I too, have never been in a program, I am 18. I learned about some of the more modern programs like Tranquility Bay and Paradise Cove a couple years ago while involved in the Teen Rights groups. This past summer, one of my best friends was sent to an unlicensed 'wildnerness program' which I found out was almost shut down because of their negligence in a 14 year old boy's suicide there in Feb. My friend returned home after 2 months. He is ok, and he even thinks the program was not that bad. I was beginning to agree with him, but about 2 weeks after he got back, I got a message from another person who had been there and he gave a negative report. Negligence, unsafe environment, untrained staff, and falsified school transcripts for their highschool class makeup program. I was also contacted last week by someone else who had been there for nearly 6 months ( it is supposedly a 3 month program) and she had similar things to say about it. Both were considered great students while they were there.
Alldredge Academy is no STRAIGHT or Tranquility Bay but it is definitely part of the problem, and the people running it are connected to the worse programs.
Slavish discipline makes a slavish temper... If severity carry'd to the
highest pitch does prevail, and works a cure upon the present unruly
distemper, it often brings in the room of it a worse and more dangerous
disease, by breaking the mind; and then, in the place of a disorderly young
fellow, you have a low spirited moap'd creature, who, however with his
unnatural sobriety he may please silly people, who commend tame unactive
children, because they make no noise, nor give them any trouble; yet at
last, will probably prove as uncomfortable a thing to his friends, as he
will be all his life an useless thing to himself and others... Beating them,
and all other sorts of slavish and corporal punishments, are not the
discipline fit to be used in the education of those we would have wise,
good, and ingenuous men...
John Locke, 1692