Fuck Yeah! Education!

[Vene]

Old news, perhaps, but it's new to me dammit. The following are excerpts from a report done on a private school in Brooklyn. Naturally, the school called the report "biased."

    * Staff shock kids for "nagging, swearing, and failing to maintain a neat appearance" and once threatened to shock a girl who sneezed and then asked for a tissue.
    * Some students must "earn" meals by not displaying certain behaviors. Otherwise they are "made to throw a predetermined caloric portion of their food into the garbage."
    * When students enter and leave the school each day, "almost all" are wearing some type of restraints, such as handcuffs or leg shackles.
    * "Students may be restrained"—on a four-point restraint board or chair—"for extensive periods of time (e.g. hours or intermittently for days)."
    * Some students are shocked while strapped to the restraint board.
    * A "majority" of employees "serving as classroom teachers" are "not certified teachers."
    * Rotenberg's marketing reps bestow presents on prospective families—"e.g. a gift bag for the family, basketball for the student."
    * Although the center has described its shock device as "approved" by the fda in its promotional materials, it "has not been approved."
    * The facility collects "comprehensive data" on behaviors it seeks to eliminate, but "there was no evidence of the collection of data on replacement or positive behaviors."
    * The facility makes no assessment of the "possible collateral effects of punishment such as depression, anxiety, and/or social withdrawal."

link

Oh, yes, I almost forgot, 6 kids died there.

[Kai]

What. The. Fuck.

[Doktor Howl]

I am unsurprised.

[Jasper]

I wish I could say this came out of nowhere and that I am shocked, but this is exactly the sort of thing I've come to expect from America.

[Remington]

 

[Doktor Howl]

You guys just aren't serious about having a good time.

[The Wizard]

Did this place get closed? Please god tell me that this place was closed. 

[Requia ☣]

Did this place get closed? Please god tell me that this place was closed. 

You really aren't cut out for this decade.

[Doktor Howl]

Did this place get closed? Please god tell me that this place was closed. 

This ain't gonna be your century.

[Brotep]

You guys just aren't serious about having a good time.

Yup...Punishment doesn't make anything easier in the long run, and we keep doing it because we are in a perpetual fail-spiral. It's a kind of infection, falls somewhere on the scale between swine flu and Oprah.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Did this place get closed? Please god tell me that this place was closed.  

Per wikipedia:
In April 2010, Mental Disability Rights International (MDRI) filed an urgent appeal with the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture alleging that the school violates the UN Convention against Torture, which the United States has ratified, and should be immediately closed.[8]

Guess the closure is pending.
This is a few miles from where I live. This is the first I've heard of this.

Edit: Wait, Brooklyn? As in NY? The one that I googled brought me to the wiki of a place in Canton, MA. Your link also indicates a place in Massachusetts.

[Requia ☣]

They mentioned advertising in Virginia too.  I think it's a large company, with multiple schools.

[Jenne]

After watching an old episode of the late and great Jeremy Brett's Sherlock Holmes on PBS the other day, I was remembering how hard it was on the mentally handicapped and what they called "insane, mad" people back then.  That was only about a hundred years ago. 

It doesn't shock me that there are desperate parents willing to put their bipolar and autistic kids into a place that accepts them readily, same with school districts who have unfunded federal mandates.  More and more schools are putting students with special needs (read: needing more of a 6:1 ratio for students to teachers, than your usual 30:1 a lot of elementary schools now have due to budget cuts) in classes along with regular students.  So a lot of administrators are spending less time monitoring the teachers in regular classes and more and more time regulating behaviors of special needs children.

The fact facilities like this have to exist and get away with all this horrendous, shocking and cruelly punitive behavior towards its students points to how little the government and therefore our society cares about them.  There are laws there to protect them, but even in 2010 we cannot keep them from harm, where they are among the most vulnerable in our communities.  Very sad...very sad indeed.  I hope the lawsuits fly and succeed, and that this place gets shut down.

[Requia ☣]

Fuck lawsuits, they tortured kids.  I know we have trouble with the whole 'torture is illegal' thing in the US, but just this once can we arrest the people who did it?

[Hoser McRhizzy]

Looks like people have been trying to shut this place down since it opened.  Hope the MDRI complaint has a better chance.

from the investigative article on the school in the same August 2007 mother jones issue Vene linked to.
http://motherjones.com/politics/2007/08/school-shock


*  Staff are monitored and punished for having casual conversations with one another.  They're encouraged to entrap other teachers into having conversations – a form of testing.
*  Students have to earn the right to talk to one another.
*  New employees have to sign a confidentiality agreement promising not to talk about the Center – even after they no longer work there.
*  While visiting the school, the reporter was on "5:1 status" – meaning she had 5 staff/teachers with her at all times.
*  New York officials tried to issue regulations against shocking students in 2007, but a bunch of parents argued against it and got a restraining order against the state so that their kids could continue being shocked at Israel's school.
*  In class, the students sit at computers with their backs to the teacher.  Supposedly, this is because they teach themselves math, science, etc.  Effect: the kids won't know which of them is getting shocked until it happens, so they can't tense up to make it hurt less.

Employees carry students' shock activators inside plastic cases, which they hook onto their belt loops. These cases are known as "sleds," and each sled has a photo on it to ensure employees don't zap the wrong kid.

Behaviorism would seem to dictate that staff shock students immediately after they break the rules. But if employees learn about a misbehavior after it has occurred—by, say, reviewing surveillance footage—they may still administer punishment. Rob Santana recalls that Mondays were always the most stressful day of the week. He would sit at his desk all day, trying to remember if he had broken any rules over the weekend, waiting to see if he'd be shocked.

Employees are encouraged to use the element of surprise. "Attempt to be as discreet as possible and hold the transmitter out of view of the student," states the employee manual. This way, students cannot do anything to minimize the pain, like flipping over their electrodes or tensing their muscles. "We hear the sound of [a staffer] picking up a sled," says Isabel, the former student. "Then we turn around and see the person jump out of their seat."

Marguerite Famolare brought her son Michael to the Rotenberg Center six years ago, after he attacked her so aggressively she had to call 911 and, in a separate incident, flipped over a kitchen table onto a tutor. Michael, now 19, suffers from mental retardation and severe autism. These days, when he comes home for a visit, Marguerite carries his shock activator in her purse. All she has to do, she says, is show it to him. "He'll automatically comply to whatever my signal command may be, whether it is 'Put on your seatbelt,' or 'Hand me that apple,' or 'Sit appropriately and eat your food,'" she says. "It's made him a human being, a civilized human being."