Challenge Day and WWASPS

[post updated March 3, 2006]--this post was a mess, when I went back to look.  See the new post here.

Challenge Day sounds so good.  It was founded by Rich Dutra St. John and  Yvonne St. John Dutra, who are a husband and wife team, in 1987 ,according to the website. However...
Does Challenge Day actually improve school climates?
Is it good for kids?

Is there a connection between Challenge Day and some questionable organizations and practices?

From Lou Kilzer's 1999 article from the Scripps/Howard news service (as posted on Rick Ross's site)

Teen Help [another name for WWASPs] was started by Robert Lichfield, 45, a southern Utah businessman who lives on an estate in the spectacular canyon country near St. George. He hired David Gilcrease to create a behavior modification program to all but guarantee parents would see a change in their teens....Gilcrease had been trainer from 1974-81 for LifeSpring, a company that perfected a form of encounter session called "large group awareness training."

In April 2002,  according to an article published The Seattle Times (link is to Rick Ross's websitethe Seattle public schools allowed

the first joint venture involving Resource Realizations, the separate, nonprofit Challenge Day organization, graduates of Resource Realizations seminars, and public schools.

A letter from Resource Realizations founder David Gilcrease to the parents of Challenge Day participants said "the next step for your teen" is the company's three-day, $295 Teen Discovery seminar. Brochures were provided for a May 3-5 seminar at the Ramada Inn on Northgate Way. "While Challenge Day is a critical first step, a one-day learning experience only goes so far," Gilcrease wrote. "To create truly lasting transformation in their lives, most teens need more." Critics have accused Resource Realizations' seminars, like the better-known est and Lifespring trainings of the 1970s, of "brainwashing" participants. Gilcrease was a Lifespring facilitator for five years before starting his own company in 1986. Resource Realizations is a defendant in several lawsuits in which parents claim their children were emotionally abused by seminar facilitators or staff at behavior-therapy facilities where teen seminars are held. The company denies the allegations. Until now, the seminars have been pitched primarily to teens and parents of teens in the five member programs of the St. George, Utah-based World Wide Association of Specialty Programs.

Comments

[Aimee]

challenge day is in no way one involved with or one of those programs that trick you into spending tons of money to be brainwashed... nor is it one of those crazy programs where you have your kid kidnapped from your house to be taken to some remote location in utah... to have their behavior altered...

i am offended that an honorable organization such as challenge day would even be associated with or talked about in conjunction with anything such as the organizations you discribed

[Niles]

Challenge day not involved?

Gee golly willickers, it does the exact same thing! It just cant get away with nearly as much as a program can because its only 6 hours and they get to leave at the end of the day to go home.

LGATs in ALL forms are ineffective, and a single one-day 6 hour LGAT will not make any lasting changes... LGATs only make people change if its over a long period of time, and constantly refreshed and in an isolated, institutional environment to enforce it.

All that will happen is the bullies and other students who want to hurt others will know personal details about others and have more ammunition.

Also, you might want to look into actual psychotherapy... and the fact that this was all debunked decades ago.

Honorable my ass, it's a pyramid scheme.

[AfroWaygookin]

LGAT's Have AIDS!

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