Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > CEDU / Brown Schools and derivatives / clones

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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.

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