real-life reeducation centers

[St Leo]

Uh, how is this punishment? A few symbolic slaps on a clothed rear is punishment. A lecture is punishment.

This is intellectual murder.

[muxec]

Hi StLeo,

Ok you are a moderator, so you must understand.
Imagine, that i said that you are "***ed up ****er, *****ist and ****". (I did not say this, just imagine) . You are like a parent on this forum. You punish me with no post term. Next time i'll be careful writing about you and i'll learn about politness. But if the hypothetical cuss message persists, you'll probably commit intellectual murder against my login.

have a nice day

[Spiffor]

Muxec:

Your analogy is false. St Leo hasn't raised you, and has no responsability whatsoever for your behaviour, except in the very llimited area that's Apolyton. It's nothing like your parents who can monitor you since your birth, who have raised you, and who gave you the basic 'programming', i.e who influenced you very much into having the personality you had before building it for yourself.

I am not arguing that kids should never be punished. This idea has broken enough kids already, and it is absurd to continue it. I am however arguing that systematic punishment (the method Tranquility Bay is using) is inhumane, as it forces the kid not only to drop the crap (drugs and things like that), but to grow into strictly obeying the spirit of the house. In Tranquility Bay, the kid has no way to grow his own personality. Otherwise, he has no chance to win the points, and to leave.

And refusing a teenager to grow his own personality is an intellectual crime. Nothing like the use of punishments to avoid self-destructive excesses like drugs.

You seem to believe all students in tranquility bay are heavily troubled kids or drug users. According to the several articles I have read, it is wrong. Many students (if not most) simply have a difficult teenagehood which results in conflicting with the parents.
This kind of conflict almost always comes from the fact the parents don't grant more freedom to their kids as they grow up (and need more freedom). Rather than being more open to their kid's problems, the parents refuse to see him as an individual who wants to think and to act by himself. That's why they send the kid there : to make sure he'll be exactly like pops and mom wanted him to be, by whatever means necessary, by whatever psychological force necessary. These parents are disgraces.

However, I agree with you on one point: I understand why parents of drug addicts or criminals can send their children there. They feel overwhelmed.
I think they are wrong because they are punishing their kids for their own failures, but I can understand the panic reaction.

[muxec]

Spiffofff, my eample is not excellent, but it should give you some understanding.

The child becomes "bad" when he fails in school, vecause he is not studying. The child becomes "bad" if he starts smoking (not because sigarete is drug, but because he thinks that everything is allowed). If those and some other factors affect the teen he(she) is a bad teen and tranquilitybaying will help. If he only misses lessons or drinks vodka he is still OK.

[Provost Harrison]

Sometimes muxec, these people will learn when they mature and grow older...some people just have to learn the hard way...

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by muxec
Spiffofff, my eample is not excellent, but it should give you some understanding.

The child becomes "bad" when he fails in school, vecause he is not studying. The child becomes "bad" if he starts smoking (not because sigarete is drug, but because he thinks that everything is allowed). If those and some other factors affect the teen he(she) is a bad teen and tranquilitybaying will help. If he only misses lessons or drinks vodka he is still OK.

I have seen quite a few people growing up along with me (actually, a bit later than me, I've always enjoyed having somewhat younger friends). From my experience, this is what I've understood.

- Kids generally begin to smoke in order to be integrated into a group. The fact that smoking is forbidden by the parents makes the said group to look like a "grown-up" group. Other forbidden things (like going out late) are deemed to be "grown-up" things as well, and are rendered more appealing by the parental restriction. In a village where I spent most of my youth, the only teens who did not end up smoking were the ones who had a real, trustful, and interactive discussion with their parents about the issue. The refusal to smoke had to come from the kid himself, and this had to be promoted by the parents, not forced by them.

- Kids who fail at school can be simply not gifted, but they more generally have dire family problems, either because of a divorce or because of a wide distrust between the parents and the kid. As a result, the teen refuses to do what the parents want him to do (that is, study). As long as the trust isn't restored between the teen and his parents, things will remain the same failure. Tranquility Bay is an easy solution for coward parents who prefer to care of themselves than to care of their kids, and of the healthy realtionship between themselves and their kids

- All the liers I know well have taken the habit during teenagehood, where it was impossible for them to do something they enjoy without breaking some family rule (like staying out late at night, having girlfriends, having non-grata friends etc.). They had to lie permanently to their parent to avoid punishment. OTOH, teens who enjoyed much more freedom did not grow up lying and distrusting.

- In short, the child becomes "bad" because the family climate makes sure he becomes "bad". Teenagehood is precisely about growing up and distanciating from what the parents had in mind from you. For some retarded parents, this phenomenon is "bad", and their kids are as such "bad". It creates a climate of distrust and tension within the family, and many retarded parents blame the kid (or better, the kid's peers) of this situation. It makes the kid only more inclined to avoid his "dictatorial" parents and to have nothing to do with them.
Of course, a cretin parent will think his kid is bad, and needs a brainwashing. A sensible parent, OTOH, will try to find what part of the problem he plays, and will try to adress it.

[muxec]

Yes, to give birth if you can not care a child is wron descision, but if the child is already born you have no way back. People who can pay 40000$ per year earn much more and they prefer to use their time working and not educating children. For some of them Tranquility bay is cheaper.
But generally a boy can became bad due to foreighn factors.

[mrmitchell]

People who send their children to places like Tranquility rather care more for themselves and their own ambitions for their children than their kids do. They can't see their own child breaking away from his family and filling out his role in life.

Good point Spiff.

[mrmitchell]

muxec: more to your actual rebuttal post, there are many far more humane options than Tranquility. Adoption, counseling, etc. are all better solutions.

[Adalbertus]

muxec, I got the impression that you're not really aware of what's really going on in Tranquility (assuming the information in the articles are correct). Punishment for doing something wrong is one thing - provided it creates understanding why something is wrong. This is a necessary thing to become a personality who is able to live with other personalities.

Tranquility does an entirely different job: They use punishment to enforce unconditional submission. This is just the contrary of what education should do, namely making understand what is wrong, and why. The methods to achieve submission are by large the same as in those sects where the members don't have a right to their own opinion, or to privacy.

"Normal" punishment works the way that it forces the punished to think about what he's done, and to see why the punisher is right (or in some circumstances, not, because nobody except Küng is infallible). It is exactly this strain of thought which is forbidden in Tranquility and enforced by the investigative sessions.

I'm not sure if this is too well written (too tired), but I hope you somehow can see why I regard Tranquility not as shaping a personality but entirely killing it off. (You'll create good soldiers but bad democrats that way )