I attended Arkansas Governors' School in 1992 when this was written (while X42 was running for Prez the first time). I don't have time to respond to all this right now, but I will say the truth is somewhere in the middle. The whole thing was slanted hard to the left, but it wasn't really brainwashing. Overall, I'd say it was a positive experience, but there were also obvious problems with the way it was structured.
If anyone has any particular questions you want a first-hand account on, fire away.
Tell us about it!
Did all groups participate in all the activities at the same time? Were you divided up? How would you describe Area II and Area III?
Where are you? We've got questions.
I attended Arkansas Governor's School in 1990. I received the exact same core curriculum and what has been presented in this forum as "brainwashing". I'm married, have children and a great career. I'm a registered Republican, slightly more conservative than moderate and have never once entertained killing myself. Although a shame, I firmly believe than anyone who is capable of being pushed over the edge by six weeks of liberal babble in high school isn't going to hold up for long in the real world. The ideology preached by many of the "professors" at AGS was openly confronted and rejected by those who held differences of opinion. It was a program for the mentally strong to be exposed to concepts and belief structures different than their own... and certainly not presented in any format that would compare to what we are asked to swallow on a daily basis in our jobs, our universities or from the televisions in our homes. I would hate to see what I found to be a stimulating exercise in free speech be boiled down to some liberal brainwashing experiment. Having experienced the exact same summer in question, I'd have to say it wasn't anything like it's being portrayed to be.