There is another side of the story? You mean any good memories justify the fact that the staff were severely under accredited,practiced experimental, abusive therapy, distorted our stories, isolated us from reality, manipulated or flat out lied to our parents, ignored viable medical conditions,fronted fraudulent academics, did not deal with core issues effectively, trained people to spy, bully, and coerce as "healthy" relational boundaries, badgered us to the extent that we had to change our histories to fit their model (do you know how many kids were fucking badgered to death to admit drug/sex/eating bulimia histories that did not exist?), adopted profane,scream jousts as a method of interacting with others, and forced us to live with the insecurity of having staff members who told us of their horrific criminal/sexual/deviant histories and we are supposed to feel SAFE given some of our own traumatic experiences?!!
WHAT THE FUCK? This isn't about pissing and moaning-- this is plain immoral and I can't possibly fathom why good hiking trips with your peers makes up for that. CEDU was just another place where I learned that I should overlook bullshit in order to survive the system and that is fallacious thinking.
I am a teacher now and yes, it is a moral imperative that I steer parents AWAY from shitholes like this. Imagine my surprise when I came to Fornits and found that unfortunately, Cedu type places and worse are proliferate in our country.
And contrary to what many assholes think--that these "troubled" kids deserved to be fucked with, you've gotta be freaking kidding me. This school wasn't about tough love or natural consequences, it was about fraudulence and abuse. Verbal and psychological abuse are far more insidious in many ways than just having someone deck you good.
This also isn't about whining because your life sucks. Life is messy. I'm not some slut/druggie/loser complaining because CEDU sucked many years ago. (Although it absolutely affected me.) I'm just a Mom/ teacher/grad student who makes mistakes, has successes, and learns a lot just like everyone else. I have a great relationship with my family that we all earned from hard work, love, acceptance, and perseverence.
But this doesn't mean it's okay for me to have an apathetic attitude toward the next wave of inductees to any one of these programs.