Here's a puzzle for all ye connoisseurs of shitpit history and philosophy. Peruse this piece and guess (or floor me with your astute answers): WHAT is this place, WHOSE baby is it, and (approximately) WHEN was this?
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"XX, do you realize that you're a gutless chameleon?" asked Teacher X X of the shy, withdrawn teen-ager who had come for an interview at XXX in sometown, somestate. XX was close to tears, but X was only following the sock-it-to-'em pedagogic philosophy of his boss, XXX Founder XX X, someage. Faced with a rebellious applicant, X once shouted, "Listen, I'm telling you either change your attitude around me or I will jam it down your throat."
Although annual fees for tuition, board and room add up to a hefty $muchomoney, life at the small (enrollment: 175) coed boarding school is almost as rigorous as that of a Marine boot camp. Many of the students are troubled, and short-tempered X treats them like a drill instructor faced with a platoon of left-footed recruits. He occasionally slaps and routinely humiliates the kids--with their parents' tacit consent--in a no-holds-barred effort to toughen them up and build their characters. "The rod is only wrong in the wrong hands," X likes to say. When he finds that a student has what he considers a "bad attitude," X may order him to wear a sign saying I ACT LIKE A BABY, or tell him to dig a 6-ft. by 6-ft. trench and then fill it up. He has even conducted a public paddling ceremony at XXX.
As headmaster at XX Academy in someothertown, somestate, in the early someera, X (who has degrees from XX College and XX University) grew discouraged with what he saw as the "coddling" of students, and an overemphasis on grades. With $muchomoney borrowed from family and friends, X bought an old mansion on the geographicalfeature and set up a school devoted to developing self-confidence and self discipline. Novel and untested, XXX could not hope to attract outstanding students; thus X started by accepting teen-agers with a history of mental illness or drug problems. The student body now includes less disturbed youngsters. However, all of them, X says, "have problems." He feels such pupils have a greater capacity for growth than conventional, "successful" children.
Character Grades. Success at XXX is measured largely by "character growth" rather than academic excellence. Students are given two sets of grades: one for performance in a traditional curriculum laden with remedial courses; the other, which is considered more important, for overcoming personal problems such as being shy or cowardly, as shown in survival tests the school has copied from Outward Bound. The grades in character development are hammered out in a kind of encounter group, where classmates and teachers urge a student to confess his strengths and weaknesses. In similar sessions, teachers are evaluated publicly by the students.
So, in a way, are parents. As one alumnus puts it, "A family, not a kid, comes to XXX." Parents are required to make a strong commitment to XXX's philosophy. They participate in two encounter weekend seminars annually, at which everyone criticizes everyone else. One father, for example, may say to another: "Mr. Smith, I have to agree with Bill. You do seem more concerned with your own image than anything else."
Loyal Alumni. For students, the emotional turmoil can be difficult to take. Says XX XX, 17: "Everyone wants to run away from here sometime." In fact, each year about 50 students do run away--and 20 never return. X blames the dropout rate on the parents' failure to uphold their pledge to make runaways return to XXX. XX ran away, but returned because "my mother stuck by her commitment. It brought us closer together."
X believes all schools could benefit from his methods. For a while he gave up his headmaster post to travel around the country lecturing about X, and he is now writing a book about it. As part of its proselytizing effort, the school also put on a traveling road show called XXX's XX. Starring XXX teachers and pupils, the show played in sometheater because the theater's director, X X, is a XXX parent.
Despite its small enrollment, XXX turns out exceptionally good athletic teams, and 95% of its graduates, according to X, have gone on to college. Many are loyal alumni. Says X XX, 22, a student at XX College in somestate: "XXX is a conservative school advocating not a return to traditional values but to excellence." Some parents credit the school with changing their own lives for the better, as well as "remarkably" improving their children.
But XXX also has plenty of critics.
Asks X.X. XXX, retired head of the English department at someotherschool in sometown, somestate: "If a teen-ager is publicly humiliated, does this build his character? Does it build the character of other students who are encouraged to take part in such a show?" The school's first teacher, X XX, who quit because X permitted no disagreement with his own hawkish views on somecontroversialwar, charges that X "is completely obsessed. You find that the kids are in effect brainwashed." XX XXXX, director of XX's Upward Bound program in somestate, whose son went to a XXX summer session, complains: "X's techniques are nothing less than demoniacal."
Despite the large number of problem children, there are no psychologists on the school's staff, because XXX teachers prefer to "use our gut feelings." When that approach fails, X has referred students to XX X, a psychiatrist in sometown, somestate. Like many parents of XXX students, XX X is willing to give the school the benefit of the doubt. Says he: "Frankly, I'm puzzled. But ordinary methods don't work with the kinds of kids going to XXX. The school does make a real effort to reach these children. It is doing something no one else is willing to do."
