I want to start this off by saying that I do not condone hate or harassment of any entities mentioned in this text, the problems I will be talking about are more systemic and less individual, most of the individual problems will be mine, I will try to make this as most about me, and if you don’t like it, too bad.
It’s that long awaited post that literally nobody asked for or even thought would happen, Mia finally talks about the systemic issues that plague American society and the societal impacts that that brings. While I could pretend I’m all scholarly and shit, I’m really not, and I don’t understand much about the world, but I understand enough to where I am writing this, and that seems like enough reason.
Sadly, in America there is this idea where if you have enough money, most problems can be sorted out with money. While, for subjects such as transport or food or housing this is true, there are many instances where this is not true. While this is a deeply societal and capitalist issue, there has been this idealism in northern American to send young adults/children “away” to “improve” for a while. While most wilderness programs are reserved for the upper-class who honestly couldn’t give a shit about their children, this issue has been a part of American culture ever since the inception of America.
While the example I am about to talk about is a completely and wildly different situation to the one I found myself in and should not be compared to at all, I would like to highlight that this attitude of sending children “away” to better themselves has been around since the inception of America. Now, let me take you back to the first instance that I can think of, a series of events that even the US government does not want to teach to kids such as myself, which is really sad because honestly the US government back in the 1800s were real assholes to anyone that was not of European decent.
Native American boarding schools. Ring a bell? For many people, they are probably like what the fuck are you on about mia?. But for a few, I hope this was something that has been brought to your attention in one form or another before now. While this was more a problem of racism and religion supremacy back in the 18 and 1900s, it showed that the settlers of America realized that children were the future, and therefore made “education” mandatory for all Native American children. Now, when I say “education” in quotation marks, this could be interpreted as me being entitled or stingy, but this was more of a complete brainwashing or re-education initiative. The settlers of America realized that after they terrorized the Native Americans into following Christianity and ravaging their colonies, that they had to continue this and make sure the children were educated in a way that saw this European way of living as the only way of living.
These boarding schools, to put it plainly were more like re-education camps rather than boarding schools. Mandated by the US government at this time, also receiving a lot of government funding, the goal of these “schools” was to completely wipe the Native-American heritage in these children and make them Caucasian “good citizens” of the US, except they were never citizens of the United States and had absolutely no rights. Does this make sense yet, because to me it makes no sense, considering that the society that they were being brainwashed into fitting into had no place for them, built on the literal oppression of the people they were now were trying to brainwash.
Now, legally, this highly-religious government was successful in passing the required laws and mandates to legally oppress one racial group. And now you may be asking, why the fuck are you talking about religion now?. Because these boarding schools were as Christian as could be, engraving the bible and Jesus into every student, something that from personal experience does not help at all when taking children from their parents and teaching them completely different idealisms and mannerisms compared to what they had with their parents. When religion leads a government, it does more harm than good in my opinion. Lets take Saudi Arabia, which is a completely different situation than this, but it is a good modern-day comparison. While a completely different idea they are oppressing, generally Muslim culture is un-accepting of LGBTQ+ people, especially people in the first 3 letters, trans people in Arabic countries is a whole different topic that I may discuss later on, but this is specifically about America. I mean it is crazy that we put up with a country that gives people the death sentence, a literal hanging in public if you are gay. Just zoom out for a second, you can kiss a dude (as a dude) and that’s literally game over, purely based on religion and internalized beliefs that are passed thought society. While Saudi Arabia is not this oppressive, there are certain instances of literal “jokes” being taken as gay rhetoric and having massive consequences. While the US does suffer from similar idealisms, the extremist-Christian population is not in charge yet, which hopefully never happens, but we will have to wait and see with Donald Trump. The difference is that in the US, people in office are paid off by corporate sponsors, in courtiers such as Saudi Arabia, the governments are the corporate sponsors, and control everything.
Ok, religion yap session over because I could talk about religion all day and its negative affects on policy and peoples lives, that’s not what this weird essay is about. Native American boarding schools were a part in US history where the government was ruled by Christian values, with very similar values to modern-day middle-eastern countries. There is a reason that this is a period of history that is not taught in Untied States public schools, and that is simply that it was a fuck-up on the government’s side, but the whole point of history is that we learn from it, and that is personally a factor that makes me enjoy writing shitty rambly essays such as this one.
Ok, these boarding schools were bad; I think that most people can agree. The whole point was to suppress the native American heritage of these people, but the fact that this was mandated in legislation shows that there has always been an attitude of sending children away, but hearing about the atrocities and honestly tortuous conditions that these children were subject to, like being forcibly kept at these facilities, but this was the start.
I have noticed a particular attitude towards boarding schools in the US versus the UK. To put it very simply, if you are going to a boarding school in the UK, you are among the top class of children, and are very smart/intelligent. However, the same sentiment is not shared in the US. The sentiment in the US is very much negative, marking you going to boarding school as a “problem,” and the act of going to boarding school more of an intervention. Having one prime example of this in my immediate family, my uncle was sent to a boarding school in the US. Of course, some of the things I heard could be exaggerated and I'm sure there was some confirmation bias in my listening of the stories told to me, but beyond there has to be at least an ounce of truth. This boarding school was very much a correctional facility, and they were sent there as more of an intervention, compared to my own brothers, who were sent to boarding school in the UK for a better education. These are just examples from my small family, I'm sure there are at least thousands of other stories just like the ones my family members have shared, but another sentiment I have noticed in the US was that it was always a “problem child” that was sent away. With the generation above me, only my uncle was sent to this remote boarding school, the rest of that family being intact and going to day school together, getting rid of the problem instead of trying to deal with it. This was also the 1990’s so times were different, but this idea of getting rid of the “problem child” has persisted, leading to the troubled teen industry.
The troubled teen industry. Something that is delegated to very wealthy and upper class families. During my time at wilderness therapy, with one exception every kid was in the upper class, with parents making at least 500k a year, a number I estimate of course but looking at behaviors and living conditions, when you live with someone for 9 weeks straight, you can guess their financial situation pretty well, and all of these kids were very well off, all being in the upper class. That one exception I will be talking about later, so honestly shut up I didn’t ask for a comment. Now, let’s make the presumption that this experience helps every kid, why is this experience delegated to only rich kids?. Or even as an extension of that, why is mental help only available to well off kids?. I think it is quite easy to see the problem here, which is in a capitalist society the only people who win are the people at the top, and everyone is scraping to the top. But that was never a question, was it? If this treatment is so useful and helpful for a wide variety of children, why isn’t it more mainstream and widespread, with the government stepping in?. Because that’s exactly what I was asking when I realized that all the children were well off at this “camp”. And that’s because it doesn’t. Now, I'm not completely dismissing the idea of wilderness therapy of treatment, but the way it is engraved in modern society is a mistake. Another trend I realized that most of the children don’t go home, doesn’t change, and go to what’s called a “Therapeutic Boarding School.”. Now, if you have never heard of a therapeutic boarding school, give yourself a pat on the back, because I'm convinced that these therapy programs have some sort of monetary gain when sending children to therapeutic boarding schools, with scared parents happily obliging. Also, the lack of information in these areas is extremely concerning, with these schools being marketed as the “next step”, from my specific program the stat was somewhere like 8/10 people go to a therapeutic boarding school, which is nightmarish to even think about, but I will get onto time later.
This lack of information and the whole idea of going with the flow was something that these programs enjoyed. I had this one instructor who I thought was cool for the most time, lets call them “M”. They had some views that were pretty against mine, but as the “adult” and superior in this situation, were very calm and composed. There was this one time during an assembly where they flat out said “I don’t think you should be Trans”, and actively was against gay people, but didn’t let that affect their instructorship, and I really appreciate that. I wish that more people were like M, you can be against someone being Trans but not actively chastise them and make their life worse. However, they did this one thing that really pissed me off, and I still think about it. Basically, we have these hikes every weekend, and usually they tell us where we are going to hike to. However, on this instance M refused to tell us anything, saying that in life we wouldn’t have information, and would have to go with the flow, which is a fucking stupid lesson, and one that some random 40-50 year old person should not be telling 11-15 year old male identifying children, we kind of need to know where we are hiking to prepare appropriate rations and get ourselves prepared, but a lack of information at this institution was a running theme thorough my time at this place.
Taking a complete 180, but the legal implications of these camps was really bizarre. First of all, the US having 50 different states with their own law-making ability basically saves these intuitions. For instance, all of the therapeutic boarding schools are based in Utah. All of them. Now, in most instances this would be really weird, but from what I now understand the law in Utah couldn’t care less about like children and essentially allow for whatever the fuck people can pay for. Now, I have no clue about where other camps are located, but I would not be surprised if they are also located in red states, such as Idaho in my instance, even being located in Utah. Its crazy how giving states autonomy on these matters leads to all the therapeutic boarding schools being in ONE STATE. Out of 50! While I was at this camp, maybe it’s just some weird fuckin fork of autism that fucks me in the head, but the paperwork required was like 80% of the job for the instructors, all of them working overtime. The instructors would work in 2 week intervals, but it is honestly crazy that they would stick to a pretty badly paying job while being in overtime a decent amount of the time. And that’s what really annoys me, the legal system of the US. While I honestly can’t do shit about the US legal system, I can write this complaining about the US legal system, and that’s good enough for me.
This legal tomfoolery directly ties into what I think makes this experience so isolating and traumatizing for many, the time spent away from parents. While in my experience, going to boarding school for weeks at a time helped make this experience easier, someone who has only gone to day school and the longest they have spent away from their parents would have been a weekend sleepover, or even a week-long sleep away camp, getting thrust into the Idaho “desert” with at most 1 hour of a call with your parents per week, not to mention that these calls are for therapeutic purposes so you can’t really discuss personal issues. However, there is a big oversight in what I just said, and that is that the camp allowed for communication through “letters”, where your parents would send a typed email to the base camp which was an hour drive away, so once every few days you could have mail, but the only way to respond to this mail was to hand-write a letter, and most of the time nobody bothered to do that, which made this experience really isolating, as you are away from everyone you know for 2-3 months.
Now, the main reason I’m talking about this mail system is that it was an integral part of the inauguration system. After a week of being in the wilderness, the expectation is for your parents to provide a letter of some sort that explains why you were there. While I understand the reasoning for waiting a week, I sensed a common theme throughout the “camp” of information being withheld, such as like when you were going to leave. Now the reason I talk so much about withheld information is that honestly it makes you feel like shit when you are the person getting information withheld from. Especially when it comes to being in the middle of nowhere, it feels like you did something “wrong”, which these camps are explicitly against saying. This is perfectly exemplified by the amount of information you get around leaving and how long you will be there. While you would think that people would get told or would at least have a basic idea about how long you would be there, instructors and everyone around you for the first week gives you little to no information.
This really sucks when you are basically taken away from your family, which we commonly referred to as gooning. Ah yes, 'gooning,' a term I'm sure you've all encountered in the most wholesome of places. But, just in case your minds are currently in the gutter, let's establish that in wilderness therapy, it meant being unceremoniously yanked out of bed at night by some very enthusiastic staff, not... whatever else you might be imagining. I know, I know, the internet has ruined everything. My problem with this "gooning" was that it was the default for most kids, and what my program recommended. And that’s so fucking dehumanizing, like it's inadvertently your parents basically saying you are dangerous when, like 90% of the time the kids were just sad depressed little shits or hyperactive ADHD kids. It's really sad how that was commonplace and how most parents wouldn't have an open conversation before, which is honestly the best way to healing, especially when the literal problems involve family. Now luckily I was not a part of this majority, as for a lot of things at this “camp,” but I can sympathize for the thousands of kids that have been through this.
As I mentioned— and you were paying attention, right? The camp was mostly filled with kids from privileged backgrounds. There was, however, one exception to that, someone I'll call 'The Exception' for this discussion. Now this kid was a really bright kid, and had some pretty interesting tendencies, while I don’t think that wilderness therapy is beneficial for most people, this kid had some problems (like all of us there), and obviously a judge thought so too, as they were at this “camp” on a court order, which I think is the wildest thing, that a for-profit company is taking so-called “disruptive” children and adults, stripping them of their freedom for profit, much like System of a Down describes in ‘ Prison Song ’: “They’re trying to build a prison, for you and me to live in.”. While the song is more about drug trafficking and how that funds most people’s daily lives, I think it’s still partially relevant as they literally sell a hoodie with a modified version of the CCA’s logo (Corrections Corporation of America) that actively satirizes and brings to light this deeply societal issue throughout the United States of America. Ok, me trying to integrate music done, back to wilderness therapy because I know you aren’t reading this anyway.
