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Stories about these institutions get conflated into a mess that scarcely resembles the reality. In a way, this is inevitable with a wide variety of schools and

Stories about these institutions get conflated into a mess that scarcely resembles the reality. In a way, this is inevitable with a wide variety of schools and treatment centers, and a yet wider variety of perspectives. This particular story tells us little about these schools – it describes the perspective of a student, a client. This is valuable and I'm grateful to read it. However, I caution other readers against making assumptions about these institutions based on any given story. I would know – I attended four of these schools. Some incredibly strict (even dehumanizing) and others a joy (one had season passes to the local ski resort). Most of them blended these two polarities. Students exhibited huge variation in responses, to the point that a listener hearing them describe their shared experiences would be certain they were discussing different places. For example, some students thought it was abusive to require skiing and mountain biking two days per week (I disagree). Other students thought it was totally fine to be required to wear hospital scrubs as a means of stigmatization (I also disagree). Almost no one questioned social isolation as punishment – perhaps the most incredible abuse I routinely witnessed and was subjected to, considering the developmental phase of adolescents. My point: it will take a mosaic of perspectives to really understand what's going on. I also caution readers against abhorrence towards parents. Consider those not-rare parents who have tried everything to help a kid who is on the cusp of life in prison, undergoing their 8th overdose, or being repeatedly raped and subjected to prostitution/exploitation. Consider that many of these schools offer a greater education than what's locally available. Consider that some of these schools are effective and relatively safe. A final note that I believe clouds this topic -> We live in a puritanical, punitive society. Even for non-religious people, we have been inculcated with ideals of purity and expectations of punishment. These delusions and biases cloud this topic. My final guidance is to read these stories with an open mind. This author was truthful, and we should listen. The next story you hear will probably contradict it but also be truthful, and we should listen.

girvo 5y ago
I have a question. Do these programs exist in other countries? A cursory search (I honestly am not sure what I should be looking for) couldn't find any here in Australia. Is this a uniquely American thing? Surely not, I assume. If it's not, do these programs have the same horrible stories coming out of them elsewhere, and if they don't, does that not paint a picture that the approach taken in the US isn't a good one? I freely admit to being pretty ignorant about all this. I do not have the best view on these "programs" though, from everything I've seen.
- fit2rule 5y ago
- searchableguy 5y ago
  > Do these programs exist in other countries? Yes, they exist in India. The usual purpose is to force kids to study. India has coaching centres which are worse than jails for kids where they are coached to crack JEE (Elite college entrance exam) and other competitive exams. You can find all sort of abuse happening in these. Stack class ranking, subtle gender separation, and some verbal & physical abuse is common in most schools outside of few urban centres though. Public stripping and getting kids dehydrated outside in hot temperatures was a thing few years ago but it might have stopped now, I hope.
  - hackernewds 5y ago
    A very common theme is the utter discard of any "growth mindset". And students are increasingly not only ranked within the same class, but thereon the classes themselves are ranked - where the best instructors are assigned to the best classes -> students. The ultimate incentive here for the school is to land 5-10 very smart students that will "top" the national exams bringing pride and most importantly, a lot of applications to the institution. YMMV as the thread states, but it is undeniably a feature of these schools.
  - sriram_malhar 5y ago
    These are quite different in spirit to the kind of schools that OP posted. Parents aren't sending their kids to the coaching centres to straighten them out. They all want their kids to do well in studies, and unfortunately, this is all they care about. In some sense, these schools are like boarding schools; some kids shine, some get traumatised for life.
  - ngc248 5y ago
    These institutions are nothing like coaching institutes. Read up a bit about these for ex: elan.
- orwin 5y ago
watwut 5y ago
> This particular story tells us little about these schools – it describes the perspective of a student, a client. Accounts of people who were clients or experienced X tell a lot about X. Not a little. When we take accounts of people who experienced it as a little, that ia when we are missing the most important perspective. And that is when abuses escalate. Yes, good experience matters as múch as bad ones. But bad ones dont tell "a little". > help a kid who is on the cusp of life in prison, undergoing their 8th overdose, or being repeatedly raped and subjected to prostitution/exploitation One of these things is not like the others. One of them is much more likely to happen in an institution.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
newaccount74 5y ago
> some students thought it was abusive to require skiing and mountain biking two days per week (I disagree) The question of whether this is abusive or not depends on the consequences for refusing to go. Do kids lose TV privileges for a day if they refuse to go? Then I'd say it's not abusive. Are kids locked in a room if they refuse to go? Definitely abusive.
- Clubber 5y ago
  >Are kids locked in a room if they refuse to go? Definitely abusive. I don't disagree, but also consider the entire picture. Some of these people end up being the ones that get raging drunk, and into head on collision with a family of 4 killing them all. How the heck do you try to prevent something like that when all the warning signs are there?
  - denton-scratch 5y ago
    > How the heck do you try to prevent something like that when all the warning signs are there? Surely not by preemptive incarceration. GP said: > Do kids lose TV privileges for a day if they refuse to go? Then I'd say it's not abusive. I don't agree. Coercing kids into physical sports is abusive. In general, using coercion (including denial of "privileges" that non-inmates consider a right) is both abusive and probably doomed. This kid was surely troubled; but why? He didn't talk much about how his parents treated him. All we know is that their response to the trouble was to dump him in an institution. My guess is that his behaviour was a rational response to being brought up in a home where he was denied love and affection.
    - Clubber 5y ago
      >> How the heck do you try to prevent something like that when all the warning signs are there? >Surely not by preemptive incarceration. You aren't suggesting any solutions. >Coercing kids into physical sports is abusive. You shouldn't dilute the term abusive like that. >In general, using coercion (including denial of "privileges" that non-inmates consider a right) is both abusive and probably doomed. I don't think you have kids, you're looking at it from the child's perspective, not a parent's. You haven't really promoted any solutions, just saying things you shouldn't do, leaving a parent with zero tools whatsoever other than to just let the kid be wild. I've seen the results of that, it's quite destructive as well. It's ultimately the parents' responsibility to raise children, and at least in the US, they get zero help and mostly criticism for how they do it, mostly from people who don't have children themselves. What do you do if you suspect your child is the next Adam Lanza? What do you do if you are as financially constrained and have nearly zero help as a parent in the US? Some variation of "pull yourself up by your bootstraps?"
IIAOPSW 5y ago
>it describes the perspective of a student, a client. The student is not the client. The student didn't pay for it. The student didn't ask to be there. The student isn't the one for whom incentives and interests align.
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  It's an interesting doublespeak to use for someone who is effectively interred - a prisoner, basically, but extralegal in that they weren't convicted to them. I think anyway, I'm sure there's plenty of these camps that actually are court mandated.
  - legacynl 5y ago
    > I'm sure there's plenty of these camps that actually are court mandated. That may be, but in those cases you would be talking about behavior problems that resulted in problems with the law, trial, guilt and conviction. Those cases are per definition a sub-set of the much larger group of people that are innocent, don't get in trouble with the law, don't go to trial, aren't convicted, but still are sent to these internment facilities. If these facilities were limited to kids that are actually mandated by court to go there, then it would be a VERY different story.
taurath 5y ago
This all pretends like there’s somehow no causality to many of these kids being “difficult”. I’ll even give that in some cases there is just some condition that makes a kid incredibly out of control despite actual loving supporting parents, but I would wager you can find environmental causes in most cases. My experience with friends who have gone to places like this is that the kids by and large were under extreme emotional neglect from a very early age, and visiting a “troubled teen” facility is that it catalyses and forever imprints a childhood completely filled with trauma. It destroys forever the possibility of a relationship with the parents. Kids are often not told where they were going or being rushed away in the middle of the night, with drill sergeants and harsh punishments and rural facilities designed to present escape. It’s psychological torture to “break” a child as one would a farm animal. Parents are sacrosanct in this country and there is no actual community to give much in terms of help. Peoples suburban homes are their castle and nobody knows how much neglect or abuse is going on behind closed doors until the kid shows up at school with a “behavior disorder”. Simply put: people who are completely incompetent to care for another human being much less an immature one’s emotional or physical or developmental needs get full legal protection. I think this is underappreciated in society since everyone who is a parent experienced many difficulties and they imagine all the ways things could go wrong. They are usually being charitable to the other parents though - the bar at which a child develops a secure emotional attachment is not that high.
- slibhb 5y ago
  > I’ll even give that in some cases there is just some condition that makes a kid incredibly out of despite actual loving supporting parents, but I would wager you can find environmental causes in most cases. It seems wrong to single out environmental causes as dominant. There are parents with multiple children who all did fine except one. Anyway, we know it's a complicated mix of genetics and environment and either factor can be decisive. > Parents are sacrosanct in this country and there is no actual community to give much in terms of help. Peoples suburban homes are their castle and nobody knows how much neglect or abuse is going on behind closed doors until the kid shows up at school with a “behavior disorder”. Simply put: people who are completely incompetent to care for another human being much less an immature one’s emotional or physical or developmental needs get full legal protection. I think this is underappreciated in society since everyone who is a parent experienced many difficulties and they imagine all the ways things could go wrong. They are usually being charitable to the other parents though - the bar at which a child develops a secure emotional attachment is not that high. Parents are much less sacrosanct in the US/UK than anywhere else. No one actually knows how to raise children. We have decided to let parents experiment on their children and this seems correct to me. The more we mandate certain parenting techniques, the more it will become clear that the "science" behind child-rearing is not reliable. We'll be screwing up children uniformly instead of haphazardly. I think it's better to let parents do their best. This leaves us with some children who were over-disciplined and some who were under-disciplined and this is a better outcome than everyone being screwed up in the same way.
wolverine876 5y ago
> Stories about these institutions get conflated into a mess that scarcely resembles the reality. Why do you say that, and then why is your story different in that respect? We cannot, in the face of evil-doing, remain forever in a state of hesitation, saying 'we don't know'. We need think critically, accept our uncertainty, and yet at times draw conclusions and act. > For example, some students thought it was abusive to require skiing and mountain biking two days per week Those are strawpersons. Who is saying it? It is not at all what is described in the OP or in the other stories by HN commenters. > The next story you hear will probably contradict it but also be truthful, and we should listen. The stories here in this HN discussion agree with the OP.

girvo 5y ago

I have a question. Do these programs exist in other countries? A cursory search (I honestly am not sure what I should be looking for) couldn't find any here in Australia. Is this a uniquely American thing? Surely not, I assume. If it's not, do these programs have the same horrible stories coming out of them elsewhere, and if they don't, does that not paint a picture that the approach taken in the US isn't a good one? I freely admit to being pretty ignorant about all this. I do not have the best view on these "programs" though, from everything I've seen.

fit2rule 5y ago
searchableguy 5y ago
> Do these programs exist in other countries? Yes, they exist in India. The usual purpose is to force kids to study. India has coaching centres which are worse than jails for kids where they are coached to crack JEE (Elite college entrance exam) and other competitive exams. You can find all sort of abuse happening in these. Stack class ranking, subtle gender separation, and some verbal & physical abuse is common in most schools outside of few urban centres though. Public stripping and getting kids dehydrated outside in hot temperatures was a thing few years ago but it might have stopped now, I hope.
- hackernewds 5y ago
  A very common theme is the utter discard of any "growth mindset". And students are increasingly not only ranked within the same class, but thereon the classes themselves are ranked - where the best instructors are assigned to the best classes -> students. The ultimate incentive here for the school is to land 5-10 very smart students that will "top" the national exams bringing pride and most importantly, a lot of applications to the institution. YMMV as the thread states, but it is undeniably a feature of these schools.
- sriram_malhar 5y ago
  These are quite different in spirit to the kind of schools that OP posted. Parents aren't sending their kids to the coaching centres to straighten them out. They all want their kids to do well in studies, and unfortunately, this is all they care about. In some sense, these schools are like boarding schools; some kids shine, some get traumatised for life.
- ngc248 5y ago
  These institutions are nothing like coaching institutes. Read up a bit about these for ex: elan.
orwin 5y ago

watwut 5y ago

> This particular story tells us little about these schools – it describes the perspective of a student, a client. Accounts of people who were clients or experienced X tell a lot about X. Not a little. When we take accounts of people who experienced it as a little, that ia when we are missing the most important perspective. And that is when abuses escalate. Yes, good experience matters as múch as bad ones. But bad ones dont tell "a little". > help a kid who is on the cusp of life in prison, undergoing their 8th overdose, or being repeatedly raped and subjected to prostitution/exploitation One of these things is not like the others. One of them is much more likely to happen in an institution.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

newaccount74 5y ago

> some students thought it was abusive to require skiing and mountain biking two days per week (I disagree) The question of whether this is abusive or not depends on the consequences for refusing to go. Do kids lose TV privileges for a day if they refuse to go? Then I'd say it's not abusive. Are kids locked in a room if they refuse to go? Definitely abusive.

Clubber 5y ago
>Are kids locked in a room if they refuse to go? Definitely abusive. I don't disagree, but also consider the entire picture. Some of these people end up being the ones that get raging drunk, and into head on collision with a family of 4 killing them all. How the heck do you try to prevent something like that when all the warning signs are there?
- denton-scratch 5y ago
  > How the heck do you try to prevent something like that when all the warning signs are there? Surely not by preemptive incarceration. GP said: > Do kids lose TV privileges for a day if they refuse to go? Then I'd say it's not abusive. I don't agree. Coercing kids into physical sports is abusive. In general, using coercion (including denial of "privileges" that non-inmates consider a right) is both abusive and probably doomed. This kid was surely troubled; but why? He didn't talk much about how his parents treated him. All we know is that their response to the trouble was to dump him in an institution. My guess is that his behaviour was a rational response to being brought up in a home where he was denied love and affection.
  - Clubber 5y ago
    >> How the heck do you try to prevent something like that when all the warning signs are there? >Surely not by preemptive incarceration. You aren't suggesting any solutions. >Coercing kids into physical sports is abusive. You shouldn't dilute the term abusive like that. >In general, using coercion (including denial of "privileges" that non-inmates consider a right) is both abusive and probably doomed. I don't think you have kids, you're looking at it from the child's perspective, not a parent's. You haven't really promoted any solutions, just saying things you shouldn't do, leaving a parent with zero tools whatsoever other than to just let the kid be wild. I've seen the results of that, it's quite destructive as well. It's ultimately the parents' responsibility to raise children, and at least in the US, they get zero help and mostly criticism for how they do it, mostly from people who don't have children themselves. What do you do if you suspect your child is the next Adam Lanza? What do you do if you are as financially constrained and have nearly zero help as a parent in the US? Some variation of "pull yourself up by your bootstraps?"

IIAOPSW 5y ago

>it describes the perspective of a student, a client. The student is not the client. The student didn't pay for it. The student didn't ask to be there. The student isn't the one for whom incentives and interests align.

Cthulhu_ 5y ago
It's an interesting doublespeak to use for someone who is effectively interred - a prisoner, basically, but extralegal in that they weren't convicted to them. I think anyway, I'm sure there's plenty of these camps that actually are court mandated.
- legacynl 5y ago
  > I'm sure there's plenty of these camps that actually are court mandated. That may be, but in those cases you would be talking about behavior problems that resulted in problems with the law, trial, guilt and conviction. Those cases are per definition a sub-set of the much larger group of people that are innocent, don't get in trouble with the law, don't go to trial, aren't convicted, but still are sent to these internment facilities. If these facilities were limited to kids that are actually mandated by court to go there, then it would be a VERY different story.

taurath 5y ago

This all pretends like there’s somehow no causality to many of these kids being “difficult”. I’ll even give that in some cases there is just some condition that makes a kid incredibly out of control despite actual loving supporting parents, but I would wager you can find environmental causes in most cases. My experience with friends who have gone to places like this is that the kids by and large were under extreme emotional neglect from a very early age, and visiting a “troubled teen” facility is that it catalyses and forever imprints a childhood completely filled with trauma. It destroys forever the possibility of a relationship with the parents. Kids are often not told where they were going or being rushed away in the middle of the night, with drill sergeants and harsh punishments and rural facilities designed to present escape. It’s psychological torture to “break” a child as one would a farm animal. Parents are sacrosanct in this country and there is no actual community to give much in terms of help. Peoples suburban homes are their castle and nobody knows how much neglect or abuse is going on behind closed doors until the kid shows up at school with a “behavior disorder”. Simply put: people who are completely incompetent to care for another human being much less an immature one’s emotional or physical or developmental needs get full legal protection. I think this is underappreciated in society since everyone who is a parent experienced many difficulties and they imagine all the ways things could go wrong. They are usually being charitable to the other parents though - the bar at which a child develops a secure emotional attachment is not that high.

slibhb 5y ago
> I’ll even give that in some cases there is just some condition that makes a kid incredibly out of despite actual loving supporting parents, but I would wager you can find environmental causes in most cases. It seems wrong to single out environmental causes as dominant. There are parents with multiple children who all did fine except one. Anyway, we know it's a complicated mix of genetics and environment and either factor can be decisive. > Parents are sacrosanct in this country and there is no actual community to give much in terms of help. Peoples suburban homes are their castle and nobody knows how much neglect or abuse is going on behind closed doors until the kid shows up at school with a “behavior disorder”. Simply put: people who are completely incompetent to care for another human being much less an immature one’s emotional or physical or developmental needs get full legal protection. I think this is underappreciated in society since everyone who is a parent experienced many difficulties and they imagine all the ways things could go wrong. They are usually being charitable to the other parents though - the bar at which a child develops a secure emotional attachment is not that high. Parents are much less sacrosanct in the US/UK than anywhere else. No one actually knows how to raise children. We have decided to let parents experiment on their children and this seems correct to me. The more we mandate certain parenting techniques, the more it will become clear that the "science" behind child-rearing is not reliable. We'll be screwing up children uniformly instead of haphazardly. I think it's better to let parents do their best. This leaves us with some children who were over-disciplined and some who were under-disciplined and this is a better outcome than everyone being screwed up in the same way.

wolverine876 5y ago

> Stories about these institutions get conflated into a mess that scarcely resembles the reality. Why do you say that, and then why is your story different in that respect? We cannot, in the face of evil-doing, remain forever in a state of hesitation, saying 'we don't know'. We need think critically, accept our uncertainty, and yet at times draw conclusions and act. > For example, some students thought it was abusive to require skiing and mountain biking two days per week Those are strawpersons. Who is saying it? It is not at all what is described in the OP or in the other stories by HN commenters. > The next story you hear will probably contradict it but also be truthful, and we should listen. The stories here in this HN discussion agree with the OP.