I believe in most cases it were parents that were the issue, not kids. Perhaps abducting them (parents) to some empathy bootcamp could do more good.
Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps
111–120 of 281 posts
Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
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...
Most child soldiers’ mental health is ruined for life.
A model of obedience and desensitization achieved through abuse followed by committing unspeakable atrocities is not a great formula for making good citizens.
What kind of twisted mental gymnastics convinces the creators of these programs that their programs are anything but harmful?
Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps
#113The people working at these camps should be named and shamed.
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Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps
#114My 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…
We have something called Cadet College here in Bangladesh (grade 7-12), and British public schools were I think the primary inspiration behind them (actually first few principals were all British). It was just as brutal as you say, if not more.
But the attitude of "ex-cadets" here is that of extreme pride, many consider it to be the best 6 years of their life. And this feeling is almost universal.
I have now several times come across criticism of British public schools by their own alumni, I wonder why there's so much difference in attitude.
Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are absolutely correct. It's the only way to make them take a long hard look at themselves.
They're often backed by... entire religions that claim they're unquestionably doing the right thing in trying to save the children from eternal hell. If only life were so simple in trying to make people feel ashamed...
Those religions should be banned and prosecuted too then.
Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
Boomer's as an entire generation are addicted to the idea that all problems are solved by just yelling at people or committing violence against them. Not to say humanity has collectively improved, but the age group which tends to "wonder" if corporal punishment should be brought back has always been very specific when I encounter it.
I was born very late to parents who otherwise would have made me a boomer. I'm pretty sure what you say is correct and caused by the little accepted fact that people were traumatised by the war not anything like this fantasy idealism that they just had Gary Cooper laconic takes and stiff upper lips. My parents gen (born into the great depression) were messed up to silence.
My parents are boomers on the cusp of being silents, themselves, and there's definitely some difference between what they percieve and the younger generations. It's hard to say how far back it all goes, really - while the depression and war years were certainly influential in making the culture that overshadowed the rest of the 20th century, stories of harsh discipline are age-old. Perhaps what makes it defining is just the fact that it occurred as a near-universal in the same way that the current pandemic did, and the result was a postwar generation with very sharp differences in attitude.
Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
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...
Most child soldiers’ mental health is ruined for life. A model of obedience and desensitization achieved through abuse followed by committing unspeakable atrocities is not a great formula for making good citizens. What kind of twisted mental gymnastics convinces the creators of these programs that their programs are anything but harmful?
I was rewatching shows from 1990 and so on lately. One of surprising observations was that "tough love" came up multiple times, always as positive.
There is something appealing about tough no nonsense solutions to people with authoritarian tendencies. And there is ignorance about how bad it can get in isolated communities where weaker individuals have no where to escape.
Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
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...
That blog says they were and are effective as indoctrination and group belonging systems. Not as teaching systems.
Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps
#119It seems all countries have their difficulties with their troubled teens industry. In Germany their was recently an outcry because there were cases rather critical outsourcing to Eastern Europe: https://www.romania-insider.com/projekt-maramures-german-tee...
Wasn't sure what to make of "critical outsourcing" (hiring too many programmers from Romania? I'm probably missing a second meaning of outsourcing) but the page doesn't properly load for me (in Germany). I can read it in HTML source though, so in case anyone else wonders the same:
It's about the same thing, German teens sent to some labour camp in Romania.
Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps
#120Institutionalizing someone without even telling them will completely sever any trust. Who thought this would be a good idea?
In most cases it's parents who are at the end of their rope and feel like they have no other options. I'm not claiming they're necessarily making the right decision. It's just that they've tried everything they know how to do and see it as a last resort.
...and the predatory, profiteering abusers who market to those parents (and, for quite a while, another layer of attention seeking self-help celebrity profiteers who publicized them in the media.)