B mod NOT

In one more example of the mis-representation of “behavior modification,” another of those facilities aimed to serve (not the right word?) children and youths with behavior that their parents find unacceptable has been identified as a “behavior modification facility. Tranquility Bay, more accurately characterized as an extremely strict re-education camp, is the subject of a documentary. It is one of the schools affiliated with the World Wide Association Of Specialty Programs and Schools (WWASPS), a group that has had facilities closed because their methods were inhumane (see example of a story from New York Times appended here).

There are many problems with calling these places “behavior modification facilities.” To be sure, the generic use of the term fits. However, those of us who teach about behavior modification neither recommend nor employ the practices used at these facilities.

See Child and Family Studies site at the University of South Florida for some thoughtful documents about these sorts of facilities. Also, note that Liz Ditz has included several relevant posts in the section on private and therapeutic schools at her blog. I need to dig up a letter that I wrote to a reporter in the late 90s or early 00s about this mis-use of behavior modification.

A person who blogs as LadyCMog has a link to the documentary about the
Tranquility_Bay_-_Documentary_on_Behavior_Modification_Centers. There are also other discussions about the Tranquility Bay facility and others like it; see Coalition Against Institutionalized Child Abuse, CAFETY, National Youth Rights Association (which also misuses “behavior modification”), Alternet, and elsewhere.

May 23, 2003
Costa Rica Intervenes at Troubled U.S.-Owned Academy
By TIM WEINER
The New York Times

MEXICO CITY, May 22 The Costa Rican authorities moved today to seize an American-owned behavior-modification academy for children after hearing allegations of physical and emotional abuse, officials said.

Parents and program officials described a chaotic scene at the site, the Academy at Dundee Ranch, where about 200 children, ages 11 to 17, almost all of them Americans, live in a former hotel under a strict regimen.

They said 30 to 50 children had fled on foot or into the custody of Costa Rican officials, after the officials told them they could not be held at the academy against their will. One parent, who was present, described the situation as pandemonium.