Additionally, the
communication skills segment of the program has been
found to be profoundly important. Youth on drugs are
completely "out-of-communication" with the world
around them. Their destructive and anti-social behavior
is based on being factually unable to understand others
or to be understood. Therefore, their communication
skills are directly addressed immediately upon starting
the program, with drills of gradiently increasing
difficulty and skill. The gains from this program step
alone are considered remarkable by the Probation
Officers working alongside Narconon staff. But the truth
is these gains regarding communication skill are the
bedrock upon which the rest of the program
stands.
Young students who can
communicate with you do not need to strike you or to run
away.
Finally, other than the extraordinary
changes that accompany completion of the body
detoxification program, considerable stress is laid on
developing a workable and self-determined system of
ethics and morals for these youth. They begin the
program unable to distinguish between friend and foe, in
fact seeing them in reverse, but slowly they regain if
not evolve for the first time a personal sense of right
and wrong. This new and strong morality and personal
integrity is what must sustain them after program
completion. Adult students of the Narconon program must
go through the same evolution or redevelopment of a
sense of morality, but the problem with youth is that
they often do not have an earlier experiential record to
which they can compare a drug-free life. All too often,
what they knew as young adults or teenage youth was the
chaos and jungle rules of drug abuse. It is here that
Mr. Hubbard's instructional methodology for consulting
the actual understanding of a young student, in gradient
steps, comes to the fore and makes the difference.
The Narconon model NewLife juvenile rehabilitation
program has generated interest from juvenile court
judges and administrators worldwide. Their interest is
based partly also on the unique close working
relationship between the judges, the probation officers,
and the NewLife personnel. The probation officers
themselves do the steps of the program so that they have
personal knowledge and understanding of what the youth
under their supervision are doing. The Narconon students
under the jurisdiction of "State Supervision" must abide
by very stringent regulatory control of their movements
and activity during the program.
Thereby the Utah juvenile
court system, through providing this intermediary
measure of intensive probationary "state supervision",
allows for these youth to do the Narconon program while
still living at home instead of being taken away from
their family and institutionalized in a juvenile hall or
other detention center. This reinforces the structure
and values of the family rather than replacing them with
the strictures of public justice. Students who fail at
this intermediary measure may still be incarcerated, but
fortunately the great majority of the Utah Narconon
NewLife program's young graduates are living stably
drug-free and ethical lives. Most students post a
radical improvement in schoolwork as well.
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