reading some stuff on this site makes me feel like im not the only one out there, and helps me confirm that my mother isnt a psychotic conspiracy theoroist. i unfortunately am still enrolled at KGS, a former CEDU/Brown school, that is, until it went bankrupt in march and got bought by universal health servies in july. but its still going by the CEDU emotional deterioration system. throughout my entire stay at KGS, excluding the first couple months where i was new and dewey eyed, hoping to be "fixed", i have been a questioner, and they didnt like that. as i stayed there longer, i saw past more and more bullshit that they threw us, and y'know what it got me? it got me a longer enrollment. ever since the day i was approached by a staff (about 3 weeks ago), saying they were doubling my stay there, they havnt given me ONE staight answer as to why i had to stay. thats when i REALLY started to see the light; and not the one they wanted me to see. i am appalled at how ive been worked like a little puppet in a corporate scandal, and im glad ive gotten that before i became truly brainwashed. over the past few months ive been fighting as their strongest student coucil member to change school policies and make the place better and more fit to what i truly felt people NEEDED. all i got was frustrated. nothing changed. i didnt understand that with how incredibly hard i worked, and with how much i put into changing the school, how nothing changed, and the harder i fought the more they disliked me. when i first got there, for the first 5 months or so, i was literally called their "model student". that was revoked, surprisingly when i confronted the program director about how i really saw the system, crying about how i felt used and manipulated and like i had been metaphorically suffocated. things got even worse when i announced my departure date, which would have been in 4 or so months. y'know that little workshop called "Truth and Trust", maybe something similar in other CEDU schools? well, at that point i was telling the truth, expressing myself, and trusting them. what a huge mistake. speaking of the workshops, they havent done ANYTHING for me. they reiterate fairy tale morals and unattainble perfections of life, with a little metallica playing in the background and some lit candles, expecting you to come out of there awestruck and reborn. what a miserable failed attempt at hypnosis for me. they have led me to believe that i am a conniving, manipulative, opportunistic defiant teenager, and i have felt guilty, but i now realize that they have done that so that i am easier to manage. does the pink floyd song 'another brick in the wall' come to mind? stripping someone of their passion, vigor, assertiveness and individuality does not make them "emotionally grown". what i have REALLY "gotten out of this experiance", is the wonderful opportunity to see how the worst "systems" really work, and how sometimes, you cannot trust people, and you have to work covertly and cunningly to get what you want/need. i have to say that KGS is the biggest hypocrite ive ever encountered. i could go on, explaining how my family (at least the ones with money...) were manipulated into seeing this school as god, and that i needed to stay longer as i got my spirit seeped away, how intricate and fucked up the system is there, how i am 18 and being scared into not signing out, and all the lies they have said and the 'behind closed doors' work they've done, but that would turn out a book. i will conclude this with sincere sympathy to all of those who've had to endure "the system", and to let you know that at least the students at this one school are becoming more aware of this, and that there is true hope of leaving without being screwed over, with therapist bills to pay for years.
~kira, who's still trying to get out safe
