the way i see it

[Anonymous]

isnt it better to put a kid in a program that has success in graduating students and getting them accepted at colleges than let them stay home and drop out? if its at the point where therapy wont help, i think a program without allegations of abuse and a good history of preparing students academically is actually a feasible option.

but hey, i know you all will argue this successfully thats what i love about fornits.  

[Anonymous]

Empty troll is empty.

[Anonymous]

actually i'm not a troll. i don't work in the industry or anything lol. but i do love getting people causing a bit of controversy. this is on topic though and isn't a lie or anything

[Che Gookin]

isnt it better to put a kid in a program that has success in graduating students and getting them accepted at colleges than let them stay home and drop out? if its at the point where therapy wont help, i think a program without allegations of abuse and a good history of preparing students academically is actually a feasible option.

but hey, i know you all will argue this successfully thats what i love about fornits.  

It is a bit of a gray area I guess. I doubt such a place would have some sort of open admissions policy. They'd probably be pretty choosy about who they took to uphold their public image. If the kid wanted to attend of their own free will and was allowed to leave, make phone calls unmonitored, and not have their mail screened I don't see what harm it would do.

However, I say this with the reminder that no program is safe no matter how good their reputation. Human nature is human nature and people given power over others will take advantage of opportunities that present themselves or create their own situations to abuse that power at the expense of another person.

[dishdutyfugitive]

isnt it better to put a kid in a program that has success in graduating students and getting them accepted at colleges than let them stay home and drop out?

Thank you for putting it so simply. From the outside looking in - that is spot on. Hell, I had my right hand deep in my pocket struggling to pull out my checkbook before I came to.

if its at the point where therapy wont help,

Big picture here - your self interests vs your community.

And how long shall we rinse, lather, repeat?

[Oscar]

I will let a parent answer, which have nothing to do with us and are on a parenting board.

I think maybe what I am seeing is that you are kind of enmeshed with dtr--you seem to identify strongly with her and you know what you want for her but she is going to have to discover for herself what she wants for herself and you will have to let her do that. It is hard to let go of our dreams for our kids but you really do have to separate yourself as a person from her. I know, I had to do the same with my gfg1 and it was so hard.

My gfg1 basically just quit going to school when she was 15 and in 9th grade. She ended up in her rtc at the end of 9th grade and I guess she had about a 10th grade education when she said she was done with school. This was never what I envisioned for my dtr--I had to come to the conclusion finally that her mental health was more important than school. She ended up court ordered to a rehab when she was 17 and it was there that she took an interest in getting her GED and worked really hard for it. This was something I didn't even mention to her--I was so relieved that she was off the streets and getting drug treatment that the school part was minor to me. She wanted it for herself and she worked for it and got it.

I guess my point really is that you can want all these things for your dtr but she has to want them for herself and she has to own her choices and her life. She is at the age where the more you push for what you want (which is of course what we all want for our kids) the more she will resist. She has to feel like these things are important to her, not just to you.

It sounds like you are so caught up in her life that she feels like it is your life she is having to live rather than her own. If your world is going to fall apart based on her failing school or having sex or lying or manipulating then that gives her great power over you. I think if you can stay very neutral with her, have strong boundaries and stay in control of your own emotions you might have more success.

I hope I don't sound preachy or like a know-it-all--I am just a parent who has made a million mistakes but now has some insight into what might have worked better. Sure wish I could go back to when gfg1 was a teen and do some things differently.

Resume: As a parent you can push your child, you can imprison your child, basically you can go as far as drag them down on a Christian ranch in Missouri and let the staff use the paddle on them with +1000 licks (If you do it yourself, it is prisontime).

But it really doesn't matter. Regardless of what you do your child will mature without you doing anything. Every single person have a certain amount of greed. They want jobs, they want success.

So let the 15-16 year old child drop out and find a job for them at a farm or as bagger in the supermarket. They can have food and clean clothes at home, but everything else they have to earn - even the money to rent a movie or attending some kind of sport. My brother gave up school in Form 9. He worked in a factory making windows, a person dragging bricks in construction, as a person in various jobs for a short period. Then aged 25 he decided to get an education. He took form 10 with even better grades than mine. Next he got an internship in business selling milk. He is now certified to drive even the largest trucks and doesn't use drugs or smoke tobacco. He just matured 10 years later. Could he have gone to college? Yes, he had the grades for it, but I doubt that his later choices would have been different.

[FemanonFatal2.0]

But it really doesn't matter. Regardless of what you do your child will mature without you doing anything. Every single person have a certain amount of greed. They want jobs, they want success.

That really says it all right there. It doesn't matter if you steal some time from your child's adolescence by placing them in lock down facility (be it hell hole or not so bad) they will still in their own time mature. That is my main issue with people who are pro-program, they all say "its saved her life" or "if it weren't for the program she would be dead" which are completely illogical statements. Not only are the statistics for deaths under age 18 proof of that theory's idiocy but the fact that teenagers since the dawn of time have been rebelling and then growing up makes giving the program any credit for that very ignorant.

Every program parent, and program supporter I have spoken to all have the same excuses... and that's all they are, excuses. When I say things like, "What about Aaron Bacon and Martin Lee Anderson and the many many kids who have committed suicide?" and they say, "That happens in public schools". I say, "Do you really think your kid deserves the abuse that I went through?" they say "That school was a bad apple, they aren't all like that". I say things like, "What if you pick the wrong one, as many do, and your son comes back worse off then he was before" and they say. "At least that's better than letting him destroy our lives too, besides by then he'll be 18 and he can leave my house"

BINGO. Parents are so willing to send their kids away because they do not want to raise a struggling teenager, they do not want that child in their lives. That is why they choose to believe the obvious lies and manipulations of the program staff because this is what they need to believe in order to keep their child away. If they were truly concerned for their child's welfare they would have much more of a problem with the way the program operates. (ie not allowed to have direct unscheduled phone contact, not allowed to visit, not allowed to have their own things, not allowed to see their own doctor and many other obvious red flags) Overall, these parents aren't sold by the program, they are sold by their own desperation to believe that it is possible to get the thing that is stressing them out, out of their lives. They enjoy the thought of having their freedom back that they took for granted before they had children and for most that means they get a second lease on life for only $2000 a month. They might care for and love their children, but they love their life WITHOUT children just a little bit more.

As well, the reason that parents call this the "last resort" is not because they exhausted any other options, it is because ALL other treatment options that are operated morally and responsibly are unwilling to hold a child against their will and force them to change into an obedient robot. No legitimate treatment program would have your child kidnapped, stripped, corralled and controlled. However this is exactly what these parents are looking for. They find these programs hoping to punish them, so that they will come home and be grateful for what they have at home and when these kids finally do arrive home, the shock of it all does have that effect. Fortunately that doesn't last long, and the kid usually go ape shit again, and soon enough these stupid parents realize they've wasted their money.

[dishdutyfugitive]

This is usually where this topic stops. At this point we're forced to jump from the micro to the macro. It's a difficult leap to start identifying cultural, national and global causes of broken families.

[Anonymous]

But it really doesn't matter. Regardless of what you do your child will mature without you doing anything. Every single person have a certain amount of greed. They want jobs, they want success.

That really says it all right there. It doesn't matter if you steal some time from your child's adolescence by placing them in lock down facility (be it hell hole or not so bad) they will still in their own time mature. That is my main issue with people who are pro-program, they all say "its saved her life" or "if it weren't for the program she would be dead" which are completely illogical statements. Not only are the statistics for deaths under age 18 proof of that theory's idiocy but the fact that teenagers since the dawn of time have been rebelling and then growing up makes giving the program any credit for that very ignorant.

Every program parent, and program supporter I have spoken to all have the same excuses... and that's all they are, excuses. When I say things like, "What about Aaron Bacon and Martin Lee Anderson and the many many kids who have committed suicide?" and they say, "That happens in public schools". I say, "Do you really think your kid deserves the abuse that I went through?" they say "That school was a bad apple, they aren't all like that". I say things like, "What if you pick the wrong one, as many do, and your son comes back worse off then he was before" and they say. "At least that's better than letting him destroy our lives too, besides by then he'll be 18 and he can leave my house"

BINGO. Parents are so willing to send their kids away because they do not want to raise a struggling teenager, they do not want that child in their lives. That is why they choose to believe the obvious lies and manipulations of the program staff because this is what they need to believe in order to keep their child away. If they were truly concerned for their child's welfare they would have much more of a problem with the way the program operates. (ie not allowed to have direct unscheduled phone contact, not allowed to visit, not allowed to have their own things, not allowed to see their own doctor and many other obvious red flags) Overall, these parents aren't sold by the program, they are sold by their own desperation to believe that it is possible to get the thing that is stressing them out, out of their lives. They enjoy the thought of having their freedom back that they took for granted before they had children and for most that means they get a second lease on life for only $2000 a month. They might care for and love their children, but they love their life WITHOUT children just a little bit more.

As well, the reason that parents call this the "last resort" is not because they exhausted any other options, it is because ALL other treatment options that are operated morally and responsibly are unwilling to hold a child against their will and force them to change into an obedient robot. No legitimate treatment program would have your child kidnapped, stripped, corralled and controlled. However this is exactly what these parents are looking for. They find these programs hoping to punish them, so that they will come home and be grateful for what they have at home and when these kids finally do arrive home, the shock of it all does have that effect. Fortunately that doesn't last long, and the kid usually go ape shit again, and soon enough these stupid parents realize they've wasted their money.

that;s exactly it. the parents DO NOT care about the welfare of theirkids. its about them.

[Froderik]

Every program parent, and program supporter I have spoken to all have the same excuses... and that's all they are, excuses. When I say things like, "What about Aaron Bacon and Martin Lee Anderson and the many many kids who have committed suicide?" and they say, "That happens in public schools". I say, "Do you really think your kid deserves the abuse that I went through?" they say "That school was a bad apple, they aren't all like that". I say things like, "What if you pick the wrong one, as many do, and your son comes back worse off then he was before" and they say. "At least that's better than letting him destroy our lives too, besides by then he'll be 18 and he can leave my house"

BINGO. Parents are so willing to send their kids away because they do not want to raise a struggling teenager, they do not want that child in their lives. That is why they choose to believe the obvious lies and manipulations of the program staff because this is what they need to believe in order to keep their child away. If they were truly concerned for their child's welfare they would have much more of a problem with the way the program operates. (ie not allowed to have direct unscheduled phone contact, not allowed to visit, not allowed to have their own things, not allowed to see their own doctor and many other obvious red flags) Overall, these parents aren't sold by the program, they are sold by their own desperation to believe that it is possible to get the thing that is stressing them out, out of their lives. They enjoy the thought of having their freedom back that they took for granted before they had children and for most that means they get a second lease on life for only $2000 a month. They might care for and love their children, but they love their life WITHOUT children just a little bit more.

Well said..

[Anonymous]

THERE ARE NO ACCIDENTS

[Antigen]

Prologue

The shocking possibility that dumb people don’t exist in sufficient numbers to warrant the millions of careers devoted to tending them will seem incredible to you. Yet that is my central proposition: the mass dumbness which justifies official schooling first had to be dreamed of; it isn’t real.

----------------------------------
Chapter Two
An Angry Look At Modern Schooling

The secret of American schooling is that it doesn’t teach the way children learn and it isn’t supposed to. It took seven years of reading and reflection to finally figure out that mass schooling of the young by force was a creation of the four great coal powers of the nineteenth century. Nearly one hundred years later, on April 11, 1933, Max Mason, president of the Rockefeller Foundation, announced to insiders that a comprehensive national program was underway to allow, in Mason’s words, “the control of human behavior.”

http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm

[seamus]

um i hate to burst yer bubble but in any academic endevors my program did exactly jack shit,sort of like the "treatment" i got, thanks again almighty straight,thanks a fuckload.

[Antigen]

k, leme try this again.

Prologue

The shocking possibility that dumb people don’t exist in sufficient numbers to warrant the millions of careers devoted to tending them will seem incredible to you. Yet that is my central proposition: the mass dumbness which justifies official schooling first had to be dreamed of; it isn’t real.

----------------------------------
Chapter Two
An Angry Look At Modern Schooling

It took seven years of reading and reflection to finally figure out that mass schooling of the young by force was a creation of the four great coal powers of the nineteenth century. Nearly one hundred years later, on April 11, 1933, Max Mason,  president of the Rockefeller Foundation, announced to insiders that a comprehensive national program was underway to allow, in Mason’s words, “the control of human behavior.”

This is in response to

THERE ARE NO ACCIDENTS

In other words, even if the Programs did deliver what passes for meaningful education for the general population it still would really amount to exactly jack shit.

And, wth, if I'm going to work this hard I may as well get a commission if I manage to pique enough interest for  anybody to actually buy the book. It's a very good book. I bought a copy and gave it to somebody, wish I could remember who.  

The Underground History of American Education: A School Teacher's Intimate Investigation of the Problem of Modern Schooling

Another cool thing about it is that the entire 800 page book is online for free right here http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm

Gatto comes at the issue from another angle--as a 20 year decorated veteran of the public indoctrination machine for the masses--and discovers the very same conspiracy we're talking about in this here thread. Reading it from my perspective, I concluded that the Program we like to talk about is a part of a broader program; intense 'treatment' designed especially for those of us who resist the standard brainwash regimen and maybe need a little more attention than the average bear.

[seamus]

My own thoughts on "education" go like this
                                  1.I wish teachers spent more time teaching HOW to think instead of WHAT to think.
                                   2. higher learning is mostly about becoming adept at jumping thru hoops,and kissing the ass of a rotting,and impotent system.
                                      as our culture has no real "rights of passage" its not hard to figure out