On 2004-02-18 08:00:00, Anonymous wrote:
"Hmm, couldn't resist the tongue-in-cheek response but it looks like ASR is a therapeutic boarding school, not one of these locked behavior modification facilities where therapy is either not available or only available at an additional charge. Don't know anything about the school so I'm planning to read the book. Should be very interesting given the growing interest in TBS's which I presume are geared specifically for kids struggling with more severe emotional or mental health difficulties. Does anyone have any first-hand experience with this school? I'm curious what they think about the place.
:smokin: "
ASR starts with a wilderness program, appears to operate with at least something akin to the "level" system, and does not allow inmates to receive mail from friends (*at least* for the first few months)--no matter how "clean" the friends or how harmless the mail.
I know of someone who's been there since last Summer and there's no indication that she's getting mail yet. To my knowledge, nobody has gotten return mail from her.
ASR also ships the kids to Costa Rica for a mandatory trip prior to graduation.
Also, this student was lied to to get her there "voluntarily"---she was not told until the night she arrived that she would be unable to send and receive mail to friends---and these are NOT drug abusing friends.
Since they operate on a rotating arrival basis (they'll accept new inmates any time of year), and they're in Massachusetts, and inmates always start with a wilderness phase, that means a teenager could find herself forcibly camping out in New England in the dead of winter.
Also note that teens are scheduled every minute of every day from lights on to lights out.
I think that all right-thinking people in this country are sick and tired of being told that ordinary, decent people are fed up in this country with being sick and tired. I'm certainly not! But I'm sick and tired of being told that I am!
-- Monty Python
