Was your personal experience as one of those students, staff, parent, or a mere program advocate who only views programs by how they appear on paper, what? Please specify...I'm curious. In all fairness...my experience is that of a kid (now adult) that went through a highly abusive program many years ago.
Of course there are consequences in the real world for not following the rules, as there should be. And yes, kids should learn why certain rules are important. For example, stealing is a crime and you will go to jail for it, so in a program for instance, if a kid steals something, there should be appropriate consequences, just w/o punishment using isolation, abuse etc. So yes, its perfectly acceptable to teach kids the importance of following REASONABLE rules as long as those lessons are taught WITHOUT isolation, WITHOUT abusive punishment, WITHOUT extreme coercion & mind control...etc.
If your experience is based on one the few decent programs out there, then please explain that too. If that is your experience, quite frankly I would be skeptical, but all ears if it REALLY was decent.
BTW, most of the views around here ARE based on first hand experience. And, those experiences were far from the sunny idealistic picture you just painted.
True, not all programs are the same, but way too many of them employ very questionable tactics at best, while others blatently abuse kids, or completely break them down and terrorize kids to get them to follow their so-called ridiculous rules, which is UNACCEPTABLE.
No one is saying that kids should be disobedient little hellions who dont have to obey rules...but when isolation is used and when other punishments go far beyond reasonableness, to the point kids are scared to death, those methods are inappropriate, counter-productive, and destroys the children subected to it.
Treating kids like animals or criminals IS NOT therapy.
In my opinion, therapy should be communication, listening, feedback, suggestions, and dealing with a kid's anger and pain with compassion and understanding(nonexistant in my program experience). Consequences, if needed, should be humane and proportionate to real misdeeds, not imaginary misdeeds created by excessive and pointless rules.