Out of curiosity: CEDU late eighties vs. CEDU 2000s

[Anonymous]

Does anyone know the difference between CEDU circa late eighties to more current practices?  I gather from the readings that it still sucks, in terms of group think, abusive raps and proheets, and wacky mind-f*&^!, but what is different? I know we had school two days a week and it was really elementary shit, like vocab lists when you are supposed to be a high school JR etc. and math w/o instruction. It was 45 minutes of "be quiet w/a math book and figure it out."  Science was sitting outside saying "if you rub two sticks together, you get fire. and water + dirt = mud."  

We also didn't have therapists then. I don't even remember anti-depressants or other prescriptions being prevalent at all. It seems meds were only given if absolutely necessary. I hear they over-prescribe now.  

---Shanlea

[mikehunt]

tons of medicine...
i think they got rid of the therapists (not the 15 minute per month drug-prescribers, i don't think.. just the one hour a week keep-you-sane therapists.)  
skool was everyday when i was there (1996-99).  2 days a week, we'd have "skool" in the afternoon (PE and other secondary classes like art, if we had it.. these were peer group classes... if you were in discovery, this is when you'd do "werk ethic" aka chopping wood and shit.)
raps 3 times a week on the non-skool days... fun times.
they started doing sign-up activities on saturday and sunday afternoons, and during the evenings after awhile... i think they wanted to be able to keep track of people more easily, but the thing is, what about all those people who didn't sign up and just dipped off into the woods instead?  ha ha.
i never really got to do many of those sign up activities anyway... i was indefinitely signed up in back kitchen.  we had more unsupervised fun there anyway... baking cookies out of the dry ingredients they'd leave out, smoking by the dumpster, and just fucking around and being loud with my homies.  ahhh... who knew that scrubbing grimey pots and pans would be so much fun?

[face_in_a_case]

yeah, i remember at one point they switched raps to the evening...yet we still had to wake up at 6:30.  This was circa 94-96 at BCA.

Luckily i read a lot and had a rather ravishing deisire for knowledge that fueled my determination to get a REAL education--at a reputable 4-year university--in between BS work assignments.  Like, hmmm, weeding a gravel path without gloves...educational, scientific, huh?  The library saved the day.  Vonnegut, yay!  Could you believe they carried Ayn Rand.  I read "Anthem" whilst incarcerated and cried, the irony!  Then I read "Atlas Shrugged" and no more Rand for me.

I barely weighed more than a buck and they had me on high doses of Depakote, Zoloft, and Trazadone.  No wonder why I can only remember on an incremental basis.

Now I have PTSD, terrible anxiety, major depression and paranoia.

but you know, i cannot place the blame entirely on the CEDU system, but it sure exacerbated the underlying tendecies my mind obviously geared toward to.  BAH!!  Ulrich at one point wanted to put me on a tricylic because he couldn't figure it out.  geez!

ha, i remember hearing that smoking was allowed in the 80's and we used to totally obsess on that, kids we were.

i think that things become more hidden in cedu.  the abuse becomes less flagrant and more cunning...tweaked here and there to avert unwanted attention.

[Anonymous]

In the eighties, you did physical labor MWF until lunch, then you had raps for the rest of the day. School was on T and TH.

If you had school everyday, when were raps? At night?

Also, when you had work detail (dishes) there was NO screwing around b/c we all were on bans while we worked.  

I honestly thought most people were "clean" most of the time b/c I pretty much was just to stay outta trouble.  The only dirt I had was one split contract (which i copped to immediately upon questionning) and then when I split, but never teh random miscellany.  THere was no sneaking off to the woods.  A lot the older kids were like spies so I didn't think you could get away w/being dirty.  Maybe they were all dirty and I was just naive.  

How did all this work when you guys were there?

[Anonymous]

Sounds like they got rid of the real therapists because they knew CEDU wasn't therapeutic, so they just kept the legal drug purveyors instead.
--Shanlea

[mikehunt]

On 2004-07-16 09:24:00, Anonymous wrote:

"In the eighties, you did physical labor MWF until lunch, then you had raps for the rest of the day. School was on T and TH.



If you had school everyday, when were raps? At night?



Also, when you had work detail (dishes) there was NO screwing around b/c we all were on bans while we worked.  



I honestly thought most people were "clean" most of the time b/c I pretty much was just to stay outta trouble.  The only dirt I had was one split contract (which i copped to immediately upon questionning) and then when I split, but never teh random miscellany.  THere was no sneaking off to the woods.  A lot the older kids were like spies so I didn't think you could get away w/being dirty.  Maybe they were all dirty and I was just naive.  



How did all this work when you guys were there? "

we'd have skool in the morning, and raps in the afternoon.

yeh, things were a bit different when you were there... that's how it was for me at the middle skool (spies and snitches) but when i went to the high skool, it was more chill.  a lot of us would hold dirt for each other... every so often, someone would let it out.  from then on, it was common that the person would kind of be shunned by their friends, at least when those friends were being 'dirty'.

we were definitely on bans in the kitchen, but that didn't stop us... there usually wasn't any staff back there (sometimes they'd come through every so often to check on us.  when they did, some people would pretend to be doing what they were supposed to and keeping to themselves, some didn't.)  i didn't give a fuck if the staff saw me talking to another full-time person; we were already in trouble... i mean, what the fuck were they going to do about it?   i always thought bans were ridiculous.. i'll talk to whomever i want to, i don't care if you think i'll "bring them down"... god forbid these poor kids actually thinking for themselves..

when i was there, a lot of the older students were dirty. some of them tried to hide it very well behind being the model spy-eyed older student, others turned their heads and pretended to know nothing about anybody else's dirt.. they didn't really care as long as it didn't get them in trouble.  jehni, now a good friend of mine (we became friends after cedu), was one of these older students... she was the head of the house committee and definitely one of cedu's favorites.  one night, jehni came into my dorm and told me to turn my music down.  i was shocked; i hadn't expected this reaction from her.
anyway, in retrospective, it's interesting to think about who was faking it, and who was not.  who was really dirty, who was as clean as they made themselves out to be.  people won't ever second guess my efforts to fit in at cedu; i wore my dirt on my shirts like a logo.

[face_in_a_case]

i knew kids had dirt, but it rarely lasted long because it would be found out.  if i heard or saw something, i probably would not have disclosed it, unless, that is, someone was trying to screw the goats.

i was too exhausted to deviate in any noticable way; although, we played inappropiate music in the OSD.  hehe.

i was locked up in pine crest and threatened with ascent and provo, so i did not want to screw myself...and i was awe-struck when some of the fellow inmates got it together enough to attempt to screw in the woods or actually do the deed in the family room.  

I neither had the time nor the energy.

[mikehunt]

time was all i had... i had to conjure the energy

[Anonymous]

Wow.  In the eighties, we weren't allowed any music in our rooms.  Music was only allowed in the main lodge, controlled by the staff.

And like face in a case said, dirt didn't last long!  YOu definitely would not be so brazen as to disregard bans on dish duty/work detail.  THe wrath of hell would descend upon you.  Usually, older students--the biggest bullies--supervised work detail and they were THE WORST about making sure you stuck to your bans.  They overlooked nothing! I didn't mind the physical labor for the most part; it beat the crap out of raps.  I will say they did have sweep a street for an entire afternoon.  

Shanlea

[Anonymous]

On 2004-07-16 14:33:00, Anonymous wrote:

"Wow.  In the eighties, we weren't allowed any music in our rooms.  Music was only allowed in the main lodge, controlled by the staff.



And like face in a case said, dirt didn't last long!  YOu definitely would not be so brazen as to disregard bans on dish duty/work detail.  THe wrath of hell would descend upon you.  Usually, older students--the biggest bullies--supervised work detail and they were THE WORST about making sure you stuck to your bans.  They overlooked nothing! I didn't mind the physical labor for the most part; it beat the crap out of raps.  I will say they did have sweep a street for an entire afternoon.  



Shanlea"

we weren't allowed to have music in our rooms either... that didn't stop me tho.  i coaxed my way into getting permission to have a little walkman (no radio) with an ambient relaxation tape to help me sleep... well, i kept upgrading my walkman without them noticing; all they knew is that i was allowed to have it.  soon enough, i traded with another girl who had a this clunky clock radio with a cd player which i kept under my pillows and stuffed animals.  it was lovely.
as i've said; at the middle skool, they were anal about bans ALL the time... you wouldn't dare look at one of your bans or wear even an inch of your shirt untucked.  when i first got to the high skool, things were similar.. then there was graduation.  there were a bunch of peer groups that they just threw together to join as one peer group... it started out as like 40 kids.. we graduated a class of 6.  anyway, none of us gave a fuck.  there was one peer group ahead of our amolgomated peer group, but there weren't enough of them to keep the skool in check.  i mean, they'd be pulling people up and stuff, but what could they do?  the upper skool kinda went to shit after that graduation... for the time i was there at least (i'm sure i had quite a bit to do with it.)
oh yeh, my point was this... the house committee used to assign a different person to supervise clean up everynight.  here's the thing tho: the dining room took about 20 minutes to clean.. the initial dishwashing area took about an hour, front kitchen took at the very least an hour, and back kitchen... well, you could be there all night.  so, usually, the front kitchen people would keep up at the same pace if they were friends with the back kitchen people.  oh yeh, i forgot, there was trash too..
so, by the time the dining room was done, the supervisor would usually go back into the house.  sometimes they'd stick around, but, usually, they'd just come check up on the shit every so often or have a staff member do it.  shit, sometimes they'd hang out and fuck around with us.  
once i made it to the high skool, it was much safer... less brainwashed kids.  less intense levels of fake-age.  more sanity and carefree rebellion! yAH!

[mikehunt]

ugh, again, i thought i was signed in.

[CEDU IS A CULT]

All we're doing here is giving the staff information.

This is idiotic.  

We're just ratting out the kids up there.

[Anonymous]

We are also giving the parents information that will prevent them from sending kids there. We are also making them realize that it would be best to pull their kid out now, before he or she becomes entrenched in that mob mentality example of behavior that the staff rely on for control of the robot student.

[CEDU IS A CULT]

I encourage the kids to rebel and break as many rules as possible.  Never give in and keep your SELF as much as possible throughout the experience.  It will make you a stronger person and able to endure many of life's challenges.  By breaking rules, you will keep a sense of who you are and a sense that no one can take that away.  They may imprison your bodies, but they can never imprison your mind unless you let them.   Do anything you want, any time you want.  You will keep your sanity that way, and you will keep your dignity that way.  I never gave in and faked it through the whole program.  I'm very proud of that.

[Anonymous]

I doubt many parents are reading this site and taking it seriously.