Wow.
This is an article about a real school in MA that shocks kids with behavior disorders as part of their "treatment plan". The kids, some as young as nine years old, are hooked up to an array of electrodes 24/7 and shocked for any bad behavior.
To quote one part, it says "Marguerite Famolare brought her son Michael to the Rotenberg Center six years ago, after he attacked her so aggressively she had to call 911 and, in a separate incident, flipped over a kitchen table onto a tutor. Michael, now 19, suffers from mental retardation and severe autism. These days, when he comes home for a visit, Marguerite carries his shock activator in her purse. All she has to do, she says, is show it to him. "He'll automatically comply to whatever my signal command may be, whether it is 'Put on your seatbelt,' or 'Hand me that apple,' or 'Sit appropriately and eat your food,'" she says. "It's made him a human being, a civilized human being."
It sounds to me like it made him an obediant robot, complying to any command.
Lara (http://www.blogger.com/profile/11480095954577891278), sent this article to me in a comment on the blog below this.
Check it out by clicking the title of this blog, going to the comments section of my last blog, or copying and pasting this into your browswer window:
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/09/school_of_shock.html
2 days ago
4 comments:
I'm so glad you decided to post about this. They might as well just give lobotomies to the poor kids. Makes me sick.
what i dont understand is that the parents actually stand up FOR this place. i cannot imagine what it is like to live with a child with severe mental and behavioral problems, let alone violent tendencies. so i guess i'm really in no place to judge them. however, i cannot imagine shipping my child off to be painfully tortured "face down on a board" with shock equipment. somehow i dont see that as a productive alternative.
again, thank you for the article.
Ms. Gonnerman’s article “School of Shock,” which appears in the September/October issue of the Mother Jones magazine, is an entirely one-sided and biased account of the court- and parent-approved behavior modification therapy used at the Judge Rotenberg Center to successfully treat, without drugs, severe (sometimes life-threatening) behavior problems of children and young adults with special needs that have not responded to any other form of treatment. For readers who would like to hear the other side of this story, please see http://www.judgerc.org/ResponsetoGonnermanArticle.pdf
Matthew L. Israel
Executive Director
Judge Rotenberg Educational Center
www.judgerc.org
Thank you for voicing your opinion, but that link doesn't go anywhere. Maybe you can try to post it again?
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