Helping Kids

[shanlea]

OK. I've got a question, and I hope to get some good insight. When I went to CEDU RS, it seemed a lot of kids there were not violent or drug addicts, just spoiled brats or depressed or unique or a little defiant.  In fact, you had to go to detox first if you had a drug problem.  It was basically a place for rich parents to send the kids they ignored for years after the kids got out of hand, in their opinion.

However, I am reading some posts where some of you are saying you went to jail a bunch of times, or were very aggressive etc. and I'm wondering what you really needed? Were your parents afraid of you and didn't know what to do? (Believe me, I'm not justifying CEDU because I don't think it deals with root causes and I also think if you OVER control certain kids, it only makes them more aggressive.)

Last, if a kid needs help, how do you provide it? I mean, I needed help. I wasn't on drugs; I wasn't violent; I wasn't a shoplifter or anything but I experienced a lot of trauma, neglect, etc.  I was depressed, not functioning, and had low self esteem. Some people say therapy, but I was all talked out. I already had therapy w/different people and all you do is sit and say boo hoo. That doesn't do shit.

How do we help kids who really need help when their parents already either dropped the ball or tried everything? Do we just say TFB? Because that sucks.

[**PIXIE DUST**]

something that would have helped me out was if my parents would have tried to understand why i did the things i did.  i used to cut on myself real bad, and they would see the cuts and not say anything, or even ask what happened.  
  when i was little up until about 9th grade (about a year 1/2 b4 i got sent to BCA) i would get beat up in school, i would get kicked and hit with shit, called a LOT of name, thrown down stairs, shoved in lockers, you name it, the popular kids at school did it to me.  (i eventually learned that i might be a good idea to start fighting back...)  i would come home crying all the time, and my parents didn't even ask me what was wrong.  they saw the bruses, and the scraps, and like i said, they didn't bother to ask.  
  i wish they would have a least made an effort to try to find out what was going on with me instead of making me see tharepests, med doctors, sending me to mental institutes, and sending me to BCA.    

Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.
--

[Oppositional Defiance]

Well we can always go after them with high tech assault rifles and combat gear. I'll even volunteer to officer!

[CEDU IS A CULT]

Does anyone understand the self-punishment of a wasted life, satisfied with mediocrity, following and dedicated to falsehoods?  It's a naked lunch.

[shanlea]

Bryan: I asked a question. Do you have any answers?

And to answer your question, I think many people's greatest fear is a wasted life.  Satisfied by mediocrity is contentment to some and impossible for others. And dedication to falsehood is just another ignorance=bliss equation.  Naked Lunch? I tried to read it but couldn't get into it.

[WhatIsAtTheEdge]

"And to answer your question, I think many people's greatest fear is a wasted life."

This, and this alone is the main problem of our generation. From the beginning; in 1st grade, 2nd grade, third grade we wave been taught, systematically to believe "I am special and unique!" So, when we grow up we start to understand that in fact, we are ordinary. The extremes of this teaching are that we will eventually seek out uniqueness and usually be let down. This kind of thing will end up killing people. Bottom line; there are unique people and there are the ordinary, and by all odds you are probly not one of the great. This in turn leads to failure. Because once we find out we are ordinary, we will have great shame and depression.[ This Message was edited by: WhatIsAtTheEdge on 2004-08-26 22:04 ]

[shanlea]

Never thought of it like that. But definitely accurate.

[Antigen]

I'm old enough to remember when those everbody wins award cerimonies in school were still weird. I still don't like it and work to subvert the meme in my own kids.

I'm also old enough to remember when a kid had to actually commit a real crime to draw serious attention from the criminal justice system. I wonder if a lot of the kids who wind up shipped off for repair due to 'police involvement' wouldn't have just gotten a detention or less 30 years ago.

Come the millennium,

month 12,

in the home of greatest power,

the village idiot will come forth to
be acclaimed the leader.
--Nostradamus

[CEDU IS A CULT]

I completely disagree.  I think we are taught from the beginning to be satisfied, to believe the lie that we aren't all unique.  And to believe the lie that we arent all the same.

Frankly, you're right.  I'm no where near one of the Great.  I consider those greats men like Socrates, Gandhi, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, etc....

I do wish I could be more like them though.  However, this HARDLY leads to failure and depression.  QUITE the contrary, it gives me great joys and daily success in striving to be the best I can.

[shanlea]

I've been sitting in some classes observing teachers teach and I have to say it is a real killjoy. I love attending college, but if I were in middle school again I would be asleep. Everything is so conformed and standardized. I actually felt great sympathy for students who have to hear recitation for eight hours a day at a time in their lives that they are practicaly jumping out of their skin anyway.

But back to what I was posting: How can we help kids who need it? Let's say someone who suffers bad self esteem and is profoundly unhappy and/or self destructive. (I'm not talking experimenting w/drugs or other teenage rebellion/activities.)  Bryan? Ginger? Take a a totally hands off approach?

[Anonymous]

I think the problem is miss communication. We are all told in school that we are speacil, but eventually we catch on that the teacher is saying that to everyone.
I remember hearing about a school where they had all the kid wear signs around ther necks saying "I am Special" How can anyone be special if everyone around them is also?
I think that it should be the parents telling there kids these things not the schools.
Another part of the problem is when kids do try to be unique, and are ridiculed by thier peers.
My opinon is that parents need to be more involved.

[Antigen]

On 2004-08-27 08:38:00, shanlea wrote:

But back to what I was posting: How can we help kids who need it? Let's say someone who suffers bad self esteem and is profoundly unhappy and/or self destructive. (I'm not talking experimenting w/drugs or other teenage rebellion/activities.) Bryan? Ginger? Take a a totally hands off approach?

Honestly? I don't know if we can pull it off, but eliminating compulsory public education would be a good start.

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of it's victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busy-bodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those that torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0802808689/circleofmianithem' target='_new'> C.S. Lewis, God In The Dock

[Deborah]

For more reasons than are obvious.
http://fornits.com/wwf/viewtopic.php?to ... t=20#59293

Scroll down to the post on Mental Health, Education and Social Control

[shanlea]

To tell you the truth, Ginger, I wonder the same thing.  But you know what? There is no way in hell the masses would be brave enough to do away with compulsory ed.  People would wonder how to occupy and "socialize" these millions of youths out of school.  I don't even know how society would sustain it. I think people are not as self sufficient or mature on a lot of levels. Also the population has increased exponentially in teh US, making opportunity more limited.

I don't know. I do know that my observations of school were a little underwhelming. I hated school (but loved learning)growing up until I went to an experimental high school taught by college teachers. Loved college courses too but its more autonomous and you can drop shit teachers.

Do you have any alternatives to comp ed?

[Antigen]

On 2004-08-28 12:01:00, shanlea wrote:

Do you have any alternatives to comp ed?

Yes, homeschool (or, more accurately, non-public alternative education) If you can hold your nose and get past the perception of homeschoolers as religious weirdos, you'll find that most of us really are not. The religious groups tend to get more media attention because 1) that's the perception so that's where journalists go looking for interviews and 2) because they tend to be better organized than us hippie drop outs by virtue of their foundation in church communities.

NEA estimates 1.1 million of us for the year 2002 - 2003. But they only count the registered hsers. They don't count duel enrolement, private umbrella 'schools' that offer the service of pumping paperwork and ensuring minimum compliance w/ education policies, nevermind underground homeschoolers who simply never report to the school district the fact that they have school aged children.

I'm starting to think Milton Friedman had the right idea (wouldn't be the first time, either) when he came up w/ school vouchers. For all the possibly problems w/ that plan, it would at least fuck up the current power and control structure that exists. That, imo, can not be a bad thing!

But I don't think you were asking how to kill the beast, but how to replace the beast. My simple, unbelievable and radically counterintitive answer is don't replace the beast! Before compulsory education (starting, in this country, in the mid 1800 at gunpoint in Massachusetts) more American were functionally litterate than today (per capita) Americans read more newspapers, voted more often, ran their own farms and other businesses and created their own prosperity w/ incredible success unprecidented in all of human history.

Just make sure your own kids can read, write and do basic math and that they understand completely that everything else is their responsibility. Sure, you and other kind adults will give them help, training and encouragement if they ask. But no one can teach you how to be an independent minded, competent adult. You have to teach yourself that.

It will be generally found that those who sneer habitually at human nature and affect to despise it, are among its worst and least pleasant examples

--Charles Dickens

_________________
Ginger Warbis ~ Antigen
Seed sibling `71 - `80
Straight South (Sarasota, FL)
   10/80 - 10/82
Anonymity Anonymous
Some days, it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps.