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When Military School Offers the Right Kind of Discipline for At-Risk Students

21 points by curtis 11y ago

mapt 11y ago
There is a long history of horrific shit going down in these sorts of environments. "At-risk students" who volunteer to be there and are cherrypicked from the top of a list of applicants are... not exactly the best statistical environment in which to judge success or failure of the teaching method. Even if such an approach were genuinely successful, the downsides to a slightly higher graduation rate may be considerable. https://www.reddit.com/r/troubledteens https://www.reddit.com/r/troubledteens http://astartforteens.org/ http://astartforteens.org/ http://wwaspsurvivors.com/ http://wwaspsurvivors.com/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2198956/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2198956/ My experience in the industry is limited to a six week summer camp. I went through a program wherein we were provided insufficient food & water and subjected to forced march in the wilderness, with constant entreaties to conform to their weird cultlike conflict resolution framework. To get us to behave they frequently threatened us with forced admission to their sister camp, which was marketed as an alternative to juvie, and ran on a level system (a more carceral aspect up to and including stress positions). I became suicidal after about two days on this regime; I 'gave up' and sat down on the trail half a dozen times, but eventually gave in to their insistence was that this was self-defeating and threaten my campmates because I would merely be prolonging the time to the next resupply, and that no authority figure would do anything but try to help them. I lost 40 pounds of bodyweight in 21 days, developed open pressure sores & lost the ability to walk without pain for a while. I staged a breakdown in front of the nurse when we got back to basecamp, to try and get my parents on the phone (I failed). They put me in a subprogram for kids three or four years my junior for the second session. The abuse there was tame, limited to escalating penalties when we did something judged disruptive, like make a disappointed face, until we gave in and apologized in the proper form. Two children that year ran away, despite threats to have the neighbor turn his dogs loose on them; One ended up back with her parents, one in the prison camp. Another (a naive and very Mormon little 10-year-old) was taken to a North Carolina state police station where the counselors got an officer to threaten him verbally with 24hrs of lockup, because his crying was getting out of hand. I count myself lucky that I didn't face anything harsher, but never in my wildest dreams would I test some child by admission to this largely unregulated the-beatings-will-stop-when-morale-improves BS. Many of them brag about adopting coercive tactics invented by cults to keep people in the program, get them to conform, and 'get your child under control'. Some of these involve things a prison warden would not be permitted to do. Mine seems to have been marketted in parallel as a disciplinary aid (one camp-mate was there on court order) and as a "treatment" for things from ADHD (my ticket) to autism. The deaths that sometimes occur pale in comparison to the amount of PTSD that comes out of these places.
- zokier 11y ago
  I'm wondering who did run the camp you experienced? I would like to believe that actual public military organization run camps or schools (such as the one hilighted in the article which is run by National Guard) would not be such horrorshows as private organizations might be.
wtbob 11y ago
I think it's pretty clear that what a military-style school can bring to the table is a stand-in for paternal care to children without fathers, or with bad fathers. Traditional schooling doesn't really instil confidence or pride, in my experience; it's much more about not rocking the boat, or rocking the boat in the way that the administrators would prefer (which, of course…isn't rocking the boat). As mapt elsethread indicates, these things can go wrong, just as the traditional, maternal school system goes wrong (zero tolerance? students disrespecting teachers‽).
cma 11y ago
Key quote: >And ultimately, for all the success indicated in the MDRC study, the same study shows that three years after completing the program, there are few significant differences between graduates and their peers in the control group on measures of crime, delinquency, health, or lifestyle outcomes.
NPMaxwell 11y ago
This article begins with the premise that programs that treat disruptive children with kindness aren't working. His evidence is an article from the LA Times: http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-school-discipline-20151108-story.html http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-school-discipli... Key text in the LA Times articles includes this: "some teachers are dubious, in part because high staff turnover has stymied efforts. A highly regarded restorative justice counselor was let go in January because foundation funding ran out, and 10 of the 11 teachers on the school's restorative justice task force last year have left the campus... Schools with enough staff and training, however, report success." Well yeah. You often get results that roughly match how well you run your program. Maybe a more important issue is in plain sight: "An ideal span of control in an organization, according to modern organizational experts is approximately 15 to 20 subordinates per supervisor or manager. However, some experts with a more traditional focus believe that 5-6 subordinates per supervisor or manager is ideal." (http://www.yourerc.com/blog/post/Span-of-Control-How-Many-Employees-Should-Your-Supervisors-Manage.aspx http://www.yourerc.com/blog/post/Span-of-Control-How-Many-Em...) A teacher typically manages 25 and up.

21 points by curtis 11y ago

mapt 11y ago

There is a long history of horrific shit going down in these sorts of environments. "At-risk students" who volunteer to be there and are cherrypicked from the top of a list of applicants are... not exactly the best statistical environment in which to judge success or failure of the teaching method. Even if such an approach were genuinely successful, the downsides to a slightly higher graduation rate may be considerable. https://www.reddit.com/r/troubledteens https://www.reddit.com/r/troubledteens http://astartforteens.org/ http://astartforteens.org/ http://wwaspsurvivors.com/ http://wwaspsurvivors.com/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2198956/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2198956/ My experience in the industry is limited to a six week summer camp. I went through a program wherein we were provided insufficient food & water and subjected to forced march in the wilderness, with constant entreaties to conform to their weird cultlike conflict resolution framework. To get us to behave they frequently threatened us with forced admission to their sister camp, which was marketed as an alternative to juvie, and ran on a level system (a more carceral aspect up to and including stress positions). I became suicidal after about two days on this regime; I 'gave up' and sat down on the trail half a dozen times, but eventually gave in to their insistence was that this was self-defeating and threaten my campmates because I would merely be prolonging the time to the next resupply, and that no authority figure would do anything but try to help them. I lost 40 pounds of bodyweight in 21 days, developed open pressure sores & lost the ability to walk without pain for a while. I staged a breakdown in front of the nurse when we got back to basecamp, to try and get my parents on the phone (I failed). They put me in a subprogram for kids three or four years my junior for the second session. The abuse there was tame, limited to escalating penalties when we did something judged disruptive, like make a disappointed face, until we gave in and apologized in the proper form. Two children that year ran away, despite threats to have the neighbor turn his dogs loose on them; One ended up back with her parents, one in the prison camp. Another (a naive and very Mormon little 10-year-old) was taken to a North Carolina state police station where the counselors got an officer to threaten him verbally with 24hrs of lockup, because his crying was getting out of hand. I count myself lucky that I didn't face anything harsher, but never in my wildest dreams would I test some child by admission to this largely unregulated the-beatings-will-stop-when-morale-improves BS. Many of them brag about adopting coercive tactics invented by cults to keep people in the program, get them to conform, and 'get your child under control'. Some of these involve things a prison warden would not be permitted to do. Mine seems to have been marketted in parallel as a disciplinary aid (one camp-mate was there on court order) and as a "treatment" for things from ADHD (my ticket) to autism. The deaths that sometimes occur pale in comparison to the amount of PTSD that comes out of these places.

zokier 11y ago
I'm wondering who did run the camp you experienced? I would like to believe that actual public military organization run camps or schools (such as the one hilighted in the article which is run by National Guard) would not be such horrorshows as private organizations might be.

wtbob 11y ago

I think it's pretty clear that what a military-style school can bring to the table is a stand-in for paternal care to children without fathers, or with bad fathers. Traditional schooling doesn't really instil confidence or pride, in my experience; it's much more about not rocking the boat, or rocking the boat in the way that the administrators would prefer (which, of course…isn't rocking the boat). As mapt elsethread indicates, these things can go wrong, just as the traditional, maternal school system goes wrong (zero tolerance? students disrespecting teachers‽).

cma 11y ago

Key quote: >And ultimately, for all the success indicated in the MDRC study, the same study shows that three years after completing the program, there are few significant differences between graduates and their peers in the control group on measures of crime, delinquency, health, or lifestyle outcomes.

NPMaxwell 11y ago

This article begins with the premise that programs that treat disruptive children with kindness aren't working. His evidence is an article from the LA Times: http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-school-discipline-20151108-story.html http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-school-discipli... Key text in the LA Times articles includes this: "some teachers are dubious, in part because high staff turnover has stymied efforts. A highly regarded restorative justice counselor was let go in January because foundation funding ran out, and 10 of the 11 teachers on the school's restorative justice task force last year have left the campus... Schools with enough staff and training, however, report success." Well yeah. You often get results that roughly match how well you run your program. Maybe a more important issue is in plain sight: "An ideal span of control in an organization, according to modern organizational experts is approximately 15 to 20 subordinates per supervisor or manager. However, some experts with a more traditional focus believe that 5-6 subordinates per supervisor or manager is ideal." (http://www.yourerc.com/blog/post/Span-of-Control-How-Many-Employees-Should-Your-Supervisors-Manage.aspx http://www.yourerc.com/blog/post/Span-of-Control-How-Many-Em...) A teacher typically manages 25 and up.