11 ms·

I went to one of these places when I was 13. Same thing, picked up in the middle of the night, and sent to a wilderness program that turned into 18 months of bo

by anm89 5y ago

I went to one of these places when I was 13. Same thing, picked up in the middle of the night, and sent to a wilderness program that turned into 18 months of boarding school. The school was burnt down by the students a few years after I left and I got a couple thousand dollars in a class action lawsuit when it came out that they were hiring unlicensed therapists and admitting students who should have been in intensive psychiatric care and were an immediate danger to others around them. I look back on it as one of the most valuable experiences in my life, not because there was any validity to the program but because it just confronted me with a lot of intense challenges at a young age that really developed my critical thinking and mindset at a young age.

havermeyer 5y ago
Did you keep in touch with any of the other students? I can't imagine that anyone came away thinking it was pleasant, but I'm curious how their thoughts on the experience compared to yours.
- anm89 5y ago
  Not many. There was a Facebook group where people kept in touch which I disconnected with because it was pretty toxic. Most of the people in there seemed like they never got over it and were sort of still reliving it 10 years later and still held a lot of anger about it. To be fair a lot of them had pretty deep substance abuse issues and probably needed some kind of organized help although I doubt very many got any of that at this program.
  - teekert 5y ago
    Or, maybe they got abusive bootcamp at the point that they needed love the most.
jkrubin 5y ago
Would you mind sharing what school you went to?
- anm89 5y ago
  Hidden Lake Academy
  - ad404b8a372f2b9 5y ago
    Ah they're associated with CEDU, that explains a lot. I heard lots of messed up stuff from people who went to those schools. There's an interesting interview on youtube of the comedian Adam Eget about his experience in a similar school.
nextaccountic 5y ago
What do you think about your parents?
- anm89 5y ago
  I'm not in contact with them at this point.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- anm89 5y ago
  Writing this on here and getting a very positive response was surprisingly therapeutic for me. Thanks for asking
  - nate_meurer 5y ago
    My knee-jerk reaction to your statement that you're no longer in contact with your parents was "good!" There's something about your story that really, deeply fucking bothers me. I think its the part where you're taken from your home in the middle of the night. I can't adequately describe how that makes me feel, and I wonder why. I'm sorry that happened to you. Regarding the silver lining, as it were, do you think your parents could have arranged another sort of intervention or experience to give you those benefits, with resorting to institutionalized abuse? Would a better sort of "camp" have worked for you?
    - anm89 5y ago
      Yeah it's tough. I don't think my partents are terrible people. They are products of their own trauma and struggles and stuff. At the end of the day the relationships were just bringing a lot fo negativity into my life and I just didn't have the energy for it. In terms of the other ways to produce my experience without the downsides, absolutely yes and if I have kids I intend to try to do exactly that. They would have the final decision on it and it wouldn't be a surprise but basically some kind of intensive month or two outdoor survival training or something like that. Maybe I'd even just do it myself with them.
waterhouse 5y ago
My reaction to these kinds of things (see also: the abuse of the Battle School students in Ender's Game) is to think: (1) Perhaps it was the best way to teach certain things; but (2) I don't think the people who do such things usually rule out all the gentler methods first. It sounds like the "challenges" weren't necessarily intended to teach you what you learned, and you just happened to have a mind and mindset that responded well to the situation, so it isn't even an instance of "competently executed dangerous teaching methods". Nevertheless, do you think there's a safer approach that would have had a high chance of teaching you and the other kids those lessons?
- watwut 5y ago
  Enders game is a fiction. And while military boarding schools (and any closed seclude communities) in fact do have abuse systems amd are prone to bullying issue, there is zero evidence the abuses are best way to teach things. Being strip searched does not fixes mental health issues. Really.
  - teekert 5y ago
    Indeed, children need love in order to be able to give it (and be able to receive it). It seems better to me to keep them in the “circle of love” than to send them off to the well known circle of abuse.
    - candiodari 5y ago
      Very often there's no choice. Either something under your control, or CPS comes and takes the kid away. Schools even do this to avoid dealing with abusive teachers and the like, or just to get rid of a specific child. And that would be this CPS: https://www.kansascity.com/news/special-reports/article238206754.html https://www.kansascity.com/news/special-reports/article23820... The idea that justifies the power of CPS, that these sorts of "measures" are taken in the interest of the child, are totally ridiculous upon inspection. Not because there aren't any problems, but because these "solutions" are so much worse.
  - b0rsuk 5y ago
spoonjim 5y ago
Can you give more detail about the intense challenges and in what way they developed your critical thinking and mindset? Interesting to hear that learning is possible even in such a traumatic environment.
- anm89 5y ago
  The feeling of losing my freedom definitely got me started thinking about poltical philosophy at a young age in a very organic way. Why do we have rules. Who should get to make and enforce rules. When should I follow a set of rules that are laid out for me. I don't think many 23 year olds have too many deep thoughts on stuff like that but I had a more intuitive sense of my own answers to those questions at that age after having the sense of losing my freedom and being treated in a manner that I perceived as deeply unfair.
bitL 5y ago
I'd say that's how childhood looks like for the majority of people on this planet outside of the first-world protective umbrella. Imagine growing up in war-torn Africa, drug-ridden slums of South America or fanatical Middle East with daily executions.
- dalbasal 5y ago
  stereotype-much? Individuals' life experience isn't the average of a regions, or defined by headlines. For the most part, it's family and immediate community that define childhoods. A lot of good childhoods is otherwise dysfunctional places. A lot of bad childhoods in otherwise wealthy places.
- arcturus17 5y ago
  > Imagine growing up in war-torn Africa, drug-ridden slums of South America or fanatical Middle East with daily executions. This sentence is so ignorantly woke that it has come full-circle and it is blatantly racist. Latin America is much, much more than drug-ridden slums, war hasn't torn apart all of Africa - and many countries have recovered from such strife -, and many people in the Middle East live under moderate versions of the Sharia that don't entail gruesome "daily executions" like in ISIS-controlled territories. About 700M people in the world live in absolute poverty nowadays, compared to about 80% in the 1800s [1]. There is no factual evidence that the "majority" of people in the world live in the abject conditions that you describe. In fact, many people now live in relative material poverty compared to Western standards, but in safety, dignity and prosperity. We can argue all day about how there is a lot of work yet to be done or how at the extremes wicked expressions of evil continue to exist, but this savage and false interpretation of the world is completely out of place. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_threshold https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_threshold
  - bitL 5y ago
    I traveled around the world and spent some time in Brazil. Look e.g. at Rio de Janeiro - a small "city" with a few luxurious somewhat safe neighborhoods like Ipanema and Gavea, then a bit more seedy Copacabana, then a Maputo-style Centro, and all this surrounded by slums that take about 20x the size of the core Rio, including the famous "Zona Morte" a foreign tourist sees first when arriving via the international airport. Friends were telling me stories they experienced in favelas, like grandma phoning to her grandchildren to skip the school because there "were a few rough days" with bullets flying around, or all inhabitants running away because two gangs decided to wage a mini war on some nice afternoon. You see 16 year olds with faces that look 50+ from the "tough love" they experience everyday, lack of opportunities, constant fear of not making it to another day, rampant cheating in everything because that's what everyone is doing, and that's just Brazil, one of the most developed ones. Now look at San Salvador or Guatemala, or some parts of Mexico that went completely bonkers. I am not sure what is "woke" or "racist" in this - most of our planet feels like a hellhole and there is a lot of work to do to improve it. Most people have terrible lives as they have to cope with these either directly or indirectly (even if your life is fine right now, you are still constrained by the hostile environment around), a small minority is cushioned from all that "fun" and pressure.
bjornsing 5y ago
> I look back on it as one of the most valuable experiences in my life, not because there was any validity to the program but because it just confronted me with a lot of intense challenges at a young age that really developed my critical thinking and mindset at a young age. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Problem is, it does “kill”* some people. (*) Sometimes literally, but probably more often figuratively.
- brian_cunnie 5y ago
  I asked a psychologist (Dr. Judith Bernstein) if it's true that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and she answered unequivocally, "Trauma never makes you stronger." In a similar vein, with respect to "there are no atheists in foxholes", A three-tour-of-duty-in-Vietnam captain in the US Army (Harry McMenamin) said, "I was an atheist when I was in Vietnam, and I was in a lot of foxholes. There are atheists in foxholes."
  - tluyben2 5y ago
    There are many atheists in foxholes: actually a lot of people lost/lose their faith in a foxhole. How can you think deity exists in any, but especially, a crap situation?
  - woofie11 5y ago
    Psychologists mostly mirror the cultural values they're raised in. A lot of historical figures contradict the prevailing narrative.
    - brian_cunnie 5y ago
      > A lot of historical figures contradict the prevailing narrative [that trauma never makes you stronger]. I'd argue that the key word here is "trauma"; I think _adversity_ can make you stronger (more disciplined, and more focused), but I think that Dr. Bernstein is using the word "trauma" in its technical, medical, sense, i.e. "Psychological trauma is caused by an adverse experience, or series of experiences, that result in an injury that changes the way the brain functions, impairing neurophysiological, psychological, and cognitive functioning." [0] [0] https://www.med.upenn.edu/traumaresponse/trauma.html https://www.med.upenn.edu/traumaresponse/trauma.html
tluyben2 5y ago
Maybe your parents could have instilled those same qualities in you without the crazy shit?

by anm89 5y ago

havermeyer 5y ago

Did you keep in touch with any of the other students? I can't imagine that anyone came away thinking it was pleasant, but I'm curious how their thoughts on the experience compared to yours.

anm89 5y ago
Not many. There was a Facebook group where people kept in touch which I disconnected with because it was pretty toxic. Most of the people in there seemed like they never got over it and were sort of still reliving it 10 years later and still held a lot of anger about it. To be fair a lot of them had pretty deep substance abuse issues and probably needed some kind of organized help although I doubt very many got any of that at this program.
- teekert 5y ago
  Or, maybe they got abusive bootcamp at the point that they needed love the most.

jkrubin 5y ago

Would you mind sharing what school you went to?

anm89 5y ago
Hidden Lake Academy
- ad404b8a372f2b9 5y ago
  Ah they're associated with CEDU, that explains a lot. I heard lots of messed up stuff from people who went to those schools. There's an interesting interview on youtube of the comedian Adam Eget about his experience in a similar school.

nextaccountic 5y ago

What do you think about your parents?

anm89 5y ago
I'm not in contact with them at this point.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
anm89 5y ago
Writing this on here and getting a very positive response was surprisingly therapeutic for me. Thanks for asking
- nate_meurer 5y ago
  My knee-jerk reaction to your statement that you're no longer in contact with your parents was "good!" There's something about your story that really, deeply fucking bothers me. I think its the part where you're taken from your home in the middle of the night. I can't adequately describe how that makes me feel, and I wonder why. I'm sorry that happened to you. Regarding the silver lining, as it were, do you think your parents could have arranged another sort of intervention or experience to give you those benefits, with resorting to institutionalized abuse? Would a better sort of "camp" have worked for you?
  - anm89 5y ago
    Yeah it's tough. I don't think my partents are terrible people. They are products of their own trauma and struggles and stuff. At the end of the day the relationships were just bringing a lot fo negativity into my life and I just didn't have the energy for it. In terms of the other ways to produce my experience without the downsides, absolutely yes and if I have kids I intend to try to do exactly that. They would have the final decision on it and it wouldn't be a surprise but basically some kind of intensive month or two outdoor survival training or something like that. Maybe I'd even just do it myself with them.

waterhouse 5y ago

My reaction to these kinds of things (see also: the abuse of the Battle School students in Ender's Game) is to think: (1) Perhaps it was the best way to teach certain things; but (2) I don't think the people who do such things usually rule out all the gentler methods first. It sounds like the "challenges" weren't necessarily intended to teach you what you learned, and you just happened to have a mind and mindset that responded well to the situation, so it isn't even an instance of "competently executed dangerous teaching methods". Nevertheless, do you think there's a safer approach that would have had a high chance of teaching you and the other kids those lessons?

watwut 5y ago
Enders game is a fiction. And while military boarding schools (and any closed seclude communities) in fact do have abuse systems amd are prone to bullying issue, there is zero evidence the abuses are best way to teach things. Being strip searched does not fixes mental health issues. Really.
- teekert 5y ago
  Indeed, children need love in order to be able to give it (and be able to receive it). It seems better to me to keep them in the “circle of love” than to send them off to the well known circle of abuse.
  - candiodari 5y ago
    Very often there's no choice. Either something under your control, or CPS comes and takes the kid away. Schools even do this to avoid dealing with abusive teachers and the like, or just to get rid of a specific child. And that would be this CPS: https://www.kansascity.com/news/special-reports/article238206754.html https://www.kansascity.com/news/special-reports/article23820... The idea that justifies the power of CPS, that these sorts of "measures" are taken in the interest of the child, are totally ridiculous upon inspection. Not because there aren't any problems, but because these "solutions" are so much worse.
- b0rsuk 5y ago

spoonjim 5y ago

Can you give more detail about the intense challenges and in what way they developed your critical thinking and mindset? Interesting to hear that learning is possible even in such a traumatic environment.

anm89 5y ago
The feeling of losing my freedom definitely got me started thinking about poltical philosophy at a young age in a very organic way. Why do we have rules. Who should get to make and enforce rules. When should I follow a set of rules that are laid out for me. I don't think many 23 year olds have too many deep thoughts on stuff like that but I had a more intuitive sense of my own answers to those questions at that age after having the sense of losing my freedom and being treated in a manner that I perceived as deeply unfair.

bitL 5y ago

I'd say that's how childhood looks like for the majority of people on this planet outside of the first-world protective umbrella. Imagine growing up in war-torn Africa, drug-ridden slums of South America or fanatical Middle East with daily executions.

dalbasal 5y ago
stereotype-much? Individuals' life experience isn't the average of a regions, or defined by headlines. For the most part, it's family and immediate community that define childhoods. A lot of good childhoods is otherwise dysfunctional places. A lot of bad childhoods in otherwise wealthy places.
arcturus17 5y ago
> Imagine growing up in war-torn Africa, drug-ridden slums of South America or fanatical Middle East with daily executions. This sentence is so ignorantly woke that it has come full-circle and it is blatantly racist. Latin America is much, much more than drug-ridden slums, war hasn't torn apart all of Africa - and many countries have recovered from such strife -, and many people in the Middle East live under moderate versions of the Sharia that don't entail gruesome "daily executions" like in ISIS-controlled territories. About 700M people in the world live in absolute poverty nowadays, compared to about 80% in the 1800s [1]. There is no factual evidence that the "majority" of people in the world live in the abject conditions that you describe. In fact, many people now live in relative material poverty compared to Western standards, but in safety, dignity and prosperity. We can argue all day about how there is a lot of work yet to be done or how at the extremes wicked expressions of evil continue to exist, but this savage and false interpretation of the world is completely out of place. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_threshold https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_threshold
- bitL 5y ago
  I traveled around the world and spent some time in Brazil. Look e.g. at Rio de Janeiro - a small "city" with a few luxurious somewhat safe neighborhoods like Ipanema and Gavea, then a bit more seedy Copacabana, then a Maputo-style Centro, and all this surrounded by slums that take about 20x the size of the core Rio, including the famous "Zona Morte" a foreign tourist sees first when arriving via the international airport. Friends were telling me stories they experienced in favelas, like grandma phoning to her grandchildren to skip the school because there "were a few rough days" with bullets flying around, or all inhabitants running away because two gangs decided to wage a mini war on some nice afternoon. You see 16 year olds with faces that look 50+ from the "tough love" they experience everyday, lack of opportunities, constant fear of not making it to another day, rampant cheating in everything because that's what everyone is doing, and that's just Brazil, one of the most developed ones. Now look at San Salvador or Guatemala, or some parts of Mexico that went completely bonkers. I am not sure what is "woke" or "racist" in this - most of our planet feels like a hellhole and there is a lot of work to do to improve it. Most people have terrible lives as they have to cope with these either directly or indirectly (even if your life is fine right now, you are still constrained by the hostile environment around), a small minority is cushioned from all that "fun" and pressure.

bjornsing 5y ago

> I look back on it as one of the most valuable experiences in my life, not because there was any validity to the program but because it just confronted me with a lot of intense challenges at a young age that really developed my critical thinking and mindset at a young age. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Problem is, it does “kill”* some people. (*) Sometimes literally, but probably more often figuratively.

brian_cunnie 5y ago
I asked a psychologist (Dr. Judith Bernstein) if it's true that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and she answered unequivocally, "Trauma never makes you stronger." In a similar vein, with respect to "there are no atheists in foxholes", A three-tour-of-duty-in-Vietnam captain in the US Army (Harry McMenamin) said, "I was an atheist when I was in Vietnam, and I was in a lot of foxholes. There are atheists in foxholes."
- tluyben2 5y ago
  There are many atheists in foxholes: actually a lot of people lost/lose their faith in a foxhole. How can you think deity exists in any, but especially, a crap situation?
- woofie11 5y ago
  Psychologists mostly mirror the cultural values they're raised in. A lot of historical figures contradict the prevailing narrative.
  - brian_cunnie 5y ago
    > A lot of historical figures contradict the prevailing narrative [that trauma never makes you stronger]. I'd argue that the key word here is "trauma"; I think _adversity_ can make you stronger (more disciplined, and more focused), but I think that Dr. Bernstein is using the word "trauma" in its technical, medical, sense, i.e. "Psychological trauma is caused by an adverse experience, or series of experiences, that result in an injury that changes the way the brain functions, impairing neurophysiological, psychological, and cognitive functioning." [0] [0] https://www.med.upenn.edu/traumaresponse/trauma.html https://www.med.upenn.edu/traumaresponse/trauma.html

tluyben2 5y ago

Maybe your parents could have instilled those same qualities in you without the crazy shit?