Brain Washing?

[thenerdguy]

The Last Resort.

 

[Heisenberg]

I think you mean 'brain'.

 

[KarenMarie]

unreal.... if you spank your kid, you can get charged with abuse... but if you pay someone 40k to do it, it is legal?

 

[JulesMaximus]

I hardly ever wash my barin. I bet it's dirty as hell.

 

[new2AMD]

Originally posted by: JulesMaximus
I hardly ever wash my barin. I bet it's dirty as hell.

lol true dat

 

[Amorphus]

sounds like an interesting concept, but only parents really fed up with their kids would really go through with that. a full year just letting your kid go off to some unknown place to be disciplined? thats possible at home.


punishments:

One girl currently has to wear a sign around her neck at all times, which reads: 'I've been in this programme for three years, and I am still pulling crap.'

BWAHAHAH


more interesting snippets:

When most children first arrive they find it difficult to believe that they have no alternative but to submit. In shock, frightened and angry, many simply refuse to obey. This is when they discover the alternative. Guards take them (if necessary by force) to a small bare room and make them (again by force if necessary) lie flat on their face, arms by their sides, on the tiled floor. Watched by a guard, they must remain lying face down, forbidden to speak or move a muscle except for 10 minutes every hour, when they may sit up and stretch before resuming the position. Modest meals are brought to them, and at night they sleep on the floor of the corridor outside under electric light and the gaze of a guard. At dawn they resume the position.

This is known officially as being 'in OP' - Observation Placement - and more casually as 'lying on your face'. Any level student can be sent to OP, and it automatically demotes them to level 1 and zero points. Every 24 hours, students in OP are reviewed by staff, and only sincere and unconditional contrition will earn their release. If they are unrepentant? 'Well, they get another 24 hours.'

One boy told me he'd spent six months in OP.

I didn't think this could be true, but it transpired this was not even exceptional. 'Oh no,' says Kay. 'The record is actually held by a female.' On and off, she spent 18 months lying on her face.

Save the kittens, at the cost of your dignity!

Points and privileges are awarded to students who tell on each other. If you don't tell on someone for breaking a rule and get found out, you lose points. 'There is zero trust,' Scott explains. 'You can't trust anyone. It's not us against them. It's everyone against you.' Scott remembers a new boy being caught with incriminating used tissues; masturbation is strictly forbidden. 'And they got him up in front of everyone right after dinner, and the upper-level kids just ripped into him, this little 13-year-old kid. It was kind of the entertainment for the night. That's what I mean about breaking kids.'

1984:

Students also take part in seminars - phenomenally confrontational three-day sessions which are calculated to induce what approaches mass hysteria. Participants must swear a vow of silence, shrouding what takes place in secrecy. Many credit these emotionally intense encounters with transforming their lives, whereas others describe them as brutal manipulation.

In their defense...

'People who say this place is too harsh, they've never had their own troubled kids. If you criticise it you don't know what the hell you are talking about. And if you think you have had experience, then I challenge the success of your experience.

I see 100 kids across this facility. I've got experience, and I will go nose to nose to you if you want to talk about it. I will go head to head with anyone. You get all kinds of people whining and complaining. They don't know what they are talking about.'

And the truth is that I do not have my own troubled kid. He is right. I have no idea what it is like to be the parent of a teenager taking drugs, running away, sleeping around, breaking the law. I cannot imagine what it feels like to fear for my child's life.

Tranquility parents say they know. They believe the programme is necessary and are usually very happy with the results, and who else is in a position to judge?

The US legal system has more or less agreed that they are right. In a crucial 1998 test case, a Californian court ruled that a parent had the legal right to send a child to Tranquility. Parental choice was sacrosanct.

What happens inside Tranquility would be illegal on British soil, but the facility falls under Jamaican jurisdiction and parents here are as free as Americans to send their children where they like. A spokesman for the Children's Legal Centre in the UK confirmed, 'I can't see anything in the law that would stop a British parent from sending their child there. It is appalling, but it is down to the Jamaican government.'

Obviously, though, the reporter didn't really like what he saw, and I suspect he/she reported a bit more favorably because of this:

This spring he decided to grant me and a photographer unprecedented, exclusive access. If he didn't like the result, 'Hell will freeze over before anyone gets in here again.'

anyways, the final paragraphs gives me the impression that it's not all it's crakced up to be:

of post-traumatic stress disorder. One writes, 'At least once out of every three nights I wake up sweating and almost in tears from nightmares of being returned to Tranquility Bay. To this day, I am afraid that somehow I would have to return.' But most students are already emotionally damaged when they arrive, with a quarter on medication for bi-polar, oppositional defiance, or attention-deficit disorders.

'Show me one kid that they can prove has ever been psychologically damaged in my programme,' demands Kay. 'To have a clinician say yes, it was as a result of this? I would find that highly suspicious.' And his confidence is probably justified.

There is very little that any opponent of Tranquility can do to prevent it continuing to do business. I don't doubt the sincerity of Kay's belief that far from damaging children's lives he is saving them. 'If I have kids, and they start giving me a problem, well they are going straight in the programme. If I had to, I'd pull the trigger without hesitation.' And Tranquility parents undoubtedly believe they are doing the best for their children.

Once a year, Tranquility Bay has a Fun Day. There are sports and special food; girls can braid their hair; staff are smiling. And there is music. Ceaseless, bass-heavy, deafening music. It sends the teenagers out of their minds. They can't stop dancing. Everywhere, students are dancing, demented with fever, as if a switch has been thrown and a surge of energy unleashed through the grounds.

I meet a student's aunt visiting from Texas. 'Oh, you would not believe the change in her! It's amazing, the way they change a kid's life. She's so polite now, I wouldn't know her. They all look so happy!'

A song by Usher is playing, and the words burn through the hard Caribbean heat. 'You remind me of a girl that I once knew. See her face whenever I look at you.' The Texan's niece pauses her dancing. As she stoops to take a drink of water, I catch her face, and think she looks like the saddest girl in the world.

To the person below me:
their success rate is implied to be 100% in the article, as the children are not released until either 1) their parents allow them to; 2) they become satisfactory people based on Tranquility's scale; or 3) they turn 18 and walk out

 

[kermalou]

wonder what their success rate is?

 

[vi edit]

When you have a teenager on the rampage, who are you going to turn to? In America, parents send their troubled offspring to Jamaica's Tranquility Bay - a 'behaviour-modification centre' which charges $40,000 a year to 'cure' them.

No, there's no anti-American sentiments there. None at all. Way to be objective twords the US!