Originally posted by euclidian:
extract from said article
quote:
Back in Blighty, one month after returning (not nearly long enough for us to know if it really worked), it is debatable whether the outcomes exemplify the success rate, which is said to be 85 per cent. In the case of Julia, her mother says she has not changed. Georgie is still tempted by drugs and her mother’s response is to sell her house to pay for her daughter to spend a whole year at Aspen — which is not an unqualified triumph.
Rosie has taken up marathon running but her ambition to return to Aspen and train as an instructor might suggest that she is merely displacing her demons and hoping to control them in other teenagers. Shit-shovelling Lucy has also identified with her guards — she wants to join the navy or the police; arguably, she is addicted to environments in which she is controlled by strict authority.
These last two outcomes are in accord with the scientific evidence that predicts that such regimes will fail: physically forcing or blackmailing children to comply will repeat the authoritarian parenting that is often the cause of the misbehaviour in the first place.