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Message |
River
Registered user
Username: River
Post Number: 878
Registered: 9-2006
| | Posted on Sunday, June 17, 2007 - 8:53 pm: |     |
one point in common.
No adult interaction in an academic setting.
O.K. what else? |
Colleentinker
Registered user
Username: Colleentinker
Post Number: 6074
Registered: 12-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, June 17, 2007 - 9:12 pm: | |
Sara, I think you're close to something really important. Academy boarding students have almost no personal interaction with adults. They are pretty much on their own, and unless they seek out off-hours conversation with faculty members, they have almost no input.
Further, a lot of really bad things happen in those dorms. I know that as a scared, immature 15-year-old, Richard experienced some cruel hazing in his dorm. Also, many students are just entering adolescence when they go off to academy. There's just no adult guidance as they try to make this huge transition.
Further, there is spiritual abuse there. The forced worships, chapels, Friday night vespers programs, the indoctrination into Adventism and its unique end-time scary scenarios--these all mark those kids. The indoctrination into fear creates a unique bond among them.
River, your war-veteran example is profound to me, and I think the underlying shared fear and identity as a "peculiar people" is a very deep bond.
In addition to all this, often the faculty themselves were people who had serious perversions or emotional wounds. Richard learned about ten years ago that his academy boys' dean, who persistently told the boys in dorm worship that they were NEVER to sleep on their stomachs and who would wander through the dorms in the early hours of the morning doing "room checks", entering the rooms and turning on the lights while the boys were asleep to see what was going on...he learned that this dean, during the time he was employed at his academy and for years later, had a secret life. On his weekends off he would drive to Portland where he was well-known in the gay community. He was identified at a gay bar where he was dressed in drag.
This man was the boys' dean when Richard was in academy.
I also know from having been a boarding academy teacher that a great many of the students there had endured quite a bit of trauma and abuse in their backgrounds, and they are there in the dorm with no parents who love them to help them navigate adolescence. Many of the students actually wanted to go to academy because home was so difficult. Going to academy was a relief from their profoundly difficult home lives.
Very interesting question and observation, River. I'm interested to hear what others say as well. This connection between those of us who have dreams of academy and those who endured combat is extremely interesting. Wow, I never knew before there were others who had these dreams!
Richard's dreams are far less frequent than they used to be; they have nearly stopped. When he has them now, they don't seem to affect him with the same level of "disturbance" that they used to.
This is SO interesting.
Colleen |
Tricia
Registered user
Username: Tricia
Post Number: 58
Registered: 3-2006
| | Posted on Sunday, June 17, 2007 - 9:47 pm: | |
Laurie,
Wow, I never knew other people had the dorm dreams, too. Yes, a few times a year, I have a terrible, frustration type dream of the dorm. I'm usually an adult in the dream and it's just awful. The last one that I had, I was trying to figure out a way to take care of my two kids from the dorm. Oh, they are just the weirdest dreams! I went one year to Bass Academy in Mississippi and the remaining three years to Cedar Lake Academy in Michigan (grad. 1979).
I didn't have a bad experience there, but I really do realize as an adult with a little perspective, it is a whole lot to deal with as a teen-ager. I can not even imagine my 15 daughter living there.
Thanks for sharing that,ya'll. Since leaving Adventism, I've come to see how much the whole culture of it permeated my life.
Tricia |
Snowboardingmom
Registered user
Username: Snowboardingmom
Post Number: 296
Registered: 11-2005
| | Posted on Sunday, June 17, 2007 - 10:21 pm: | |
Tricia, I'm a Great Lakes Academy graduate too (formerly known as Cedar Lake  ). Have you seen it recently? They've done a lot to the place; it looks completely different from even when I graduated (1994).
This thread is so fascinating to me. It's interesting that so many of you share the same type of dream. I haven't had recurring Academy dreams--some Academy dreams, but no more than any other type of dreams (working, home, family, etc.). I had a good Academy experience though, but I was also one of those students who sought out adult interaction (I was close to several of the faculty). In fact, I was so "into" the thought of Academy, that from the sixth grade on, I couldn't wait until I was old enough to go away to Academy. I was definitely in the minority though. Many of my friends hated it there.
Grace |
Tricia
Registered user
Username: Tricia
Post Number: 59
Registered: 3-2006
| | Posted on Sunday, June 17, 2007 - 10:31 pm: | |
Grace, No, I haven't seen it lately. A couple of years ago, I looked at the campus on their web-site, though. It's a beautiful campus. I have several close friends from there, who I still keep in touch with. I've been back in Mississippi for the last 20 years or so.
I wonder why they changed the name to Great Lakes Academy.
Tricia |
River
Registered user
Username: River
Post Number: 880
Registered: 9-2006
| | Posted on Monday, June 18, 2007 - 6:47 am: | |
During my days in the military, mostly under times of stress I suppose, it is getting hard to remember details about such things, but sometimes at night I would hear my mother call my name from our front porch, it was an absolutely clear call and I would sit straight up only to find myself in the bush far from home.
About a year ago my brother and I were talking and I told him of this experience and he told me he had the same experience many times and we talked about how weird that was.
Of course this has nothing to do with what you are talking about, but at times of stress and strangeness it would seem to me that those students would need close adult contact which would bring a stabilizing force to the situation, to take a child from his home and plunge him into surroundings that he is not used to even if there is abuse in the home, I would think would tend to bring destabilization.
If handled responsibly, the adult supervision, although the student may seem rebellious at the time, would tend to offset the destabilization that might occur with the student who has had the stabilizing effect of home and parent removed.
Close contact with loving and caring teachers and counselors would tend to offset the problem and relieve it to a large degree I would think.
This would also tend to be a real help for the ones who had abusive situations at home because the caring teachers and counselors would tend to give them what they had needed at home although they might tend to become over dependant on those adults and still have a hard go of it.
The student would continue to have someone to whom they could look to for comfort and guidance if administered properly it would seem to me.
Being a dog owner the most of my life I have noticed how my dog would come up to me for a pat on the head and then go off and lay down.
Of course people are not animals and this has no bearing on the human reaction, but it is much the same in that the student would draw comfort in the presence of fine teachers and councilors.
Classical conditioning plays a large part in our lives throughout childhood and on into early adulthood especially.
I would tend to think that hearing my mothers voice calling my name so clearly in times of stress and being far from home was what my emotional condition needed at the time so it furnished it own version.
I remember also that one of the adults I remembered at that time was my early Sunday school teacher, I think this was because she treated everyone with unfailing kindness and I drew comfort from bringing her to mind.
Strip home away from the young person and into a dorm or barracks like situation when he/she is most in need of guidance it would seem to me to be why the dreams persist.
Many times when we think we have things in our life neatly buried and daisies grow on it, back it comes at the most unexpected times.
I cannot see anything else that would have such a traumatic effect on several people, of course this coming from someone who never experienced it and who probably don’t know what he is talking about anyhow.
It just seems to me like the whole problem may stem from lack of caring, comforting and guiding teachers and counselors and just by the by seems to me would be a basic demanded Biblical requirement of a Christian Academic structure and for that matter any secular structure involved with children.
Further more it seems to me that these Adventist parents and school affiliates depended on AVENTISM ITSELF to rear their children and a religion cannot replace loving or at least caring human contact.
I can tell you this with confident truth, this idea makes me shudder to think about it, think of the thousands of children who are facing the same situation right at this minute and then multiply that by the number of students that have attended since the structure was formed if I am even remotely right about the above statement.
For Adventism itself to become the parent is almost more than can be believed and I am tempted to toss the idea out and yet it holds me with the strange possibility due to what has been said. I suppose stranger things have happened and I just cannot discount it at this time and it brings me to conclusions that I don’t like to think about.
Go figure.
River |
Snowboardingmom
Registered user
Username: Snowboardingmom
Post Number: 297
Registered: 11-2005
| | Posted on Monday, June 18, 2007 - 8:51 am: | |
Tricia--they closed down Adelphian Academy and combined it with Cedar Lake Academy and called it "Great Lakes Academy".
River--I think you're right on in your assessment. Pretty good for a never-been Academy student . I'm impressed at your understanding of how the system works! I was thinking the same thing you stated as I've been reading through this thread. Again, I really sought out a "faculty family" full of nurturing teachers and staff on campus, so I have no "trauma" related to Academy. On the complete flip side though, I KNOW I was way more "clingy" and dependent on some of the faculty members than any healthy teenager should be. It's one thing to have mentors, and another to be desperate for them.
Grace |
Colleentinker
Registered user
Username: Colleentinker
Post Number: 6082
Registered: 12-2003
| | Posted on Monday, June 18, 2007 - 10:46 am: | |
River, amazing insight again. I think you are right...Adventism itself was to be the unifying, parental influence in those kids' lives. That really is the reason so many parents sent (and still send) their kids to boarding academy (although the numbers are declining). They believe that they need to be indoctrinated, to become secured in the church, to marry an Adventist (and how will that happen if you don't go to school with them?), to hopefully work for Adventism.
Boarding school is a way of immersing one's kids in Adventism so they never leave, so it shapes them and holds them at deep levels.
Colleen |
Sara
Registered user
Username: Sara
Post Number: 11
Registered: 5-2007
| | Posted on Monday, June 18, 2007 - 10:51 am: | |
Grace,
I did not have "conscious" trauma in dorm life. I liked boarding Academy for the most part. In fact, I always planned on sending my own kids one day. I think any trauma was unconscious. I didn't miss the adults consciously. I just now even thought about how limited adult interaction was. I was a hall monitor in Academy, and a Resident Assistant in college, so I was often the "surrogate parent" role to the yonger kids. I could tell stories.....Oh boy, I was not prepared for that role. I have already asked God to forgive me for some of the "advice" I handed out. Imagine, a 16 year old dealing with MAJOR issues of a 14 year old.
Thank you for reminding me that God did provide some faculty and others who actually took an interest in me. One "village mom" would take us to her house to eat sabbath dinner etc. She loved us I believe. One teacher in academy encouraged me regularly, would pull me aside to ask about my life. And one girls dean let us have a birthday party for one of us in her apartment! That was a big deal.
Diana, we should add those in Academy to your prayer chain. To lurking adventist parents, I hope you will pray, with an open heart to really hear from God, about sending your kids away to boarding academy.
Today, as I was driving teenage kids around to an activity, I was aware of being grateful to God for the time with them. This thread has made me think of my need to spend MORE time with my teenagers. Thank you. Its a priviledge to drive them here, and there, and here, and there, and here again...LOL. I will not complain. I will Praise God that I am not leaving them to other teenagers to raise, advise, and drive around. |
Laurie
Registered user
Username: Laurie
Post Number: 8
Registered: 6-2007
| | Posted on Monday, June 18, 2007 - 1:15 pm: | |
Very very interesting. River... to answer your question, I think the commanality is just the experience itself.
You are taken to this place and dropped off. You lose all of your freedom. You have no freedom whatsoever. No TV. We had a TV in the lobby and were allowed to watch the Waltons and Little House on the Prarie. No music. We had a speaker in each room for announcements etc, and they played the Heritage Singers non-stop. Over and over and over. I would buzz on my intercom and plead with the person at the desk to stop playing it. It still went on. I would turn my speaker all the way down - could still hear it. Of course, I had my little transister radio secretely hidden in my room. I would lay in bed at night and listen to my forbidden rock music. Always in fear of being caught.
You couldn't even control when the lights were turned off. 10:00 PM... LIGHTS OUT. Many times you are left standing in the dark.
No control over what you ate or when you ate. Being forced to eat the fake meat and horrible food. Girls enter through one door, boys through the other.
Being forced to take a shower in front of 20 other girls. Horribly traumatic for me. I would get up at 4:00 AM to be the first one down there so I could be alone.
Forced worship attendance. Punishment if you missed.
Sitting alone in your room, bored out of your head. Nothing to do, nowhere to go.
Having to work. I got stuck working in the kitchen right off the get go. Horrible.. hot, washing gigantic pots full of fake meat! Then thankfully somebody found I that I played the piano and from then on I had the job of playing for the voice students when they had their voice lessons. My roomate worked in the kitchen the entire year. I felt very guilty.
I remember one day I walked into my room and my roomate was curled up on the floor in the fetal position crying "I want to go home". I sat and talked to her. What was I supposed to do????? I was in the 10th grade.
I do not recall any traumatic single events or mistreatment during that year. I will agree that there is no adult interaction. I had never even done a load of laundry and was given a roll of quarters and a container of soap. I didn't have a clue what to do.
I was also very embarassed about the fact that I went to a boarding school. When I was home and around my neighborhood friends, we would go places and hang out and people would say "where do you go to school". How awful to have to say.... "well..... I go to this church boarding school about an hour away, out in the boondocks, and I live in a dorm." When I finally was able to say the name of the public high school I attended after that I was elated!
I came from a completely loving and wonderful home. It would be considered quite liberal by most SDA standards. Like I said before, I was picked up every single weekend and taken home by my parents or my roommates parents. There were no issues at home I was trying to escape. I had been told for the last 9 years that public schools were run by the devil himself. Drugs, sex, violence... I was terrified of going there. I was so angry when I did attend public high school and saw what it was really like. I felt like I had been cheated out of 10 years of quality education.
When they closed the school, my roommate decided to go to the academy in Nebraska. It was hours from home. Both of our families drove out there together to look at it. She decided right away she was going there and begged me to room with her. It was absolutely in the boondocks, hours from home. My mom and dad just said "it's up to you". To which I replied "NO WAY".
My mom has confided in me as an adult that she did not want to send me to academy. She felt she was "supposed to". She begged me not to send my daughter. I told her don't worry about that, will never happen.
Anyway, I think that the experience is not what should happen to children of that age. It's just not right. Obviously, it did deeply affect me.
Laurie |
Colleentinker
Registered user
Username: Colleentinker
Post Number: 6086
Registered: 12-2003
| | Posted on Monday, June 18, 2007 - 4:15 pm: | |
Laurie, thank you for being so vulnerable. As I read your post, things I had not thought of came to life in my mind. I went to a day academy, and that was bad enough, what with the end-times indoctrination, the subtle but powerful social structure based on one's parents financial status or involvement in the "medical work", etc.
When I taught at a boarding academy as a twenty-something recent college graduate, however, I saw just about everything you described...and more. You are not exaggerating. I did see the tears and despair, and some students would stop by our house (my first husband was a band teacher) for respite. I have seen tears and terror and fear and depression fully as bad as everything you remember from your year in academy.
I have also heard more complete stories from some students who have kept in touch over the years. One girl who asked me to drive her to the public health clinic in town because she thought she had a serious infection confided in me years later that she actually had an abortion. I was not much more than a teenager myself and had no "real life" experience except my years in a college dorm. I was also terribly naive and failed to pick up certain things I'd likely be much more savvy to now.
The boarding academy scene is not healthy. I think that about sums up my understated opinion.
Colleen |
Flyinglady
Registered user
Username: Flyinglady
Post Number: 3802
Registered: 3-2004
| | Posted on Monday, June 18, 2007 - 6:37 pm: | |
Sara, I wll add the SDA academy students to the prayer list. Thanks for the suggestion.
Diana |
River
Registered user
Username: River
Post Number: 891
Registered: 9-2006
| | Posted on Monday, June 18, 2007 - 8:37 pm: | |
Laurie,
Thank you for letting me see through your eyes, I am like a blind man I guess, I need your eyes to see.
Just about time I think I am too the bottom of the Adventism barrel I am shown something else.
If I could have seen all of Adventism at once I think I would have run away screaming and said "No way am I going there Lord, send someone else, I ain't going. Mercifully he took me room by room and let me look around awhile and then on to another room.
Thank you again,
River |
Flyinglady
Registered user
Username: Flyinglady
Post Number: 3808
Registered: 3-2004
| | Posted on Monday, June 18, 2007 - 8:54 pm: | |
Reading what all of you have said about boarding academies, I am SO THANKFUL that I did not send my son to one. I took him out of SDA schools. It was not until I came to FAF that I saw it was God's leading. THANK YOU GOD. YOU ARE AWESOME.!!!
Diana |
Lori
Registered user
Username: Lori
Post Number: 54
Registered: 11-1999
| | Posted on Tuesday, June 19, 2007 - 7:48 pm: | |
Memories of dormitory life....I've got some good ones I suppose. I loathed it at first, cried myself to sleep at night. Went home every weekend and begged my parents not to take me back. It took me about 6 weeks to adjust. The worst adjustment was to the heat--the dorm had no air conditioning.
Adventist dorm life only assures one thing--whatever you do (good or bad) will be done with an Adventist!!!
Personally, I look back on my two years of dorm life with pleasant memories....I found my place by being the deans nightmare; I was the mischief maker!!!!
She entered several rooms on different occasions after "lights out" to have a carefully balanced bucket of water dumped on her head. My greatest achievement was the morning we tied all her apartment doors shut with panty hose and she couldn't get out to come to morning worship.
You never knew what you might wake up to find scattered all the way up and down the hallway...the funniest thing was my "goody two shoes" roommate never knew I was culprit in all the many pranks. She was one of the early birds who made it out in the hall first to get in the showers before anyone else. She would always return with, "...you won't believe what somebody did..." I always ran out to the hall with great curiousty (like I didn't already know!!!)
I was kinda bad!!! I hated to wear dresses and refused to wear them to the Week of Prayer mid-day services. I walked in the church in my bluejeans two days in a row. The second day I was sent to the principal who told me not to come to the church in my blue jeans. So, I just didn't go!!!! They didn't even notice I was missing until the last day. When I got in trouble for not coming I reminded him that he told me not to come in my blue jeans. (He never told me I must report in a dress!) I didn't get in trouble.
My senior year in Academy was the beginning of my questioning of the Adventist doctrines. EGW was shoved down our throats on a hourly basis. Bible class should have been called EGW class.
It was in one of these classes that I asked the teacher why we had to memorize all the EGW passages. If our church was so Biblical wouldn't we do better to memorize the scriptures instead?
I was told this was "additional light" so we needed to memorize it.
That was the beginning of my rebellion against EGW...and when you remove EGW you eventually remove Adventist doctrines because they can't stand the test of the Scripture without EGW telling you what Scripture says. |
Timmy
Registered user
Username: Timmy
Post Number: 196
Registered: 8-2006
| | Posted on Wednesday, July 11, 2007 - 8:08 am: | |
Since this question posted I have talked to several formers and so far, everyone of them has had at best, bad dreams. Most call them nightmeres.
One friend, who left academy and God, 22 years ago was shocked when I told him of this subject. He said he had nightmeres every night for ten years! He still has 1-3 a month! and probably always will. He said he never spoke of it beacause, he thought he was the only one.
He then told me about a dean that manipulated him into doing something, then told him not to tell anyone of the situation, if he told, the dean said he would spread rumors arround that he was gay. Well... my friend was so shocked that he told his dad, his dad made some phone calls... a few weeks later the bible teacher called my friend into his office and started preaching to him about the evils of homosexuality!
It gets worse from there but you get the point. We talked for about two hours on this subject.
Good question Lori! |
Colleentinker
Registered user
Username: Colleentinker
Post Number: 6280
Registered: 12-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, July 11, 2007 - 10:54 pm: | |
Tim, that is so sad--and it confirms again that far too often the deans and faculty members at academies are not really safe or psychologically (to say nothing of spiritually) healthy.
And we wonder why so many "young people" left the church and God...
Colleen |
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