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Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps

bbc.com

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Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps

#101

Post by ChrisKnott »

dang wrote: post #77
dash2 wrote: post #68

My first thought: wow, the US is crazy, I’m glad they don’t have this in the UK! Then I remembered that I was at a famous boarding school for five years, the most miserable years of my life. Thirty years later I’m still coping with the aftereffects. I think of that place as a form of institutionalised child abuse, and frankly if someone pipebombed it, I would not shed a tear. One simple thing: it wasn’t authoritarian…

Your comment reminds me of Robyn Hitchcock's classic line about English boarding schools: "they fuck with your mind forever, then send you out to run the country".

Reminded me of Orwell's account of his education (Such, Such Were The Joys) which contains one of my favourite quotes ("It was not only money that mattered: there were also strength, beauty, charm, athleticism and something called ‘guts’ or ‘character’, which in reality meant the power to impose your will on others.").

https://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/joys/english/e_joys

Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps

#102

Post by b0rsuk »

watwut wrote: post #96
waterhouse wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tha…

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.

I think people setting these up get their inspiration from the agoge, the boy rearing system in Sparta. The same methods are used to raise children soldiers in Africa.

https://acoup.blog/2019/08/16/collections-this-isnt-sparta-p...

Also, you might be interesting in Cult of the Badass:

https://acoup.blog/2021/02/19/collections-the-universal-warr...

Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps

#103

Post by simonbarker87 »

dash2 wrote: post #68

My first thought: wow, the US is crazy, I’m glad they don’t have this in the UK! Then I remembered that I was at a famous boarding school for five years, the most miserable years of my life. Thirty years later I’m still coping with the aftereffects. I think of that place as a form of institutionalised child abuse, and frankly if someone pipebombed it, I would not shed a tear. One simple thing: it wasn’t authoritarian…

Sorry to hear you went through that. I went to a UK military boarding school (by choice) for A-levels and I agree with the above, in our case the issues were always caused by student on student. There was stories of what it used to be like “in the old days” and how the college was softer now and would produce weaker officers in the long run. I have no idea if it was true or just internal rumours but the leadership at the time was very focussed on pastoral care, academic excellence and ingraining the foundations of leadership and integrity with (looking back) not that much military-ness to it. I look back with very fond memories, it was tough but not in a nasty way, more just a “high expectations and packed schedule” way.

I was the last year to be Army only, after that they opened it up to all three military services and civil service along with moving to a new purpose build facility - leaving behind the old abbey it had been based at for 50 years. I imagine that that cleared out any remaining vestiges of a less pleasant past.

Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps

#104

Post by spoonjim »

anm89 wrote: post #40

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 intensiv…

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.

Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps

#105

Post by Synaesthesia »

eric4smith wrote: post #91

Where do we find a middle ground?? I can see the point of people starting "tough love" camps. But also, youth of today are incredibly soft, condescending and not ready to take responsibility for themselves. We people above 40 years old built the modern world that everyone now enjoys. Many of us had INCREDIBLY rough childhoods. We never enjoyed the helicopter parenting that Millenial-on-up children got. The world (des…

Children need loving care and nurture. They also don't need to be dictated to at all times.

Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps

#106

Post by lordnacho »

eric4smith wrote: post #91

Where do we find a middle ground?? I can see the point of people starting "tough love" camps. But also, youth of today are incredibly soft, condescending and not ready to take responsibility for themselves. We people above 40 years old built the modern world that everyone now enjoys. Many of us had INCREDIBLY rough childhoods. We never enjoyed the helicopter parenting that Millenial-on-up children got. The world (des…

> But also, youth of today are incredibly soft, condescending and not ready to take responsibility for themselves.

Where's the evidence for this?

Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps

#107

Post by Boomerchick »

dash2 wrote: post #68

My first thought: wow, the US is crazy, I’m glad they don’t have this in the UK! Then I remembered that I was at a famous boarding school for five years, the most miserable years of my life. Thirty years later I’m still coping with the aftereffects. I think of that place as a form of institutionalised child abuse, and frankly if someone pipebombed it, I would not shed a tear. One simple thing: it wasn’t authoritarian…

> One guy, who I think was genuinely evil, took psychology as a minor subject.

He is very determined.

Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps

#109

Post by ascorbic »

dang wrote: post #84
ascorbic wrote: post #65

For a country founded on the ideas of individual freedom, the US seems to have an incredible blind spot when it comes ot the rights of children. In any country with any sort of child protection laws worth their name, these would be illegal, as would most forms of physical punishment and emotional neglect that seem to be permitted in the US.

Please don't take HN threads into nationalistic flamewar. It destroys this place, and you can express concern for children without that. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

This isn't nationalism, it's a reference to the laws in a particular country.
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