The Truth for Troubled Teens

My interview for admission at the John Dewey Academy, a therapeutic boarding school in the Berkshires, was marked by one word. “Fear!” barked Tom Bratter, immediately upon seeing me. I was then 15 years old, and had been refusing to attend school; instead, I hid out in bookstores and wrote. “Do you know what your problem is? It’s fear!” Tom, as most call him, founded the school 25 years ago to serve bright, troubled youth. Dean Ken Steiner, who also attended my interview, says the school’s focus is on “high expectations and high demands” and it’s “reality-based, choice-based.” The school accepts students like me, as I once was: bright, even academically successful, but crippled by poor coping mechanisms, which they’ve used to try to treat their anger, depression, and loneliness, and—yes—fear.

The school doesn’t allow the use of psychotropic medication (it’s not the place for those with genuine organic dysfunction), but, rather, seeks those students for whom medication has been a false solution to the problem of life, rather than a problem of biology.

Many who find their way to the school have abused substances, and for them, the message that drugs are not a cure may resonate particularly. I did not use illegal drugs, though I found some escape through the internet, an increasingly common addiction among new John Dewey students. In truth, though, it matters little what specific issues bring students to the academy: they range from drug abuse to physical self-harm to disordered eating and more. These are their symptoms. The feelings that underlie every student’s behavior are not only similar, but universal.


I was shocked that Tom seemed to pinpoint my problem, ‘fear,’ so immediately; I shouldn’t have been. “I think for every kid who has trouble,” says Dean Steiner, “everyone who has trouble, it’s rooted in three or four real issues that have been unresolved. Fear/insecurity, loneliness, anger/depression, which I think are two sides of the same coin—and figuring out how to deal with anger and depression, how to deal with insecurity and fear, how to deal with loneliness—which we all experience.

“I’ve always said it’s a shame you have to screw up to come to John Dewey,” he adds, though he admits it might be a hard sell to those who haven’t. “We’re very real, very raw, very confrontational. We deal with the truth. The truth is rock solid. Most people spend their life trying to avoid the truth.” John Dewey, instead, bases its approach on what institutional lingo names ‘caring confrontation,’ and stresses concrete accomplishments, academic and otherwise.

In many ways, it’s a typical college preparatory boarding school. The academics are rigorous, the teachers highly qualified. Most have Ph.d’s. Students attend class year-round, though summer classes are more relaxed. Graduates often end up at colleges like Williams College (my alma mater), Amherst College, Brown University, University of Chicago, and NYU. Students work hard at John Dewey; there are two or three hours of structured study hall a day, and a student-run academic advising program. It helps that the school is relatively free of damaging distractions. Students’ time is structured, and there are limits put on internet use, television-watching, and time spent playing video games. More importantly, students often realize it’s not in their best interest to waste time on those things, in any case.


Often, while I was there, I was simply too busy even to think of spending my time on something like a video game. In addition to attending classes and group therapy, which takes place every day in student-run groups and three or four times a week with clinical staff present, John Dewey students order and cook their own food and help maintain the grounds and buildings. Dusting is a daily chore. I came to love Pledge, particularly the pine-scented kind. Even during the second half of my senior year at the school, when I had given up my job as the student in charge of running the school’s kitchen and had more freedom, I found myself drawn toward more meaningful pursuits.

And John Dewey does promote a search for personal meaning, though it’s secondary to personal growth. Navel-gazing is less important to students’ psychology than goal-setting. If you sit in on one group session—there are three and often four weekly that include clinical staff, and nightly meetings for the students alone—chances are you’ll hear Tom shouting at a student to “Change!” Frequently, the raw exhortation comes with a sprinkling of profanity. And it works. No one, no matter what their accomplishments, is allowed to become complacent. Those who achieve good grades and stay on top of their chores are encouraged to become “moral leaders,” and to help their peers. The friendships made at John Dewey can be very deep and last for years; some of mine have. Many alumni remain tightly connected.

More important than the relationships the school lets you establish with others, though, is the relationship it allows you to establish with yourself. No one leaves John Dewey Academy ‘cured,’ because the school’s philosophy doesn’t frame people’s issues as illnesses. Rather, they leave—I left—profoundly changed, and prepared to continue to grow and change.

Of course, I’m still afraid sometimes, and sometimes want to withdraw from the world in any way I can. But now I find my refuge, such as it is, in seeking truth, and in my own and others’ honest opinions. John Dewey has a lot of rules, to be sure, though it’s a voluntary program and students may always choose to leave. But its lessons, not least of which is the importance of confronting truth, can set you free.