Shread this one to pieces!! Lon Woodbury on CEDU/ Wasserman.
ttp://www.strugglingteens.com/archives/ ... ation.htmlExcerpt
A similar progression has occurred in the network of parent-choice emotional growth/therapeutic schools and programs. Before the start of any of these schools and programs, in the 1950s, social critics were decrying the sameness that seemed to be permeating most segments of society. Popular scholarly books like ?The Organization Man,? made the point that individuality was being lost, as large national corporations seemed to be increasingly dominating everywhere important, and were imposing standards that gave the appearance of sameness nationwide. Predictability had won out over innovation, and by the 1970s parents of struggling teens needing residential placement had for the most part only clinical choices - hospitals or residential treatment centers to choose from.
However, the 1960s and 1970s saw a tremendous surge of innovative ideas and new approaches for these teens. Synanon, Daytop, Elan, DeSisto, EST, boy?s ranches, LifeSpring, the Dallas Salesmanship Club, wilderness adventure, back-to-nature communities and many other innovative approaches proliferated, challenging the system of predictability then in vogue. The founders of those facilities that were focused on struggling teens developed philosophies and approaches they thought would better meet these children?s needs because they felt the standard approach to helping teens who were making poor decisions did not help many of them. One of the most influential approaches to the network of emotional growth/therapeutic schools and programs was Mel Wasserman?s CEDU School, founded in 1967.
Wasserman concluded, like many other innovative founders of the time, that there was nothing available to adequately help teens with problems, so he went into the school business. Since the psychological research of that time focused on abnormal behaviors, Wasserman discarded the mainstream treatment practices as too limiting, and he adapted from many of the other alternative education currents of thought flourishing during the 1960s and 1970s, and from the self-improvement movement. Adding Rocky Mountain Academy in North Idaho in 1982 as a sister school, the schools flourished during the 1980s. Built as a school rather than a treatment center, the philosophy was explained as a whole child education, with an emotional growth curriculum, a physical growth curriculum, an academic curriculum and a wilderness curriculum. This was probably the most successful era of the CEDU schools, both financially and in positive impacts on a student body that were comprised primarily of students who had failed in mainstream treatment. Parents who had been disappointed with the results of predictable mainstream treatment often found success in the innovative approach of CEDU.
The evolution of CEDU reflects the evolution of the network of emotional growth/therapeutic schools and programs. As CEDU?s popularity increased, they came to the attention of the forces favoring predictability. For example, in a dispute with the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare over whether they should be regulated by the Department of Education or by Health and Welfare, the Idaho legislature determined that they should be considered some kind of treatment center rather than a school. CEDU bowed to the decision of the state and reversed their long-standing policy of being a school and an alternative to standard treatment for teens making poor decisions. They applied for State Department of Health and Welfare licensure, hired therapists and various other clinicians, and started accepting students with serious mental conditions and those needing psychotropic medications. Prior to the state?s intervention, CEDU insisted they were a school and thus did not qualify for treatment center status, they referred students needing psychotropic medications and clinical services elsewhere, and hired staff based on their effectiveness with students, clinical training or licenses were considered incidental. Over time, this has evolved, and today the staff promoting CEDU, or many of the other schools and programs in the network, brag almost as much about their clinical capabilities as do the mainstream residential treatment centers. Successful innovation is being brought into line with the predictability of mainstream treatment, and innovative schools are forced to provide treatment based on the problems of their students.
Innovation from programs such as CEDU has left its mark in mainstream treatment and schools also, since it has gone both ways. These innovative ideas of structure, impact of wilderness, ropes courses, climbing walls, the importance of developing a community and relationships, are the elements developed through the innovation of schools and programs in the network of emotional growth/therapeutic schools and programs are now common in quality mainstream treatment centers, schools and community efforts to help teens. Without the innovation from places like CEDU, residential treatment centers might still have the same kind of priorities and practices they did in the 1970s. If that had happened, the children would be the losers.
This brief review of the history of this network as I understand it underscores to me how important it is to keep the door open to the small locally owned and operated schools and programs. These small start-ups are where innovation will primarily come from. Most of the schools and programs in the network of emotional growth/therapeutic schools and programs started with a visionary putting together a small start-up and grew from there. Times change, children?s needs change and society changes. If regulations and expectations expand to where there are major increases in the requirements of conforming to expectations of predictability, start-ups will become impossible, and the required innovation to keep up with societal changes will not occur. We do not want to repeat the conformity of the 1970s. The children deserve better than that.
