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This is not to say that the students enrolled are not intelligent-- in fact, for the most part they are, and this helps the school in that students soon realize the path of least resistance and flock to it.
I was at Carlbrook from 10/03-05/05 and I found this site just looking up things about cbrook one day and I saw this quote from may 2009 and it is one of the best statements about carlbrook I have seen....
I also constantly have dreams/nightmares about being back at carlbrook or being sent away again by my parents...
When I was there I constantly disliked the school and its program and what it was trying to do to all the kids there. Towards the end of my stay I even got in trouble with my advisors for saying that I did not want to be like the Carlbrook sellouts who were brainwashed by this place and I got put on bans with everyone in the school except for the people I said were those sellouts. I was constantly told in group and the workshops that I hated myself and thought all sorts of crazy shit when I didnt....
I can also say that I always thought it was creepy and weird how they tried to get all the students to hug each other and "smush" and stuff like that, I dont think parents knew their kids were going to be smushing with 50 year old men when they enrolled them.
And Grant Price is the biggest hypocrit there, and has no room to be running a school for "troubled youth" when he is just a former student and still hasnt figured his own shit out. WHile I was there Grant would blast me and many other in group and claim a whole bunch of stuff and come to find out after I graduated that while I was there he got a dui and had to be restrained by the police and was having an affair with someone who worked there.
I was always on bans with my good friends there for a number of false and stupid reasons and just did what I could to make it through the place. I unfortunately did not turn 18 when I was there and had to endure the whole stay of 18 months. I found the whole program to be rediculous.
And having read many things about how this is an offspring of CEDU and the other schools, I can see the similarities and the mind control or behvior modifications that they try to instill and force upon the kids there. Issues were forced upon me in group and workshops and I was put on programs and giving absurd writing assignments that I just had to figure out what the advisor wanted me to write.
I have not really kept much in contact with how the school is now or what they do now, i graduated over 4 years ago. I have many long talks/arguments with my mom still about me being sent there and she keeps in contact with moms who had kids in my peer class there and many of them agree that carlbrook did not really help their kids or prepare them. Carlbrook is way too much of a controlled environment and could never prepare the kids there for experiences they will face in the real life. I just found it very hypocritical and contradicting and I hated the way the older kids who had sold out to the system called out other kids and exerted this fake authority that the school gave them to further gain their trust. It was a system of manipulation through obidience of their rules.
It seems to me parents are given half-truths about the school during their visits and in talks beforing enrolling.. I do not think any parents realized what their kids would go through. I have seen many of the posts from people who have been to Carlbrook, some when I was there, and are happy and grateful to have been there and can only find good things to say about it. The different reactions and experiences of kids there are polar opposites- either they loved it and are grateful for it or they hated it and felt like they were trying to be brainwashed or controlled. I think that if you got a lot out of it and are happy with yourt experience, then thats great but I think many people were dissatisfied, to put it lightly, with their time there.
To parents who are thinking of sending their kids away: Think about being woken up by two huge, strange dudes at 4 in the morning and being taken to the airport with no idea of where you are going. Then all of a sudden you are in the woods being stripped searched and then sent out into the woods for an X amount of weeks before you are shipped off to this boarding school for 15-20 more months. Limited contact with parents and I couldnt ever talk to my friends or send them letters because my advisor would not let me. They train the parents with what to say, telling them that their kid will just try to manipulate their way out of the school and that everyone deserves to be there. They always made us feel like we had to be there or else we would end up dead or even more fucked up than we already were.
The lessons they teach about love and how that is what is most important in the world and how much power love has, those lessons are very powerful and true. Love really is the missing thing that this world needs to come together. I also found "there is only now" and "friends are the family you get to choose" to be great tools for life and something i did find relevant. But the thing about Carlbrook is those great messages are lost among the bullshit that they spit to you in groups and other settings and the stupid control they try to hold over all the kids there and the unnecessary humiliation and extremes that they go to.
Sources:
Who is this? I went to Carlbrook as well
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