The Boston Globe:
The mother of a 12-year-old boy who alleges he was beaten by Boston Public Schools staffers while on a field trip to Rhode Island last weekend said that her son came home covered in bruises serious enough to warrant a hospital visit.
``He said leaders put them in a circle and punched each in the chest for things he's done around the year," the boy's mother said in an interview Thursday.
The woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity to protect her son's privacy, said the boy alleges other children were also struck during the trip....
While all students on the trip have been interviewed, none of the staff members have been because of their lawyers' and union representatives' schedules.
Anand Vaishnav, a spokesman for Boston Public Schools, said yesterday that the Outward Bound-style program under which the alleged abuse occurred has been suspended until the investigation is complete. The program, known as Rites of Passage, emphasizes personal growth and self-awareness and is an after-school activity offered in at least two Boston public schools....
The boy's mother said her son, who she said was bruised across the chest and on the arms, was struck when he left to return to camp. She said her son is receiving counseling.
``I don't know if it's tough love," the mother said. ``He's confused and hurt . . . and couldn't understand why he was being treated like that."
Winston C. Cox, former principal of Harbor School, and founder of the "Rites of Passage" program there:
In Herman Hesse’s Sidhartha, we meet a boy who is seeking to leave the comforts of his princedom to find enlightenment in the realities of the outside world.... This academic year, in Dorchester, Massachusetts, 19 young men are
beginning to play out their own 21st century version of this universal journey through The Boys’ Rites of Passage Program (ROP).
Three adult males, including myself, are providing direction for these youth to succeed in their journey. Our backgrounds complement one another as we redefine our own personal answers to what it means to be a man. Mark Clarke is a fiery black nationalist and intellectual....
As we interact with these young men in various settings—while shooting pool,
listening to a lecture at a mosque, doing rope courses on Thompson Island, or taking in an elegant Alvin Ailey dance performance—we are constantly engaged with this question....
At the conclusion of Sidhartha, the prince has become an old man. He has found Nirvana or divine peace. He has also realized that the Samsara, the seemingly endless and sometimes painful cycles of life, death, and rebirth, are not mutually exclusive.... The young men of the ROP program are still far from being enlightened, but there is something about Sidhartha’s truth in our work.
From the Rites of Passage web site:
We are an integration of past energies and experiences, and the potential creativity within our personalities is reflected within the name we have taken upon us for this incarnation....
In the process of reincarnation, our true essence must slow its intensity and vibration down to the point at which it can integrate with the physical vehicle it has chosen. To do this it builds bands of energy about it -- what is often termed subtle bodies. These bands of energy slow the vibration down so that our physical vehicles do not "burn up" in the process of integration, and they filter out the intense energy vibrations so that we can function and learn what we most need to learn while in the physical....
This filtering, along with the density of the physical body, causes us to lose much contact with our higher essence and consciousness. Our soul though, 'in its infinite wisdom, realized that the shock and density of physical form would create this problem, so it makes sure there are some built-in "reminders." It chooses a time and place of incarnation in which the universal energies can work in our lives to provide the learning circumstances, and it chooses a name whose vibration will serve as a catalyst for certain energies to play upon us throughout the incarnation....
And this, on how to "harvest" the next generation of children:
African Life Paradigm
Beliefs/Principles
1. Humanity and nature are one.
2. Both humanity and nature experience cyclical, periodic and inevitable change.
3. In nature these changes are celestial. In humanity they are called "life crisis."
4. Both humanity and nature functions by the law of "regeneration" which state the energy in all systems is eventually spent and must be renewed at intervals.
5. In nature this process symbolized as a Death and Rebirth sequence, is monitored by rites of passage.
6. "Life Crisis," by definition, are disruptive to both the individual and to the community.
7. The rites of passage, which assist and cushion the individual's passage, consisted of three essential phrases: separation (pre-liminal), transition (liminal), and incorporation (post liminal).
You'll note echos of these principles in the statements offered by Principal Cox.
In short, we have a program which appears to be sponsored by a major national education program (SEED), is founded and run by public school staff members, and is based on, and imparts, a definite metaphysical/religious worldview.
(Oh, and apparently involves abusive, cult-like, coercive activities, which got a bit out of hand this time, or we would never have learned about them.)
"Separation of church and state" is a nice idea. There are movements, like bible or Torah study groups, that admit they are religious in nature. Thus their actions are restricted and carefully controlled.
But there plenty of others who disguise they fact they carry an equally religious (or sometimes anti-religious, which is also a kind of religion) agenda. So does "separation of church and state" mean that the one should be banned from schools, while the others, in fact, receive state funding, and privileged, secretive access to indoctrinate and mould our children?
Apparently.