Aptos High School “crosses the line” with secret behavior control exercise

By Freedom Advocates Staff
September 27, 2006

Program is showing up in other Santa Cruz County Schools

Aptos High School (AHS) violated the families of 360 students when it conducted a secret behavioral control exercise that compelled the students to publicly confess their sexual behaviors, personal thoughts, and family secrets, according to “Crossing the Line crosses the line” in the Santa Cruz Sentinel. AHS dismissed its violation of law and family autonomy as an “oversight” and expects the story to stop there. It doesn’t.

Some of the rest of the story

AHS and the business with which the administration contracts to conduct behavior control and social engineering programs on campus have failed to provide curriculum materials for parent review. They continue to conduct the programs without parental notification. So, it took some digging for F21SC to uncover some important information that all Santa Cruz County parents should review before allowing their children to participate in Breaking Down the Walls, Link Crew, or other diversity training programs being conducted on their children in government schools.

Highlights of available resources

Following are highlights of the articles, commentary, and news stories F21SC has found related to the behavior control and social engineering programs being conducted on Santa Cruz County school children. If you have additional information or would like to suggest changes or corrections, please complete our feedback form.

Crossing the Line crosses the line. SC Sentinel

Adult strangers and youth trainees in the schools are asking children to publicly disclose and discuss their sexual thoughts and behaviors, and to provide other intimate information about themselves, their parents, and their families. This is done with neither parental permission nor knowledge, a violation of district policy and state law.
Following is a summary of “Crossing the Line Crosses the Line” by Donna Jones, Santa Cruz Sentinel reporter. The story appeared in the Santa Cruz Sentinel on April 12, 2002.
See the complete story at the Santa Cruz Sentinel >


Educators at Aptos High School crossed the line when they didn’t inform parents about the sensitive nature of topics presented during encounter sessions held at the school, according to “Crossing the Line crosses the line” by Santa Cruz Sentinel Reporter Donna Jones.

During an exercise called “Crossing the Line”, students were asked to reveal — by stepping over a line in the gym — increasingly intimate information about themselves, including responding to questions about drug use, sexual activity, family use of drugs and alcohol, or thoughts of suicide, according to the Sentinel.

A parent interviewed by Jones, Susan McLaughlin, said: “Most parents, if they knew the questions being asked, they would be horrified”. However, since the school failed to inform parents about the controversial nature of the sessions, “parents may have been unaware of the program at the time, and still may not understand it,” McLaughlin told the Sentinel.

The Sentinel explaned: “school officials neglected to follow district policy that requires having materials available for parental preview two weeks in advance and permission slips signed by parents before students participate when controversial topics are discussed. Materials were not immediately available after the event either,” Jones reported.

Christine Amato Quinn, Pajaro Valley Unified School District assistant superintendent, told the Sentinel the failure to notify parents “was an oversight caused by a shuffle in school staff”.

The Sentinel interviewed participants who supported the program, saying that the “edgy nature of the seminar did raise ’emotional feelings’ and was a “life changing experience”. Ruth Barker, a parent and member of the school site council that approved the program for implementation at AHS told the Sentinel she was happy about her child’s participation in the program, saying: “Sometimes it’s incredibly powerful for people to be on the edge; it helps them grow and learn.”

See the complete story at the Santa Cruz Sentinel >

The questions that crossed the line. PVUSD

The schools and the business that conducts psychological encounter sessions on SC County campuses have failed to produce any curriculum materials, even after repeated requests by parents for them to comply with policy. However, an anonymous source has provided F21SC with the questions strangers are asking children at your school.

Source

Anonymous, from Pajaro Valley School District

Summary

This is an partial list of some of the questions asked of 300 Aptos High School students during an exercise called “Crossing the Line”. In this workshop, students were pressured to publicly confess to questions about their and their parents’ sexual activity, drug and alcohol use, private thoughts, and family history.

Something to ponder before reading the Crossing the Line questions

Managers

If you posed any of the “Crossing the Line” questions to an employee how quickly do you think you would be fired for harassment or other law violations?

Business owners or HR professionals

  • If you asked any of the “Crossing the Line” questions as part of your job interview process would your company be sued?

Parents

  • Would you think it appropriate if a stranger invited your child into a meeting and asked him or her to answer these questions in front of 300 other people?
  • Does it help in your attempts to steer your child from drugs, sex, suicide, dangerous life styles and other destructive behaviors when your child sees that these are “normal” behaviors of other kids that are condoned by the adults who are administering the exercise?

Others

  • If you pulled someone else’s kids off the street and asked him or her to answer these questions, how likely are you to be in violation of the law?

Given your response to the above questions, how appropriate do you think it is that Aptos High School sponsored an anonymous group of strangers to ask these questions of your children and to compel your child to publicly confess to each question?

Process

  • Your child is made to stand on one side of a line in the gym at school.
  • A facilitator asks a question.
  • Your child is asked to step over the line to indicate his or her answer to the question in front of more than 300 other students, faculty, and counselors. For example: If the facilitator asks “Do you have an immediate family member is addicted to drugs or alcohol?” your child steps over the line if the answer is “yes”.
  • The program administrators advice the school to have counselors observe the proceedings in case the highly personal and sensitive nature of the questioning causes emotional trauma — which is a frequent occurrence.

 


Cross the Line (30 minutes)

Cross the line if…

  • Are a good kisser
  • Excellent friend
  • If you have ever let a friend down in a really big way
  • You have ever lied to your parents
  • Have snuck out of the house without your parents knowing
  • If one of your parents ever let you down in a big way
  • Either parent is younger than 35
  • Either parent is older than 55
  • Parents are divorced
  • Considered teachers pet
  • Received straight A’s on a report card
  • Received an F on a report card
  • Received a suspension
  • Have ever been expelled
  • Immediate family member is addicted to drugs or alcohol
  • Ever been drunk
  • Ever tried an illegal drug (not age related)
  • If you smoke cigarettes
  • Have you ever come to school under the influence
  • Have a close friend or relative who gay or lesbian
  • Have ever used the term “that is so gay”
  • If you currently practice abstinence
  • If you believe we live in a violent society
  • Have ever been made fun of on this campus
  • Have ever done anything you shouldn’t have done just to fit in
  • Have ever made fun of someone on this campus
  • If you are treated differently because of the color of your skin
  • Believe that women are treated better in our society
  • Believe that men are treated better in our society
  • If you believe you are an attractive person
  • If someone you trust has told you, you are an attractive person
  • If you have been in the hospital for two weeks or longer
  • Immediate family member has had cancer
  • Know anyone who has attempted suicide
  • Know anyone who has committed suicide
  • If you have seriously considered committing suicide
  • Have ever attempted suicide
  • If one of your parents has passed away
  • Learned something about someone you did not know before today
  • Learned something about yourself that you did not know or that surprised you
  • Crossed 100% of the time when you could

Schools shouldn’t endorse psycho-fest. Seattle Times

The Seattle Times says that “schools should not endorse psycho-fests” like the Breaking Down the Wall program because they are “soul-searching” “brainwashing” exercises that can cause a child irreparable emotional damage, and create a “legal mess” for the schools.
Seattle Times Editorial

The role of educating children has justifiably broadened over the years to include more than the basic three R’s, but encounter-style seminars that leave students emotionally drained should not be part of it.

Especially not to turn a profit.

It is alarming that nearly 300 Seattle Public Schools students have already participated in Challenge Day workshops. These 12- and 13-year-olds went through sessions reminiscent of est, or Lifespring encounter groups, courtesy of a for-profit company. While the goal of the seminars has merit — to create a safe school environment free of teasing and harassment — their methods don’t belong under the imprimatur of public education.

That the sessions took place off school property — at St. Joseph Church on Capitol Hill — has little bearing. They were arranged by the co-president of the Parent Teacher Student Association at Washington Middle School and approved by the principals at Washington and Meany middle schools.

The emotional intensity of the workshops is troublesome. Schools should not assist in placing children in situations where adults break them down emotionally and, purportedly, rebuild them into better people. Better to leave intensive character building to parents. If parents endorse this therapy, they can arrange it privately for their child.

Another disturbing aspect of encounter groups in the schools is their commercialism. The district has an anti-commercialization policy. Yet, students participating in Challenge Day received information packets about a seminar offered in Seattle next month by Resource Realizations, a Scottsdale, Ariz., company best known for its controversial work in residential behavior-modification for troubled teens.

Sales pitches directly targeted to children place parents in an untenable position. It is the role of parents to sort out what is appropriate for their child, but the job is made more difficult by an end run around them to their children. The cost of these seminars goes from none at the schools to $295 for the next-step session, to more than $800 for a weeklong seminar.

Challenge Day’s pilot program in Seattle is the first step in bringing the seminars to a larger market. This should have been expected by district administrators. School districts full of children translate potentially into huge profits.

However, this can also translate into a legal mess the first time a child is emotionally, and irreparably, undone by one of these soul-searching encounters. Seattle’s principal corps is a strong one and principals have great autonomy over their schools. But Superintendent Joseph Olchefske should step in and say no this time.

There are plenty of ways to thwart harassment and teasing that don’t involve putting children through what many adults wouldn’t go through.

Copyright © 2002 The Seattle Times Company

Breaking down the wills.

A professor of organizational behavior comments on how programs like Breaking Down the Walls work by breaking down the will of a developing mind so it can be rebuilt according to the values of a collective or organization — a process that builds walls between parents and their children. When the same techniques are used by cults, they build walls between children and society for the greater good of the collective.
The following is a letter to the editor of Santa Cruz Sentinel in response to “Crossing the line crosses the line”

The Aptos High School faculty and site council break the law, violating the families of 300 Aptos children, and it’s OK for them to just say “it was an oversight”? (“Crossing the line crosses the line” Santa Cruz Sentinel April 12, 2002). Even if this and similar violations don’t result in law suits, at least the “Sentinel” article gives us the opportunity to ask what the schools are doing to our children behind our backs — and whether we as parents want to blindly allow it to continue.

The Breaking Down the Walls program seems to be a strong case proving that we are willingly allowing a government-mandated educational system to co-opt authority over our children. This “edgy” (emotionally abusive) program uses powerful behavior control techniques and peer pressure to make your developing child question his or her individual worth and values, then seek for esteem among a collective according to the values of an anonymous organization. In short, your child’s will and your parenting are the walls the program seeks to break down.

The mission statement of Aptos High School makes it clear that social and environmental indoctrination are among the school’s key objectives; so, we shouldn’t be surprised at Breaking Down the Wills, the degree of secrecy under which it continues to operate, and the continuing educational decay on the campus. But, it seems like it’s past time for Aptos parents to wake up, pay attention, and help Aptos High School redirect its mission to education and academics.

About the author: Brent Duncan, MaOM, teaches Organizational Behavior and management courses at the University of Phoenix School of Business and Management.

Cloning of the American mind, B.K. Eakman

The executive director of the National Education Consortium discusses how the government education system has become an “illiteracy cartel” which is built around an out-of-control psychographic consulting industry.
Following is a summary of “Cloning of the American Mind: Eradicating morality through education” by B.K. Eakman:America’s government education system has become an “illiteracy cartel” which is built around an out-of-control psychographic consulting industry, according to B.K. Eackman in “Cloning of the American Mind: Eradicating morality through education.”

Unethical behavioral scientists are teaming up with school testing companies, computer specialists, and information brokers to produce polls and predict workforce needs, a political weapon is being created that holds a youngster’s future employment prospects hostage to a set of quasi-political, psychological criteria . . . while the nation’s cognitive and cultural knowledge base is systematically eradicated, Eakman says.

Eakman argues that psychology has assumed a messianic political mission in government schools. “An unwary public and its distracted elected representatives have bought in to the education reform movement’s bogus agenda, which is being sold under the dual umbrellas of ‘mental health’ and “testing standards”

“Cloning of the American Mind” traces the contributions of two distinct factions within the behavioral science community — one that emerged from the old Hitlerian Right and one on the Marxist Left — and shows how their two disparate agendas eventually merged for the purpose of introducing psychological screening instruments and experimental therapies into the schools. Eakman demonstrates how this screening process takes on new meaning as students and their families are unknowingly assessed for supposed “markers” of psychological disorders, the most recent example being to label Attention-Deficit Disorder (ADD) as a “marker” for schizophrenia. The results of the various tests, analyses, and therapies designed to locate ADD students are placed into sophisticated, cross-referenceable electronic transfer systems, such as the SPEEDE/ExPRESS.

Information collected by the schools can be overlaid with other public and private records, and downloaded at any time by “research groups” and underground information brokers for a small fee, according to Eakman. A mathematical, computer model enables experts to predict probable future behavior and reactions. Psychological assessments masquerading as academic tests and curriculum, maintains the author, have frightening implications for both individual privacy and learning.

Eakman provides a step-by-step guide to countering psychological manipulation by professional agitators-turned-facilitators in small- and large-group settings. She conducts seminars to show how parents can take corrective measures to protect their children’s health and mental well-being.

About B.K. Eakman

B.K. Eakman is executive director of the National Education Consortium and the author of the book, Cloning of the American Mind: Eradicating Morality Through Education.

Individualism, the only cure for racism. Edwin Locke, Ph.D.

A leading behavioral scientists says diversity indoctrination programs, like Breaking Down the Walls and Link Crew, are highly divisive and racist; he recommends a proven method for solving the problems the SC County schools are trying to correct.
by Edwin A. Locke, Ph.D.

It is now taken as a virtual axiom that the way to cure racism is through the promulgation of racial and ethnic diversity within corporations, universities, government agencies and other institutions. The diversity movement has many facets: diversity awareness, diversity training, diversity hiring and admissions, diversity promotions, and diversity accommodations (e.g., special organizations and facilities at universities for groups baced on race or interest). The common feature in all these facets is: racial preference.

If diversity is the cure, however, why, instead of promoting racial harmony, has it brought racial division and conflict? The answer is not hard to discover. The unshakable fact is that you cannot cure racism with racism. To accept the diversity premise means to think in racial terms rather than in terms of individual character or merit. Taking jobs away from one group in order to compensate a second group to correct injustices caused by a third group who mistreated a fourth group at an earlier point in history (e.g., 1860) is absurd on the face of it and does not promote justice; rather, it does the opposite. Singling out one group for special favors (e.g., through affirmative action) breeds justified resentment and fuels the prejudices of real racists. People are individuals; they are not interchangeable ciphers in an amorphous collective.

Consider a more concrete, though fictional, example. Suppose that since its creation in 1936, the XYZ Corporation refused to hire redheaded men due to a quirky bias on the part of its founder. The founder now dies and an enlightened Board of Directors decides that something “positive” needs to be done to compensate for past injustices and announces that, henceforth, redheads will be hired on a preferential basis. Observe that: (1) this does not help the real victims — the previously excluded redheads; (2) the newly favored redheads have not been victims of discrimination in hiring, yet unfairly benefit from it; and (3) the non-redheads who are now excluded from jobs due to the redhead preference did not cause the previous discrimination and are now unfairly made victims of it. The proper solution, of course, is simply to stop discriminating based on irrelevant factors. Although redheaded bias is not a social problem, the principle does not change when you replace hair color with skin color.

The traditional and essentially correct solution to the problem of racism has always been color-blindness. But this well-intentioned principle comes at the issue negatively. The correct principle is individuality awareness. In the job sphere there are only three essential things an employer needs to know about an individual applicant: (l) Does the person have the relevant ability and knowledge (or the capacity to learn readily)? (2) Is the person willing to exert the needed effort? and (3) Does the person have good character, e.g., honesty, integrity?

It will be argued that the above view is too “idealistic” in that people often make judgments of other people based on non-essential attributes such as skin color, gender, religion, nationality, etc. This, of course, does happen. But the solution is not to abandon the ideal but to implement it consistently. Thus, organizational training should focus not on diversity-worship but on how to objectively assess or measure ability, motivation and character in other people.

The proper alternative to diversity, that is, to focusing on the collective, is to focus on the individual and to treat each individual according to his or her own merits. Americans have always abhorred the concept of royalty, that is, granting status and privilege based on one’s hereditary caste, because it contradicts the principle that what counts are the self-made characteristics possessed by each individual. Americans should abhor racism, in any form, for the same reason.

With a few heroic exceptions, such as Nucor and Cypress Semiconductor, which have defied quota pressures, business leaders (following the intellectuals) have been terror-stricken at the thought that there is any alternative to diversity. Their belief — that you can cure racism with racial quotas — is a hopeless quest with nothing but increased conflict and injustice as the end. It is time that business leaders find the courage to assert and defend the only true antidote to the problem of racism: individualism.

About the author

Edwin A. Locke is a professor of management at the University of Maryland at College Park and is recognized as one of the world’s most renowned experts in organizational behavior. For information on Mr. Locke, see his web site at http://www.edwinlocke.com.

Diversity & multi-culturalism, the new racism. Michael S. Berliner, Ph.D.

Two leading psychiatrists discuss how diversity indoctrination programs have actually encouraged and institutionalized the bigotry and societal divisions they say they’re trying to cure.
by Edwin A. Locke, Ph.D.

It is now taken as a virtual axiom that the way to cure racism is through the promulgation of racial and ethnic diversity within corporations, universities, government agencies and other institutions. The diversity movement has many facets: diversity awareness, diversity training, diversity hiring and admissions, diversity promotions, and diversity accommodations (e.g., special organizations and facilities at universities for groups baced on race or interest). The common feature in all these facets is: racial preference.

If diversity is the cure, however, why, instead of promoting racial harmony, has it brought racial division and conflict? The answer is not hard to discover. The unshakable fact is that you cannot cure racism with racism. To accept the diversity premise means to think in racial terms rather than in terms of individual character or merit. Taking jobs away from one group in order to compensate a second group to correct injustices caused by a third group who mistreated a fourth group at an earlier point in history (e.g., 1860) is absurd on the face of it and does not promote justice; rather, it does the opposite. Singling out one group for special favors (e.g., through affirmative action) breeds justified resentment and fuels the prejudices of real racists. People are individuals; they are not interchangeable ciphers in an amorphous collective.

Consider a more concrete, though fictional, example. Suppose that since its creation in 1936, the XYZ Corporation refused to hire redheaded men due to a quirky bias on the part of its founder. The founder now dies and an enlightened Board of Directors decides that something “positive” needs to be done to compensate for past injustices and announces that, henceforth, redheads will be hired on a preferential basis. Observe that: (1) this does not help the real victims — the previously excluded redheads; (2) the newly favored redheads have not been victims of discrimination in hiring, yet unfairly benefit from it; and (3) the non-redheads who are now excluded from jobs due to the redhead preference did not cause the previous discrimination and are now unfairly made victims of it. The proper solution, of course, is simply to stop discriminating based on irrelevant factors. Although redheaded bias is not a social problem, the principle does not change when you replace hair color with skin color.

The traditional and essentially correct solution to the problem of racism has always been color-blindness. But this well-intentioned principle comes at the issue negatively. The correct principle is individuality awareness. In the job sphere there are only three essential things an employer needs to know about an individual applicant: (l) Does the person have the relevant ability and knowledge (or the capacity to learn readily)? (2) Is the person willing to exert the needed effort? and (3) Does the person have good character, e.g., honesty, integrity?

It will be argued that the above view is too “idealistic” in that people often make judgments of other people based on non-essential attributes such as skin color, gender, religion, nationality, etc. This, of course, does happen. But the solution is not to abandon the ideal but to implement it consistently. Thus, organizational training should focus not on diversity-worship but on how to objectively assess or measure ability, motivation and character in other people.

The proper alternative to diversity, that is, to focusing on the collective, is to focus on the individual and to treat each individual according to his or her own merits. Americans have always abhorred the concept of royalty, that is, granting status and privilege based on one’s hereditary caste, because it contradicts the principle that what counts are the self-made characteristics possessed by each individual. Americans should abhor racism, in any form, for the same reason.

With a few heroic exceptions, such as Nucor and Cypress Semiconductor, which have defied quota pressures, business leaders (following the intellectuals) have been terror-stricken at the thought that there is any alternative to diversity. Their belief — that you can cure racism with racial quotas — is a hopeless quest with nothing but increased conflict and injustice as the end. It is time that business leaders find the courage to assert and defend the only true antidote to the problem of racism: individualism.

About the author

Edwin A. Locke is a professor of management at the University of Maryland at College Park and is recognized as one of the world’s most renowned experts in organizational behavior. For information on Mr. Locke, see his web site at http://www.edwinlocke.com.

The “Three Rs” ‘r’ now the “One E”: Education = Environmentalism. Local UN Agenda 21 Santa Cruz


Aptos High School “crosses the line” with secret behavior control exercise

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