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[Anonymous]

OK. Ottawa, for the sake of argument, you said it wouldn't be healthy if your son told you every minute detail about his life.  At CEDU, staff spilled every part of their sexual and other dysfunctions whether it involved waste products smeared all over themselves etc., and some pretty repugnant sexual experiences (even animals).  Do you really think this is healthy?  Don't you think they are working out their own issues with us instead of fixing their own selves first and then retaining some sense of therapeutic boundaries?  In fact, in many cases, I believe that b/c many of them were poorly accredited, they had no idea how to maintain healthy boundaries, often getting their own BS mixed up with ours.  An example of this is the family head who was addicted to cocaine (pre CEDU) and then treated anyone who ever tried a drug as an addict and telling their parents the same.  This happened to me and I EASILY gave up experimenting with drugs 5 months prior to CEDU (and never went back.  Chocolate is my thing.)  So any time I was in a rap, he'd bring up drugs, but (this is not why my parents sent me to CEDU) only after I told him I experimented earlier in my teens.   He never did get around to the REAL issues.

Shanlea

[CEDU IS A CULT]

Many who are molested blame themselves.

So do many rape victims.

I've never claimed I wasn't an asshole.

I have very few friends because of it, but that's just who I am.

Ottawa5- I'm very impressed with how cool headed you remained.  I wish I could do that.  My blood just boils very easily.

I'm glad we can see eachother's point of view.

[ottawa5]

Shanlea, You have touched on a topic that has bothered me for some time--how much a person in the caring professions should self-disclose.

I run into it all the time. Today, at my psychology practicum, I was working with a paranoid schizophrenic, a lovely man, but he wanted to know all about my life, and I had to constantly ask myself, "Is what I may say next helpful; is it necessary, is it wise?".

There are, in fact, books written on this subject, but in the actual moment, in therapy, what is in the books never seems right on target.

Every situation is so different. Compound this with a school situation that involves a group of kids (and understandably stressed-out counsellors)  rather than a one-to-one therapist-client situation, and the whole thing is problematic.

People can go too far, perhaps at your school you have seen people that did so.  But I still believe that some amount of self-disclosure can be good.

And, I know that the following is very unfashionable to say, but it seems to me that if my male child needs to hear self-disclosures that relate to sexual matters and functioning in adolescence, it is better if this information comes from a caring male educator who carefully considers what to disclose--rather than from me, his mother. (This of course presumes that there is not the potential of a caring male within the family, because of divorce, alienation from a step-father, and so on).

I guess the key words are "caring" and "carefully", and on this site, I get the impression that these key elements of self-disclosure have not not always met in the therapeutic boarding school situation.

You have a good sense of these things, if I may say so, this much is obvious. Have you ever considered, once your children are older, perhaps, pursuing studies in  one of the caring professions yourself.  It seems to me that your experiences of what did not work for you in helping a child who was having trouble navigating adolescence, might be a starting point to describing, and even implimenting what can actually work.

Well, it's not my business, I realize, but it seems, with medical advances, that we are all going to live to 100 or so, so you will have lots of time to do things that are meaningful to you, within your life time.

[Anonymous]

Ok. I still don't understand why it's acceptable to you that CEDU manipulates your parents and is dishonest about stuff involving its students. Why would anyone still say it is OK as long as you come out OK in the end. Why is verbal and emotional abuse acceptable if you survive it in the end?  (Frankly, these types of abuses are so insidious that people are often screwed up without realizing it a decade or so later.)

Also, if your son went to CEDU in the nineties, you must have a prior connection to CEDU if you did workshops with Mel present.  

Shanlea

[CEDU IS A CULT]

It's not okay.  They say that Hitler loved children.

Like I said, Ottawa is wrapped up in denial.

If what we are saying is true- then what did she put her son through?

Her opinion is subjective and so are ours.

Her responses will come analytically, flatline, and devoid of human emotion.

I am fucking ANGRY at what is and has going on there!!

I have no interest in defending a god damn thing going on up there!

There is NO excuse and it has to fucking stop!!

[ottawa5]

I am not sure I am understanding your point.

To try to clarify things, when I've said "CEDU" I've sometimes meant the overall organization, if that is part of the confusion.

My son went to RMA, never CEDU HIgh School.  I heard about the school from a teacher at his old high school. The teacher had a neighbor whose child had had a great experience there.  After researching it further, we sent him there when the next dangerous event, in a long series of dangerous events, happened.

The way I ended up taking a workshop with Mel Wasserman was this:  I had just taken the introductory parent workshop with Bill Valentine in Sandpoint Idaho. Then I heard that Mel was coming to Idaho and giving his very last presentation, an advanced workshop, before the CEDUschools were sold to the Brown Schools.  

So I got approval to take this advanced workshop before I took the intermediate one, because I was very pleased with the program and wanted to meet the person who started it. This was my only interaction with Mel. I know that he was not in Idaho on a day-to-day basis during any of the time we were involved in RMA.

I really did not find that I was manipulated by RMA.  To be sure, after deciding on the school, I accepted its basic program. But there were times when the team tried to convince me on certain courses of action, for example, seeking extended custody, and I decided on balance, not to do so, and told them, and they were very accepting of my decision. To me it was more like a partnership, they offered their expertise, with the understanding that, as a parent, I still was a decision maker.  But it seems unreasonable to think that I would be able to arbitrarily change the very program that I had accepted.

And this issue of abuse: I am perfectly willing to believe you if you say you were abused.  But you must consider that I know my own child, not to mention several of his RMA friends. I know them well.  It would seem foolish for me to dismiss what they say and how they are doing and arbitrarily decide that they must have been abused because you say they were. You can see that this would be a foolish way to act, can't you?

There is a difference between confrontation and abuse, and certainly counselors can cross the line and from what you say, some of yours did. But I continue to believe that when an adolescent is bent on antisocial, self-endangering behavior, some degree of coercion and confrontation is necessary.  I can agree that it must be done in a caring, skilled, and insightful way. It also may be a matter of what you consider emotional or verbal abuse--some things I would guess that we would agree on, other things we might see differently.

[CEDU IS A CULT]

It is your self-focused attitude that is the reason why CEDU and places like it still exist.

It is your same line of thought that is used to excuse all of our complacency in allowing it to continue and remain ignorant.

I was completely wrong about you.

You are so selfish it sickens me.

Because your son and a few others had a good experience at CEDU, how can you disregard the abuse there!

No one is saying your son was abused!

We're saying we fucking were!

But I guess you only care for your son!

Yes you do act very foolishly!

You really still think you were a decision maker in your son's life at RMA?

Jesus Christ - this shows how absolutely naive or in complete denial you are.

You are so blind, that this is the last post I will ever make on this Forum to you directly.

I will not waste my time on a blind person who just needs to open their eyes!

On a personal level, I am completely disappointed of you and I really do feel sorry for you.  It must be very tiring.

[ottawa5]

Now before you become permanently disgusted wiht me, at least consider what I am saying in more detail.

Of course I care if people are being treated badly, at CEDU or anywhere. And where I can, I want to find ways to help.

It probably is not the biggest thing in the world, but I am proud of the fact that, at a relatively late time in my life, I have been able to find a way of helping people in trouble. I'm doing this by learning in my psych program to use the abstract principles of different psychological perspectives to  meet the needs of real people who each have a different experience which must be respected and approached in an individualized way. This kind of thing was not even on my radar screen before I went through the emotional growth things at RMA--whatever its flaws, for me, that program really opened up my eyes in a lot of ways, I have to say it.

If you found my post to be self-centered, it may be because I thought that the person addressing me was asking about my particular experience and my son's.  It isn't really fair to consider that self-centered, it's part of answering the question, at least as I understood the question.  

And it was pretty late when I got home and responded to what I saw, and I had been working almost non-stop since 5:00 AM, if I missed a nuance of the post that made my answer sound self-centered I am really sorry--that was not my intention.

I've said it before, I can't deny my own reality, or my son's, not even for the approval of people who I realize know a lot and who I have been learning a lot from.

And I have been learning a lot from some of the other posters here, such as that our family's experience was not everyone's, something that I was not sure of before--I used to think that the only kids who didn't benefit had either deep-seated problems or some other factors that interfered with benefiting from the program. From what I've seen here I am convinced that it is much more complicated than that.

Yet everything that I've seen with a whole other group of people convinces me that the confrontory style of much of the program was helpful to them.

So I am trying to make sense of these conflicting stories and to find an explanation that make these two true things make sense to me.

I am very interested, for instance, in learning and perhaps developing ways of confrontation that do not carry the potential to be detrimental to certain groups, or even ways to understand better which groups of people just aren't suited for confrontory techiques at all.

And of course, as I have always believed, if you can use reason and give-and-take conversation with a child or anyone else, it is always the best way. It's just been my experience that in terms of developmental issues (adolescent egocentrism for one) in some kids who have gotten off course, sometimes you really can't have that conversation in time to keep them from getting into a lot of trouble without some intrusion into what they would prefer to be doing.

So you have a perfect right to believe what you want to believe about me and act accordingly, but I hope you will consider what I've said.

[Son Of Serbia]

Alright ottawa, i accept that you are not the person that i suspected you were, but you might as well be, because if Pat Savage was here, I bet that her views would mirror yours.  truth be told, i think bryan is right, you are in denial.

Reading your posts on this topic, i get the impression that in your mind you logically divide cedu survivors into two groups: those who view the experience as positive, and those of us with who view the experience as negative. Of course you view your experience as positive, and when discussing cedu schools, it is clear that you defend the positive experience. you defend your own, all fine and dandy.  what bothers me, is that it is becoming all too clear that you view the split between the 2 experiences as being 50/50 (50% view cedu positively, 50% view it negatively).  YOU ARE DEAD WRONG!

Having spent 1 year and 7 months at CEDU "highschool" (it is not really a school by any stretch of the imagination), i witnessed 3 graduations, and the largest peer group that ever i saw graduate had 7 people.  Please bear in mind that peer groups when formed usually have between 15 and 20 people. i also know for a fact that 2 of the peer groups that i saw graduate had combined at some point (2 peer groups combined together to create 1, this was done because either 1 or both peer groups had too few students due to run aways, expulsions, etc.) By all accounts that i have heard, this practice is typical of all cedu schools.  Bryan Felscher graduated right before i split for the final time.  when i first came to cedu, Bryan's peer group had just combined with the one above it, and they had 21 students.  Bryan's graduating class consisted of 5 students! i've read some of CEDU's bullshit sales literature, which boasts that 80-90% of Cedu graduates go on to college.  A more accurate (and by far more truthful) statistic would state that out of all the students who attended Cedu, only 15%-20% (this is a very generous assessment on my part) actually finish the program.  if you don't believe me, do the math yourself, or better yet ask your son or any of the other posters on this site!!! i know that they will all agree with me!

You seem like an educated and intelligent person, i'm sure you would agree with me that the students like myself who left early (who either ran away and lived on the streets, were sent to lock ups & mental hospitals, or who were fortunate enough that their parents figured out that cedu is a big waste of money and pulled them out) do not view cedu in a positive light.
Furthermore, many of the posters on this sight, such as bryan felscher for example, are cedu graduates, and are just as disgusted with cedu as the rest of us. what is the point of all this?
my point is that you, your son, and everyone else who views cedu as a positive experience, are a minority! and not just a minority, but a great, big, huge, gigantic,larger than life, minority!!! yet you do not acknowledge this, and in fact, you continue to defend much of what Cedu does!  this proves to me beyond any shadow of doubt that: YOU ARE IN DENIAL!!!

Another thing, you often speak of your own "emotional growth" experiences at cedu in a manner that to me, suggests that you believe that your experiences is on par with the rest of ours; meaning that, it seems that you believe that you understand what we went through.  YOU HAVEN'T GOT A CLUE WHAT WE WENT THROUGH! i don't care what your son told you, even if you have heard every minute detail, at best it is all second hand information.  And please don't compare the parent workshops to our profeets. luxery hotel suites, gourmet meals, and cocktail hour, coupled by the fact that the 24hr. profeet experience is stretched out over a 2-3 day period, with no raps: THIS IS NOT THE CEDU WE EXPERIENCED!!!!!!

As for your beleif that the confrontational methods used by cedu staff has theraputic value, again, YOU HAVEN'T GOT A CLUE!!!   there is no communication in raps.  Staff Members gather their attack dogs together, and scream at,
threaten, ridicule, and completely degrade
people until they have a complete emotional break down, in order to force confessions from them!  you have no idea of the kind of pressure that they put on you.  Many kids at cedu who really never did anything wrong, end up making things up, thinking that staff will leave them alone if they just say something, THEY DON'T LEAVE YOU ALONE!  whatever you tell them, they use it to label you somehow, and then they continue to use that against you, day after day after day!  i love life, and i never, ever, considered suicide before i went to cedu.  i never considered suicide after i left cedu.  but while i was at cedu, i thought about killing myself every single day!  That is what cedu did to my head!  As I understand it, your son's school RMA, actually did drive some poor kid to kill himself. Does that sound theraputic to you?  HOW THE FUCK CAN YOU DEFEND THAT?  

What really scares me is that you want to someday start your own school, and apparently you are considering using some of cedu's methods. :scared: PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, LIFE, CHILDREN, OR WHATEVER IT IS THAT YOU HOLD DEAR, DO NOT USE CEDU AS AN EXAMPLE!!!  confrontation does not breed communication. think about your psychology courses, what they teach you. in nature, when an animal(yes human beings are animals, even though most of us think we're better than them)is forcibly confronted,there are 3 natural physical responses --- fight, flight (run away),and freeze (scared stiff).
i'm sure you agree that fighting is not a productive way to communicate (i guess it is if your message is leave me alone, i hate you, or i want to hurt or kill you).  it's virtually impossible to talk with someone while they're running away from you.  And people who are scared stiff either won't say anything, or they will say whatever they think you want to hear to escape the situation.  this is not productive communication.

the way to successfully communicate with people is to be honest, sincere, curtious, and respectful to them. Respect their privacy, keep your conversations between the two of you, it's no one elses business anyways.  listen to what they have to say, don't ridicule them, or insult their ideas and beliefs. Respect that others have the right to their own opinion, treat them as equals. Let them know that you are here to help, but only if they want it. be patient. in time they will come to trust you, and will open up to you.  this is how to communicate with people, and this is exactly the opposite of what cedu does!!!

Ottawa, you've been around a lot longer than I have, you should know all of this.  please, before you go on another one of your rants defending yourself and saying how we all misunderstand you, at least think about what I am saying.  Everyone can talk, it's easy, but it takes real skill to actually listen.

[shanlea]

Ottawa, the way S.O.S. describes the raps is exactly how I experienced it.

Another thing: I split after 6 months (not something I would normally ever do--I am not that brave).  The reason was a fundamental lack of honesty and direct (rather than cedufied) communication, along with coersion that I felt at the school.  I knew if I stayed I would be forced to lie about myself and bully others. They break you down until you do and I saw most kids do this.  They would even make the passive kids go around and spew venom at every single kid in the rap---they would be making up stuff and the staff knew it and encouraged it.  THe other thing, again, is that the school inculcates and atmosphere to make you feel dirty for normal everyday teenage stuff along with traumatic experiences that happen to you. (I'm not talking about the stuff you should be held accountable for)

A philosophy that promulgates this behavior is barren of any integrity.

[ottawa5]

With reference to Son of Serbia's contribution given so energetically a couple of posts ago: just a few points in reply, to keep it simple and useful:

1) Do you have any proof that the great majority of CEDU graduates view their experience as negative?  I am asking sincerely: do you have any proof? I know you have anecdotes and so do I.  I mean any kind of survey, even on an internet site, or research or anything?

Because I see a few posted names here that tend to appear repeatedly, and I personally know a fairly large number of people who do not feel that way, but that still leaves the great majority of people who attended these schools unaccounted for.

It must certainly occur to you that if I am biased because I am brainwashed or whatever, the population that takes the time to post often at a "Hate CEDU" site is not necessarily representative of all the students who attended this kind of school.

I know that RMA's own internal data shows a very high success rate. but understandably internal data is to at least be questioned.  

2) I have never suggested that my experience was the same as my son's--please do not assume that because that's all it is: your assumption.  What I am saying is that the workshops were positive for me--which happens to be true and which is not going to change because it's not P.C. to say so here--if this truth bothers you, I regret it, and perhaps it's a deal-breaker as far as meaningful communication goes, but there it is.

3) On the subject of whether all confrontation is bad, we will simply have to disagree--we can agree that the form and the tone of the confrontation makes a big difference--that may be as much common ground as is possible between me and someone like yourself. Sometimes, that's the way it is when people ascribe to different value systems, have different life experiences, etc.

4) Putting a phrase such as "YOU ARE IN DENIAL" in caps may be useful to illustrate the force of your belief--it doesn't however make it true when it is not.

Look, I am not going to buy into a lot of hostility, I'm not going to be talked into saying things I don't believe, and I am sure not going to get derailed from my purpose because somebody gets upset and "rants" about the fact that I am "ranting".

Actually one or two more rants at this site ought to blend right in. However, do what you have to do, I'll try to take what is positive in what I find here and leave the rest. [ This Message was edited by: ottawa5 on 2004-07-23 20:01 ][ This Message was edited by: ottawa5 on 2004-07-24 22:36 ]

[shanlea]

OK. I guess the problem concerns objective truths. I think there are subjective truths and objective truths. If there were no objective truths, there would be no way to have a relatively safe, orderly society.  To me, a place run by cultists (I realize that you don't agree with this definition)who aren't honest and are verbally abusive and encourage this in their "therapeutic" group sessions lack baseline ethics and moral fortitude.  If you think the way these raps are run are subjective, then there is no point in discussion.  I mean, they think its ok to kill women who have been tainted by rape in other societies, so I guess I can say that is their subjective truth.  If I were to apply this "subjective truth" to every evil/unethical action in the world, we would be in deep s*&^.  

The other thing is that after CEDU, even if you split, you are often still CEDU-fied.  THe experiences there are so intense, you can't just shake it off. Even though I split, it was years and years before I ever disclosed fully (even to myself) why I left, because it wasn't to go back to screwing up.  Instead, I over focused on the positive for me (this really entailed the hard physical labor, wilderness, forcing myself to deal w/disability -- not by the staff or by therapeutic measure by by the circumstances there) and suppressed the utter fear and anxiety of the raps and propheets, the falsehood propagated in these forums, the bullies at the school, the isolation and manipulation from and of my parents, the inability to question any part of the very flawed system, and frankly, the dangerous pasts of a few of the students. I know for a fact that it was too scary for most kids to EVER say how they felt about the program to parents, staff, visitors because of the ramifications later...your life would be a living hell. What happens is that this becomes so conditioned that you still follow this code even after you leave.  

On another site some people admit that if you asked them on their graduation day how they felt, it would be more positive than after they are reimmersed in the real world and have time to process it away from the insularity of CEDU. Various people have said they have nightmares ten, fifteen years later.

The other thing is that if you had any history with drugs or low self esteem, you get conditioned to believe you can't beat it without CEDU and see the place as your savior.  Many kids did not have real  drug problems but were conditioned to believe they did or would. I guess if you really did have a drug problem then you might see CEDU as a savior, especially with those tools given to you that don't always seem to work in real life.  

All in all, there were too many kids there who were parked there by their rich parents who never dealt with their real issues because the staff both recklessly mislabled and mishandled you.

These kids get out of school thinking they are OK and then end up swept by a tidal wave when they realize they have to deal with the same, unresolved issues.

Shanlea

[mikehunt]

i don't know what percentage of students feel a particular way...
honestly, there are tons of people who couldn't handle cedu because they were unprepared.  there were others that just blocked it out.  either way, everyone was effected in one way or another.
i think that if cedu was actually honest with parents about their methods of treatment, then the parents could make a better choice about whether or not to send their kids to cedu.
for me, it goes back to the standardized approach in which all children are treated in the same way... well, we're all different, and we're all inevitably going to respond in different ways.   we all have different histories, different internal languages, different perspectives.  in order to actually help someone in a way which is most suitable for them, you must build a relationship with the person and decide which approaches would yield the best results.  it actually IS about manipulation, but it must remain ethical (in the therapised's best interest.)  i think that's where the problem lays; most people think that their standard method is the best method for everybody.  and they think that pushing their standards off onto another person in such a harsh manner is the way to get the results they want (which just proves that they're not interested in what the kid wants, it's about the skool's agenda.)  that's a no-no.[ This Message was edited by: mikehunt on 2004-07-24 13:23 ]

[CEDU IS A CULT]

Ottawa5  This is a mutual site where we are fighting
the CEDU fascist philosophy.  Do you understand that!

Get out of here.  Why don't you go onto CEDU'S site?

Can't you see that we all share a common goal of shutting CEDU down?

Why can't you just fucking leave us alone?

Why are you fighting us?

Can't you see what you are doing?

Why don't you just go on CEDU's site and convince everyone how good everything is?

What the hell is your motivation?

What are you trying to do?

Leave us alone!!

We already heard ALL about your perspective during our internment at CEDU!!

On a personal note, I fucking HATE you and everyone of your mentality.

On a personal note why don't you just FUCK OFF!!

[ottawa5]

Bryan--You may want to try some new words or insults, if you find that the old standbys you favor are either losing their shock value or becoming kind of immature for an adult and a father to use--just a thought.

No, I will not leave this site, not until I choose to.  Although I do not anticipate any meaningful conversation with you, at least not until something changes drastically in your current approach, there may be others that I want to interact with. And there may be new visitors to the site: they can read your comments and mine, and make their own determinations of the relative weight to give to them.

The tone of your post seems to indicate that you see this site as your own personal playpen-- when I hear that from the site's owner, I'll take it seriously. And I will visit other sites also as I have been doing, I thought that I had made pretty clear that I am comparing points of view from different sources, but I guess you didn't understand that.

That's about it, I just dealt with a similar recent post from you on another "Hot Topics" forum--you can refer to that one if my position about your present point of view is not clear.