....wha? What the fuck? How does a school turn into a torture camp and nobody stops them for TEN FUCKING YEARS?
I mean, I could almost understand if it was just the shocks. Electroshock therapy exists, and treatments have been extrapolated badly before, and there exist people so stubborn they won't admit they're wrong even if it's hurting someone.
But here we've got people holding KNIVES to the kids THROATS to terrify them into doing "bad" things and thus get shocked. There is no way to see that as anything but sadism. The "severe mental illness" kind of sadism.
It's as though someone printed out a report on the Stanford Prison Experiment, and someone else printed out a copy of 1984, and they got collated together somehow, and someone else picked up the result and mistook it for a how-to manual.
This is utterly incredible. I'm going to do more research.
Oh Christ, I'm reading the report on "Mother Jones" link and I just got to the biography of the school's founder, Dr. Israel. (It starts on the second page.) The school is run by a psychopath who's modified Skinner's approach to behavior modification to run entirely on behavior modification. And a lot of the parents like it because nothing else was working for their kids, whereas Israel's methods work quite well if you don't, y'know, have any morals or decency. I imagine most of the parents simply aren't aware of exactly what's going on - they sign on for 'shock therapy' but don't fully understand what that entails. And their kids are either unable to communicate with their parents, or their tales are written off as exaggeration a la Matilda.
That's why this place is still in operation - desperate parents send their kids there as a last resort, get results, and conclude that Dr. Israel is a fucking genius. Then whenever somebody tries to shut the school down, all these grateful parents defend him.
The way they and other abusive schools/homes for mentally/physically people get away with doing this shit is that the place get their shit together when an important person comes by. Sometimes they'll throw in a wad of money if a slip-up happens.
Oh, just got to page three. You'll fucking love this - Dr. Israel switched to shocks so that his staff wouldn't have to restrain the students for pinching/spanking/whatever. Then, when he shocked a student a couple of thousand times in one day and it didn't fix him, he decided the shock device wasn't strong enough, so that's when he started modifying it. And students who become inured to THAT version get the even stronger GEI-4.
His 'demonstration' video consists of a before-and-after: Before, the students in question were hurting themselves, banging their heads on the floor, tearing their hair out. After some of Dr. Israel's treatment, they're just fine, smiling for the camera! Success story, right? Yeah, it turns out they're still at the school, still hooked up to GEIs, years after the video was made.
Ahh, I finally have my answer to HOW IN THE FUCK. I was right to think of the Stanford Prison Experiment, although the Milgram experiment is even closer. The staff are caught between the students and the boss - many of the students are indeed violent and dangerous, and between that and the constant applying of shocks, I imagine more than a few 'teachers' come to think of the students as the enemy. Newer employees follow the lead of the older ones, telling themselves that "this must be okay, they wouldn't be able to do this if it wasn't okay." And of course at the top you've got Dr. Israel, who's certainly going to fire anyone who doesn't enforce his treatment plan. Add in the pressure from parents, grateful in their ignorance, and there you have it
( ... )
I mean, I could almost understand if it was just the shocks. Electroshock therapy exists, and treatments have been extrapolated badly before, and there exist people so stubborn they won't admit they're wrong even if it's hurting someone.
But here we've got people holding KNIVES to the kids THROATS to terrify them into doing "bad" things and thus get shocked. There is no way to see that as anything but sadism. The "severe mental illness" kind of sadism.
It's as though someone printed out a report on the Stanford Prison Experiment, and someone else printed out a copy of 1984, and they got collated together somehow, and someone else picked up the result and mistook it for a how-to manual.
This is utterly incredible. I'm going to do more research.
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The school is run by a psychopath who's modified Skinner's approach to behavior modification to run entirely on behavior modification. And a lot of the parents like it because nothing else was working for their kids, whereas Israel's methods work quite well if you don't, y'know, have any morals or decency. I imagine most of the parents simply aren't aware of exactly what's going on - they sign on for 'shock therapy' but don't fully understand what that entails. And their kids are either unable to communicate with their parents, or their tales are written off as exaggeration a la Matilda.
That's why this place is still in operation - desperate parents send their kids there as a last resort, get results, and conclude that Dr. Israel is a fucking genius. Then whenever somebody tries to shut the school down, all these grateful parents defend him.
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I hate people.
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I really hate people.
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His 'demonstration' video consists of a before-and-after: Before, the students in question were hurting themselves, banging their heads on the floor, tearing their hair out. After some of Dr. Israel's treatment, they're just fine, smiling for the camera! Success story, right? Yeah, it turns out they're still at the school, still hooked up to GEIs, years after the video was made.
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