How About This Theory

[Anonymous]

Could one go through the entire program without speaking a word?  I mean in reality it would drive one insane and eventually lead to many more deep emotional problems, my experience with CEDU had alot to do with watching what i bring up and talk about in certain situations, I once argued with a Staff about how i am not "Cheating Myself" because i dont need some bitch yelling at me to learn things and get over things on my own.  I simply answered this with the thought of applying what i had learned the 1st year to everything else i was left dealing with in the 2nd year, Therefore i got a year of freedom living in the OSD not doing shit, out of raps, and of course a propheet here and there, My Summit wasnt the greatest experience either.  Only those in my peer group could understand alotta mistakes were made and the outcome was well, quite a big waste of everyones time, so i went back to my daily schedule of sleeping in, going to class, sleeping through lunch and no raps....ever. Im not really clear on how i pulled it off for so long, but well i did.  I guess thats why i dont understand everyones outcries all the time, if you just PIMPED THE SYSTEM then it wouldnt have had such a toll on your life, i

I set it up from the beginning, Ascent for 6 weeks, learned to shut myself up there, probably the reason i ended up at Boulder Creek Academy.  Tough Shit.  1 week in i had a steady hook-up for anything i needed to get my hands on while at BCA from a few kids on a doctors trip in bonners ferry who happened to live a mile and a half from my dorm, MLK for all you BCAers

Everyones experience is different and if you learn to you use your intelligence for something that you can use to kill time other than just sittin on your ass bitching about it than i guess i can say that BCA really wasnt a "tramatic" "abusive" "scarring" experience for me, it was just another step in life and a way to PIMP THE SYSTEM.

anyone feel free to comment, i may have come across in a bad way but dont hate me for it i just gotta let it out.

Im big on pimp the system, anyone heard of dead prez would know what im talking about, its also the shirt i wore on my graduation day and its rasta colored, a big no no apparently at CEDU yet they tackle no drug issues....interesting

[Anonymous]

I am telling you now that CEDU-RS in the late eighties was a very tightly controlled system and you wouldn't have gotten away w/any of that. I mean, I wish we could have slept in or ditched raps. This was before CEDU-RS had 2 schools.  It was predominantly BM/EG and academia was a joke (2 days, elementary school.)  The kids were trained spies/tattlers/and bullies, so to pimp the system, that would be what you had to be. But there was no ditching anything.

[Anonymous]

And another thing. There was no "getting your hands on anything you wanted" either back then. You were totally shut off.  But this was when we had no outside therapists and no psych meds. Dr. visits were only by medical necessity...and supervised.

[Deborah]

Don't be too hard on your compadres. Acting is a skill that not everyone possesses. One which apparently comes easily for you. I've said for a long time that those who do well must become good actors.

My son learned to play the game too and got himself to dorm head before it was over, just to get some moments of relief. To be out from under the magnifying glass for a few precious moments. He also experienced internal conflict everytime he had to smile and say yes, when he'd rather not have. To this day he will fabricate when it's not necessary. As if they are still evaluating his every movement.

[Anonymous]

Are you saying that acting is a negative thing at a place like this? especially where being honest gets you in a shit hole.

I lived everyday with honesty, i would simply just hide the "underground" things i was doing, who didnt?  in terms of being honest with myself i was primarily sent there for drug addiction how was i suppose to communicate with kids that fantasized about there grandparents having sex?!, only to find there is no treatment or counseling for it...so basically i was stuck but not alone many other kids found many things hard to understand which led to this "underground" at BCA.

Im currently in treatment now and doing very well with it, those 2 years i dont consider lost because they are an everyday part of my life and ive made many good friends there which whom i still communicate with..

In response to the "dorm head" statement i was a dorm head for 6 months and earned the Older Student Dorm in which i had my own Microwave, Stereo, Bathroom, and Refrigerator as well as a bigger bed...talk about freedom i was practically home...and still using drugs

I find it hard to believe that there was no input/output of things when you were there..how hard could it have been, i was being shadowed and on watched every 20 min my first month and still managed to bring in substances.

Id really mainly like a response to the "acting/actor" comment wondering if its negative or how you gotta do it

[Deborah]

Not meant as a negative comment at all. As I said, my son learned to act too. A good survival technique, as long as your mind doesn't get confused and adopt the program rhetoric in the process. It can be very challenging when the inner you and the outer you aren't congruent.
I think those who can learn the skill will have an easier time of it. Those who can't are likely to be more aggressively abused.

[Anonymous]

alright, well i agree with you then.  it sure is a survival technique at best.

[Anonymous]

The best way to approach any situation like this is to get what you can for yourself.  Take from your environment the lessons of life and the gifts of relationships.  

Unfortunately, CEDU makes it impossible to do that.  The program uses antiquated, psudo, philosophy, and the staff are uneducated, disfunctional adult children.  It is very hard to receive from someone or something without some respect.

I saw many techniques used by students to survive CEDU which would not serve students too well in the real world.  I suggest all of you ex-CEDU students put your defenses away now.  It's time to receive.

[Son Of Serbia]

I agree that being at cedu forces you to do a lot of acting and even more lying to keep the heat off your ass, i could never do it for more than a a few weeks without snapping at someone and and getting in trouble (i was always in trouble at cedu). Some of the students were obviously born to play the part, i think we called them LOOK GOODS. They used to really come after me in raps because I would never talk about my problems,I was dirty, and because i was such a pain in the ass to staff and older students. I would usually deny everything the Look Goods said about me, and then i would used their cop outs against them and they'd start crying.  Then everyone would start screaming at me. I probably spent 2/3 of my entire stay (1 yr. 7 mo.) at cedu on restrictions mostly because of this tactic.  And then I would refuse my work assignments and the LOOK GOODS got even more pissed off at me.  Man I'm sure that I generated some of the LOUDEST raps in history.  

Is knowing how to act at cedu an asset in the real world? No, certainly not. In a nutshell, "Looking Good" at cedu involves being completely dishonest, never standing up for yourself in the face of confrontation, accepting everything you are told without question, and allowing your self to be completely dominated and subserviant to people (staff) who are clearly no better than, and often times inferior to yourself.  Also, most Look Goods upon a staff's command, were able to snap into a rage of self-directed hysterics, complete with tears, mucus on the floor, and drawn out screaming reflections about how much they hated themselves for being such aweful people. While this behavior might earn some points in another institutional setting like a mental hospital for instance, it is clearly a recipe for failure in the real world. This is because cedu teaches people to be sheep. In the real world the way to get ahead is to be a Wolf, or better yet, a Tiger. Sheep get eaten alive. No one likes being around crybabies who constantly pity themselves out loud.

I submit that cedu survivors would be most successful in the real world by doing exactly the opposite  of Looking Good at cedu.

.

[Anonymous]

i sure wasnt the ideal student at all, never told on a single person, or even remotley got involved with what was going on in the OOA's....i was indeed considered majorly "out of agreement" yet there were two levels of it, one being the kids that do something, tell everyone, and end up caught.  And the other the group of kids who were using means of another community to get away with things, lets not forget 6 miles outside of downtown bonners wasnt a hard walk at night...stuffing the bed and your gone and back before morning.  Smoothness.  But you had to watch from all sides of you and be an active part of the program as well and not be seen as "sketchy" or even raise suspicions because once you do, your fucked.  And  your found out about.  So it was all about communicating with staff and just talking to em about anything and keeping cool, not letting the conversations be directed in a deep manner which they arent even good at doing anyways, i left one staff member speechless when talking about my drug abuse and treating the addiction, seriously speechless.  I just walked away with a smile on my face pretty much giving em a big fuck you.  

I was reamed for being right in raps, and i was no suck up or look good, either, i was on my fare share of 17 restrictions and 3 jump suits.  So it was no east trip but the vision i had for the 2nd year i was there came true and i was ina  good position, Dirt Lists were being written and i refused many a time, its not my responsibility to tell on myself or other people, the most they could do was put me on a little bitch of a restriction, saved myself and a lotta people.

on and on, the saga continues

[Anonymous]

At  CEDU-RS, noone refused writing a dirt list...if you did, you'd face holy hell that beared down on you until you caved.

[Son Of Serbia]

Hey Annonymous, when were you at cedu-RS?[ This Message was edited by: SON OF SERBIA on 2004-08-04 14:57 ]

[Anonymous]

It's Shanlea... Late eighties. Were you at RS, too?  I heard it changed a lot from eighties to nineties. Same old BS, I'm sure, but different in some ways.

[Son Of Serbia]

I was at cedu for all of 1991 and half of 1992. I went to cedu right before all of the "big changes" happened. When I started Cedu RS they were still following the 80's model (work crews and raps on M,W,F. school on T and TR. Work crews on Saturday morning, and then if you weren't "out of agreement" you had activities on Saturday afternoon and all day Sunday.  The school was strict, strict, strict, everyone was a narc, and you couldn't do anything "out of agreement" without someone else ratting you out. The vast majority of students were too scared to rebel, so they just split. People were splitting left and right, it felt like every other day someone split.
Then Cedu middle school opened about 6 months before I left. After Cedu MS. started up, Tim Brace (headmaster of cedu at the time) and crew began experimenting with changing cedu-rs on a trial and error basis, they told us this was being done so we students would feel safer staying at the school (instead of running away).
During my last 4 months at cedu-rs, the staff had no idea what they were doing. At one point for about 6 weeks the Source and New Horizons families were eliminated and those students were combined into something called "program", It really pissed-off the source students at the time because some of their special priveledges were taken away, and they were basically reduced to the same level as students like myself who were 2 peer groups below them. I had just been moved up to NH when this happened and I loved the idea that no one could pull the source power trip on me. A lot of distraught older students just had total temper tantrums in raps about the changes, and eventually certain staff (like Rudy Benz) started crying about it.  i found this all to be humorous and refreshing. Eventually, Cedu squashed the whole program idea, and changed everything back to how it was before. I split for the final time not long after that.  


[ This Message was edited by: SON OF SERBIA on 2004-08-05 07:42 ]

[CEDU IS A CULT]

I remember, Serb.  Also do you remember how my peer group was originally 3 different peer groups?  So many of us split, we were all combined.  In the end,  we were only 8 who graduated.  John Brogan, having stayed there over 3 years!!  (he was dropped down 3 peer groups for dirt poor kid)  (he was the step-son of "Arthur" and some famous model)

You remember how we used to sneak into town every night and get cigarettes and chewing tobacco?

I also had a girlfriend named Rachel at home.

Anything to stay sane.