school and was proud of the reputation it had in the community as a good school. My junior year I was one of five national merit semifinalists, which was quite a lot for a school of our size. I was in the band and we competed all over the place, and did well. *Most* of my graduating class loved our school while we were in it, despite all the usual adolescent drama.
The local public high school where we live is excellent, and the local kids I've met that go there, and to the other one nearby, are proud of their school and know how lucky they are to attend schools with such a good reputation.
Sure, there were things about our school we thought sucked, there were some of the staff we hated. One of the special ed teachers got her nose broken by a kid way back when, and just about everybody thought it was great. She was a real bronze-cast bitch.
But nobody tried to coercively modify our heads. The teachers who knew the various of us that were headed in a self-destructive direction tried to guide us into navigating adolescence more safely, without draconian and stupid control-freak freaking out. It worked very well. We had some kids drop out--and a lot of them pursued their GEDs or went to alternative school in the evenings. We had some kids get pregnant. We had almost all the kids get drunk occasionally, and almost everybody tried pot at least once (no, I didn't). We had a couple of kids die in a car accident. Our homecoming queen my junior year had had a baby--but she was back in school and finishing. The baby was a minor scandal with a few people. Most were impressed she had her life back on track.
My best friend from my freshman year got pregnant our sophomore year. She married the father and graduated with the rest of our class.
We had the average social problems, and the average mix of kids.
The ones that didn't get sent away to these weirdo reform schools did a lot better than the people here that did. Not having all the PTSD and nightmares and the lost adolescence was a big "better."
I went through a horrible, long episode of depression, and that stank but wasn't the school's fault. Very few of us were so miserable in school that we weren't absolutely convinced that the arch-rival school sucked. :smile:
It helped that our county had good vocational and fine arts programs the kids who were inclined to the trades or arts could attend, so college-prep wasn't forced down their throats if what they wanted to be was something completely different.
Your pessimistic picture of adolescence is all in your head, and you use it as an excuse to treat teens like objects to be strictly controlled instead of fellow human beings with hopes and dreams who are at the right age to separate from you and the nest by successfully throwing off your control.
I hate being mean, and I've almost left Fornits a couple of times because I don't like what my moral sense compels me to say, but you program parents are at best irresponsible, gullible dupes, and at worst dysfunctional, control-freak monsters.
People who do what you did, and the programs who directly perpetrate the abuse, should go to jail. I will continue to work to change the laws to make these facilities totally illegal.
Julie
