This story was originally written on the message board called the Fornits Home for Wayward Webfora.
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I have looking at this forum for many months now. I have read many comments of haters and lovers of Carlbrook.
I chose to leave Carlbrook as soon as I could, shortly after turning 18. I would say it helped me mainly in one thing, it helped me make friends. I didn't have any friends at home and making friends at Carlbrook is what turned me around. A lot of people are talking about whether people needed to be there, stating sarcastically that you were doing well in school, had good relationships with your family, and never touched drugs or alcohol. Actually, I fit all the criteria above. I was not sent away for substance abuse, harming myself physically, or any other extreme things.
As I was told, I was sent away for being depressed after I had recently lost both my parents. I did not need any of the limitations of Carlbrook. When I first came home, I was not able to say that Carlbrook attempted to brainwash me, but I easily was able to say they tried to manipulate me. I was constantly threatened with suspension. After my first term at Carlbrook, I accumulated the highest GPA in the school. I was immediately ridiculed for this saying that since I had done so well, I obviously wasn't doing my therapeutic work and was using it as a distraction. This came from other students, my advisor, other staff, and even administrators!
Well I'm sorry, but I was told that Carlbrook was not categorized as a Therapeutic Boarding School, but as Tim Brace said many a times, it is listed under a college-preparatory boarding school. I have always done well in school and according to Carlbrook's prerequisites, having a high GPA is mandatory. If it is mandatory to even be accepted into Carlbrook, then accumulating, per say a 4.0 every term would be a piece of cake. But instead, people don't pride themselves on accumulating a GPA that prestigious schools would accept, but rather that they are not failing. Obviously, if someone has accumulated a high GPA in their stay there simply because Carlbrook's academics do not demand an adequate rigor, then they must not be doing something right and hence forth, that person shall be given a "game" in which they run their day, "business mode."
In groups, people would constantly tell me how sad I should be that both my parents have passed, with my mother passing only a few months before I was sent away. They made me create anxiety when there was none existing. I had social anxieties (remember, no friends) not anxiety that my life would never get better. My advisor put me on an action plan around my amicitia workshop. This actually helped me the most. Through the course of this seven week action plan, I was able to realize that the manipulated crap that was forced into my head was so ridiculous. Shortly after my action plan, I told my advisor that I didn't think I needed to be at Carlbrook anymore and that I would do not just fine at home, but exceptional. She immediately engaged on the attack. She brought up that by not going through animus, I would not have any ambition. Was she joking? I was a good kid at home and never did anything to harm myself or harm those I care about. Everything I did was though through and my decisions were based on valid logic. I actually have a hatred for impulsivity and making decisions on emotions alone. It is so ignorant and so blind sided stupid that anyone that does do it obviously has a lot of issues. I don't care if you were raped, did drugs, had significant losses in your life, or had any other discretional experiences, using your emotions to make choices for you will inevitably harm yourself and harm other people. However, at Carlbrook, this was not only accepted, but encouraged.
During a team building group, I was attacked by both the advisors and many of the students for mentioning someone being raped. The context was in a hypothetical exercise where we had to come up with reasons that a woman was a young single woman with a kid who was pretty old. I mentioned how she could have been raped and had the kid. This girl stood up during the group and literally screamed in my face how it was completely disrespectful. I did not find anything wrong with what I had said and still do not. But this girl was crazy! She told people that she wanted 9 children! One that is ridiculous! Two, she was 16 at the time! She told people that she wanted to have her first kid by the time she was 20. She could barely take care of herself and the thought of some hormonal teenager bringing up kids of her own was disgusting. I thought originally that these were some of the problems that she entered Carlbrook with. But I was wrong; these were the ideas that she had after starting Carlbrook. Carlbrook continuously uses parenthood as a therapeutic tool. During animus returns, people are always screaming how they want to be a father, or they want to be a mother, and they want to have this many kids and they’re going to treat them well. What is this place teaching them! The average age at Carlbrook is 16 and they’re preparing them for parenthood! They shouldn’t be ready to have kids at 16 unless this is Shakespearean times and even then, having a 12 year old Juliet is still pretty weird! You don’t need to be ready to be a parent. I don’t know anyone who said that they were completely ready to have kids when they eventually had their first born. You learn through time and experience, not by screaming on some stairs how you want 12 kids so they can live their life through you and accomplish all the things that you couldn’t do because you were a raging cocaine addict and no one would hire you.
Suspension was one of the most disgusting things I have ever witnessed. It reminded me of wrongly convicted prisoners. Obviously Carlbrook didn’t physically touch anyone unless a student became physical, and even when I was there, I never witnessed that. The only physical thing that Carlbrook does is gives hugs, but that could get annoying after awhile. Instead, Carlbrook played the mental battle. Similar to the wilderness program, they start you off with nothing. By doing certain things and people obviously seeing these things, you get rewards. You get tea and hot chocolate when you become a DHIT (dorm head in training), coffee when you become a dorm head, bottom bunk when you become a DHIT, an extra student store (candy and soda) by joining certain committees, etc. I only have three problems with this form of rewarding manipulation. First, some of these things shouldn’t be a reward. I mean come on, you have to work to have tea? That is ridiculous.
Second, Carlbrook attacked external validation constantly. However, obviously it works different if Carlbrook is the one giving the validation in the form of hot drinks and candy. As long you play into Carlbrook’s hands, and then you will be rewarded. But, if you have retained your individuality and your own thought process, you will not see these rewards and you will watch as your friends move up in hierarchy while you stay down, because you are doing things poorly. The final reason is because you don’t get these positions for doing the best, but you get them because people like you and people see you doing it. For example, during my stay at Carlbrook, I wrote 5 proposals and even when I was about to go into upper school, I still had not become a DHIT. Did I deserve these positions, of course I did. Did I put in the work? Of course. Why didn’t I get the positions? Because other people did things with the intention of getting these positions while I just did it because I felt like it was the right thing to do. For example, in keeping a “safe” dorm, I would talk to my dorm mates in my dorm all the time casually. I kept a safe dorm. But other people would purposely go into the hall and have a formal appointment and make sure people saw them. That is the difference. I was not concerned with people seeing me, I was concerned with helping my roommate who was having a hard time. But because I did this, people saw nothing. Another example would be upper school classmen trying to get on the DCOM (Disciplinary Committee). With that committee, you are selected, you do not write a proposal.
Every person on the campus “holds people in standard,” but with them, they will make sure they get the entire room’s attention so everyone knows that they are doing this. For instance, I was in math class and a kid didn’t wear a belt that day. He was already on DCOM but just wanted to show people that he could do things. He stood up in the middle of class, disrupted the teacher, and told the kid to stand up. He asked him why he wasn’t wearing a belt and he said he forgot to put one on in the morning. The DCOM member then told him that “as a consequence for taking away from the class,” that he erase the white board. Is he freaking serious!!! I thought that was a sarcastic joke when I saw this, after only being there for a few weeks. Obviously, from any other person who has not yet been brainwashed by Carlbrook, this person disrupted the class to “hold someone in standard” because they were taking away from the class by not wearing a belt. Then, individually, people in the class thanked him for holding him in standard saying that he was brave for doing that. They were just glad that class could be disrupted and for the few minutes that this whole situation took, they didn’t have to learn anything (going back to my point earlier of people who lacked ambition-most of these people were upper school classmen who have been there for over a year. They relied on Carlbrook’s way of living and this means that school is not a priority, as long as you attend, you are fine. In fact, as I mentioned earlier, my first full term there where I got the highest GPA in the school, a few other people who were young in the school, actually younger than me got on Dean’s List (having a 3.75-4.0). A few upper schoolers were proud if they got honor roll (3.5-3.74). But the majority were surprisingly ecstatic if they pulled off a 3.0.
I went on a little tangent but there is a lot of energy towards this subject. As I was saying earlier, suspension was the controlling force at Carlbrook. For those who are reading that may not know what suspension is, I will try my best to describe it. Suspension is referred to one’s suspension stay while sometimes also referred to the suspension room in the downstairs commons building. The suspension room to the eyes of an outsider looks like a classroom with desks, a small television set in the front, and a teacher’s desk in the back facing away from the three double doors which line the side of the classroom. The girls bathroom is also located in the suspension room and is shared by suspension students (but they must knock first). When you are in suspension, you are on bans with the entire school except for appointments and if you are in ISS (In School Suspension) on other bans that are determined by your advisor. The most common bans for people in suspension is lower school bans. If you are in ISS, you must return to the suspension room for lunch during the school day and you are also on bans with action planners and other suspension students. As for being in the room, 7am-10pm for out of school suspension students (minus school time for ISS students), you can only ask four types of questions a day:
- Can I use the bathroom?
- Can I get a drink of water?
- Can I access my backpack?
- An emergency health question.
All other questions must be written on a piece of paper which are collected during meal times. In addition, if you use the four questions frequently (like more than once every two hours), you are written up and it is used against you to keep you in there longer. Also, every day you are late to the suspension line in the morning, you must stay in there another day. On Saturday and Sunday, you see a movie in the suspension room (same one each day), usually one that is self-motivating. For example, I saw Finding Forrester like 4 times when I was in there. It was nice to have something to kill time. When suspension students travel together, they travel in a single filed line and are not permitted to look up or look at anyone. They are given an hour to exercise on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday. They are also permitted to have a 45 minute appointment with someone once a day during the school week and twice a day on the weekend. This room is a prison without bars. It locks you out of just another prison, the school. The school does not have fences or walls. The only thing that keeps you there is knowing that if you leave before you are 18, “then you will go back to the woods.” Actually, the school has no legal right to send you back to the woods without the parental consent. But even if the parents tell them that under no circumstance are they to be sent back to the woods, the school will still threaten the student with the woods as a form of manipulation.
All I have to say to anyone who any parents who are considering sending their child to Carlbrook is to understand the ramifications of that decision. You are probably thinking that you are willing to put your child in such a place to help them and it is probably not as bad as everyone on this forum and a multitude of other websites make it out to be, but I assure you, it is! Anyone who says otherwise has not yet realized that they have been brainwashed. If you choose to look at the school or if you have done so already, you will be impressed by the seemingly beautiful campus and facilities. Don’t trust it. There is a reason why Carlbrook is so expensive. Most of their money goes to pay for the cover up of this brainwashing facility. They say that they’re a new school which may explain why kids are forced to live in trailers while they are there, but seriously, it takes less than seven kids enrollment to add up to a million dollars. There is a reason why Carlbrook is under Troubled Teen Industry, because that is exactly what it is, an industry. You will talk to Tim Brace and other administrators at Carlbrook and they will tell you all these good things about Carlbrook along with other lies. They will attempt to manipulate you because they believe you are not aware of what really goes on there. That is why I am writing this, to give people a fair chance before they make a decision based on ignorance. Please listen to me before you make the wrong choice!
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