My intentions

[ottawa5]

To Hamilton(just like a bad penny)f:

I admit that I have much to learn about psychology and a number of other things but I doubt very much that I am going to learn them from a socialist-leaning-America-bashing-drug-obsessed-lawyer-of-sorts from Canada. Thanks but no thanks, I'll trust my own sources.

I've rather had all the political drivel with you already, and it is too late and I am too busy to go through that again.  

If you try me another time, I might be game though--you are just way more interested in the whole question of legalizing drugs than I am--so you always seem like of peripheral to my focus--don't get me wrong, as a libertarian, I think I've told you that, in  my view, the drug war is one big mess--that is about the only thing we are likely to agree on, so perhaps it is something to celebrate. [ This Message was edited by: ottawa5 on 2004-07-28 23:08 ]

[Cypress]

Ottawa,

I asked you in my previous post to state what you like about Cedu.  You gave a lengthy response that I find rather revealing.

Based on your response, it appears that the only thing that you have any kind of first hand experience with is with the parent workshops.  While you sing the praises of your workshop, you readily admit that your workshop was not like a propheet given the lack of sleep deprivation.  Why exactly did Cedu not expose parents to that lovely aspect?

Your post only justifies what I've said before. I don't believe you are qualified to sing the praises of Cedu based on the simple fact that you were never in the program.  A few parent workshops are a far cry from living Cedu day in and day out.

[Anonymous]

Also, while your workshop with Mel was emotionally difficult you can bet that they did not employ the more verbally/emotionally abusiev aspects that were the hallmark of the propheets for students.  There is a difference between confrontation and verbal abuse.

But hey, if you got something good from your experience, the parent tailored Dream exercise, then I'm not going to trash that specific experience.  It's always good to rediscover talents... But that is still a tailored experience. It's not the full frontal assault that students experience.

[ottawa5]

What did you think? That I'd been enrolled in an emotional growth school myself?  Of course, my only experience is in the parent part of the program!

But from talking to my son, and other kids, I've seen how the underlying premises of emotional growth are behind both dimensions of the program.  

Well, I gave it my best shot.  If it makes you feel any better, I was sleep deprived during most of my advanced workshop because I couldn't sleep for writing poetry and being kind of scared of Mel, who was a most cranky man at times.  Right a lot, I think, I don't know how, but not very pleasant.

I'm sorry you didn't experience any of what I'm talking about, it was very powerful and very positive for me, my son, and the rest of our family. I believe that you didn't, though, if you had experienced even a small part of it, I think that something in my very, very, very long post would have touched you in such a way that we would have had some amount of common ground.

I've got to trust the people I know personally, know in many aspects of the way in which they live and feel on a daily basis.  These people got the same kind of growth out of the school program that I got from the parent part.

I continue to believe that, for some kids, the emotional growth curriculuum is life changing, in a good way.  I wish that a program could be designed that did not make some people react as you have and ruin any chance of your benefiting from what the underlying principles have to offer.

[Anonymous]

I don't believe you are who you say. I think you're one of those Lon Woodberrys trying to sabotage these forums.

[Anonymous]

You are still putting the onus of CEDU's abusiveness on us. It is the way we react instead of how CEDU acted.  I will not go on another long diatribe about its specific abuses as I already have and you don't give a rat's ass.  ::argue::

Shan

[ottawa5]

To the recent Anon poster: You know, when I first came to this site, I would have tried to reason with you, to convince you that I am an independent person looking for answers.

I don't feel that way anymore.  People who make these kinds of comments don't want answers, they just want to fit everything they see in to their "Spy vs. Spy" view of the world.  

Belive what you what to believe--if you can't see what is real, I can't help you. [ This Message was edited by: ottawa5 on 2004-07-29 19:32 ]

[shanlea]

That was me posting Ottawa, and I think I can delineate what is real.  I never thought you were a "spy."  Basically because I generally believe what people tell me unless proven otherwise. You said you were a parent who had a good experience.

My problem with you is that you seem to be totally desensitized to the very real, integral problems that existed at CEDU and the pain it caused.  Your letter to Tiffany was the first post to show any measure of compassion. Yet, you still view her experience as an isolated incident rather than a systemic one.  It was rampant.

This is our safe haven to vent and be proactive about our experience. For you to deny it is not only insensitive but actually, cruel. It would be different if you listed your positive reasons and then moved on. But to continually discount what happened to us and to the people around us is wrong. Remember this didn't happen to Joe schmo we don't know, this happened to US. I really hope you don't treat your future clients this way.

Before you start to cast doubt on my ability to grasp reality, maybe you should enlarge the scope of yours.  I haven't made a single comment about whether or not your son's experience was positive. I have never met nor spoken to him.  

But I do know that CEDU was not only the wrong placement for me, but that they manipulated my parents and myself in an unethical manner, that they used emotional and verbal abuse in the raps and propheets, that their school (at that time) was embarassingly sub standard, that the staff had inadequate training and expertise, and that the school inculcated an atmosphere of fear, anxiety, and bullying.  

Also, from my own experience, I know that my past was purposely misconstrued and exaggerated by the staff.  I know that they often didn't resolve the real issue but fabricated or honed in on a lot of trivial miscellany. I know that medical issues were often mismanaged.  It happened to me and it happened to others.  

If it makes you feel better to think we don't know what is "real" than perhaps that is an issue that you need to explore.

[ottawa5]

Shanlea--

One thing that we can be sure of is: we cannot change the past.  I think that this is something that both you and I can agree upon.

What we can change is the future.

Perhaps you are right, perhaps you ended up at a bad school or one that did not meet your needs, perhaps, for whatever reason, you never saw the gains that my son and I saw in his program.

I will not deny my own experience, but I am perfectly willing to accept that you are the best expert on your own.  

So what are you going to do about it? I guess that you can troll around on a site like this one, looking for things to  be mad about.

Or you can focus on the fact that you have parents who cared enough to try to find a program to help you in whatever difficulty you were having.  OK, maybe they picked a program that did not match your needs, but they tried, they cared enough to pay a whole lot of money to help you.

Do you know how many people would love to have parents who cared that much?

I see what you're saying: there have been procedures and approaches used in some schools, at some times, that were not good.  Believe me, if I am ever involved in such a program, this will not stand, where it has, indeed, occur.

But you can't go back and do the whole thing over again--is it not possible that there were things that you did learn from your program in spite of its clumsy approach and misdirected interventions?

The question remains: So what are you going to do about it? Now? Where you are today?

[Anonymous]

We all have to deal with our past, and I am dealing with my real thoughts about CEDU now. Again, your post trivializes what I saw and experienced.  What will you tell a rape victim: try to get the best out of that experience?

Talk about trolling around these posts and talk about yourself. I'm not looking at stuff to be mad about. I am being honest and exploring what CEDU meant to me for the first time.  I don't know what the heck you are here for but the pleasure of telling us that we don't know what real is.

For now, this site is a good place for me to talk about my experiences with others who have been through it.  This is the first time since leaving CEDU that I have been able to do this.

Also, I see it as a proactive forum to get people thinking about these schools and questioning their decisions to send their children there. And guess what? Some parents have decided NOT to send their child there and others have pulled them out.

You don't know my parents, so don't make any inferences there. But let me tell you this.  In many cases that I saw, spending tens of thousands of dollars was easier for parents than actually parenting their children.  So don't tell me that money = love. For my parents, raising a child was too mundane for their adventurous tastes.  Years of parental neglect and other issues you have no business knowing culminated in me being placed at CEDU.  I will say this, I was not a liar, a druggie, or a danger to anyone. I never even shoplifted. But I did need help and attention, and also went through some pretty traumatic experiences that affected my wellbeing.  

When my parents placed me there, they did so at the advice of a counselor who thought it was a real school that provided therapy. She did not know anything about it except that it had a lovely  brochure.  People need to be educated about the exact nature of these schools, both in terms of philosophy and practice.

No shit my parents cared about me. They were lousy parents but they were good people and I am very close to them now. In a way, I was even close to them then because we enjoyed eachother's company and had some common interests.  Having children of my own now, I can appreciate how difficult it is to be a parent.  So I'm not into bashing my parents when they didn't have the personal resources to help me at the time. I can't tell you how unbelievably supportive they have been in my life since then.  

I think its interesting that you you keep saying you won't deny your experiences when I, for one, have not denied YOUR experience.  But I sure as hell am not going to have you deny mine.

--Shanlea

[Anonymous]

Look, Ottawa knows ALOT of details about CEDU. Much more than nay parent I have seen. I think Ottawa is full of shit and just trying to defocus the forum (and doing a pretty good job of it too).

[Anonymous]

Look, Ottawa knows ALOT of details about CEDU. Much more than nay parent I have seen. I think Ottawa is full of shit and just trying to defocus the forum (and doing a pretty good job of it too).

-------------------------------------------------
To some extent, I feel like I need to keep replying to O to address her denial of the school's abuses. I know she doesn't get it, regardless of her pseudo-intellectual, rationalizing bullshoot.

I was starting to think the same thing...most parents seemed pretty clueless to me when I was there. Are you a staff member? If so, you would know more about this.

Also interesting was her equating money with love. (Sending your child to CEDU and spending $$ means they care.)

Should we just ignore her?

[Antigen]

On 2004-07-29 19:31:00, ottawa5 wrote:

To the recent Anon poster: You know, when I first came to this site, I would have tried to reason with you, to convince you that I am an independent person looking for answers.

Trouble is that we're no longer a bunch of naive kids operating under extreme stress w/o the time and presense of mind to reason out and challenge what we're told to believe.

You're getting the answers you say you want. We're telling you about everything you ask. You simply don't seem to want to accept what we're telling you.

I was never in CEDU. But I've learned enough about their Program to understand the fundamental similarities among all of the Synanon based programs.

Here's the program, in a nutshell.

Starting w/ a person who, for whatever reasons, does not want or believe they need to change their ways, how do you make them change anyway? Well, first you isolate them from all influences over which you have no control. This would include family, friends, newspapers, television, etc.  any kind of input or stimulation other than what the Program providers want the person to have.

Then you inflict some dominance rituals. These often include things like surprise midnight abductions, strip searches, extended and provocative interrogations, etc. Show them who's boss, ya know?

From that point, it's just a matter of keeping the subject fatigued, confused, a little frightened and constantly emmersed in an atmosphere of indoctrination. Eventually, even a grown person w/ strong convictions (such as a military officer in a POW camp) will break down and accept the indoctrination. But it doesn't always last forever. And many people, once they have time to reflect on what happened to them, when they see through the slight of mind that has been worked on them, are quite resentful about it. Worse yet? A major componant of the Synanon method is that every inductee, in order to progress closer to the door, has to work the program on others.

Put yourself in the shoes of any of those fellow hikers who took part in chiding and belittling Ian August in the final days and hours before his death. At the time, they probably all sincerely believed that Ian was faking and that they were helping him to become a better person by not bying into it. But now they know the truth. Now they have to live, for the rest of their lives, w/ the knowledge that they stood and laughed and scolded this boy while he died.

But that, according to Program proponants, is just one of the risks we must face in order to save the children. God! But I hate the sanctimonious sadistic bastards who are often found waving that banner!

Power concedes nothing without a demand. The limit of oppression is determined by the extent of the endurance of the oppressed.
--Frederick Douglas