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This sort of thing is necessary for the milieu control that is necessary for thought reforming environment. Robert J. Lifton called it "the cult of confession."
People are psychologically coerced into considering passing acquaintences one's closest friends and confidants, and are further coerced into telling them things they'd only tell lifelong friends or God in private. In this way the natural order of human affection is inverted, so that the organization, and not one's relationships of natural affection, is the most important relationship in the neophyte's life.
A thought reforming organization inverts the beneficial effect of talking things over with ones comrades. Instead, it becomes primarily an act of symbolic surrender, an expression of merging the individual with the organization. Confessions before the group helps thought reformers to totally expose organization members. Ego boundaries become blurred. The boundary between what one wishes to keep private and what one wishes to make public becomes blurred. Using this faux camaraderie, the organization can learn everything possible about the life experiences of individuals, their thoughts, their passions, their fears, and most especially, their weaknesses. A persons psychological buttons are quickly discovered, and later are pressed incessantly to further manipulate his or her feelings and behavior. All this is explained as sensitivity training.
It is a common practice in totalitarian organizations and borderline psychotic religious cults, and is one reason I refer to militant homosexuals and their associates "The Cult of the Anus."
The fact that it is common in schools is cause enough to take up arms.