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Almost everything you have read, thus far, in our website has been designed to encourage you to come to this school. What we are going to say here will be designed to discourage some among the many who have logged onto our website. In some cases, this year, regardless of your age, may be a year or two too soon, and we will be seeking to persuade you to wait; in some cases what we will say may convince you that this is not the school for you at all — and that would be good for you to know right up front, would it not?
We built Freedom Mountain Academy so that a few young Americans could have a real-life school where they could live what they were learning about, rather than simply reading about it and talking about it in discussion groups. FMA is a place for students who have grown weary of so much talk and who want to put their lives to work learning by living as well as by studying.
“Youth Demands Adventure!”
Paul Petzoldt, who founded the National Outdoor Leadership School about the same time that I founded Academy of the Rockies (FMA’s precursor), used to say, “Youth demands adventure — high adventure!” He was right on. Your body, your mind, your soul and spirit are all at that point where you are ready for the adventure of meaningful independence. Yet you live in a society that seeks to keep you wrapped in a blanket of childish security, a society that calls you and your friends “kids” instead of what you really are — young men and young women.
Wrapped in childish security, kept “safe” from the experiences of real life, young men and women in their teens learn to rebel in order to satisfy what Petzold calls the demand for high adventure. Too many, tragically, seek the artificial adventure of drugs, high-speed, reckless driving, forbidden sex, and the thrill of “beating the system” by lying, stealing, and cheating at home and school.
Others who see the undesirable downstream effects of those actions simply suppress the demand for high adventure. They force themselves into near mindless apathy, becoming teenage couch potatoes or video-game junkies, aimlessly drifting through the malls and “hanging out.”
Fulfilling the demand for high adventure by seeking to lie and cheat at school and at home in order to meet the challenge of having your own way in a world of parental and schooling authority is understandable — at a certain, immature age.
Been There; Done That
All of us (or at least most of us — one of us included!) have been there and done that during the growing-up process. And sooner or later most of us mature to a point where we no longer get a thrill out of being able to con or cheat people who trust us. There are some, however, who have become stuck in that immature phase of development. Like Peter Pan, they refuse to grow up; they want to remain “kids” who are clever little tricksters. Such people suffer from what psychologists label “arrested development” or “arrested maturity.”
When “kids” like that go away to boarding schools they usually don’t wise up to the fact (until too late) that, sometimes quite soon after arrival, and sometimes later, their immature
thrill-seeking will be exposed; they will be discovered to be untrustworthy with respect to those who (in the real world at least) must be able to trust them.
At this unique, “real-life” boarding school the consequences falling upon a student who is untrustworthy are simple and swift. Anyone among our student body who cannot be trusted is out of here on the next plane home.
We Don’t Take Prisoners!
Do not — repeat, do not — allow your parents to send you to this school against your own better judgement. We don’t take prisoners. Students who come here not wanting to be here are usually the first to leave here. If you don’t want to get along with your classmates so that they can trust you and you can trust them, don’t come. We seek to enroll students who want to be getting on with their lives, not students who haven’t outgrown
self-indulgence and self-pity.
So when we write that Freedom Mountain Academy is a “real-life” place we mean just that. And if you are ready for that kind of experience then we welcome you.
We Don’t Play Games!
Freedom Mountain Academy is not a place where we play “kids-versus-teachers” games. It’s a place where you and we will be doing work in the woods or up in the wintertime mountains where sometimes we will have to be able to trust one another with our lives — or at the very least with our physical safety. In real-life environments, honor and trustworthiness are two of the most valuable character traits a young man or woman can possess.
Here at FMA we are a team. Everyone makes it to the top of the mountain on every one of our expeditions because we work as a team and nobody gets left behind. The same spirit prevails in the farm work and even in the classroom. Nobody gets sent home because of poor academic performance or for not being Superman or Wonder Woman in the mountains. There is only one thing that can get you kicked out of here: we find out that you cannot be trusted by the team that we are at FMA.
So if you are still stuck at that point of immaturity where you believe that it is cool to beat the system and that you are proving what a cool guy or girl you are because you can get away with it, then we urge you to put off coming here for a year or two until you have matured past the point of messing around with those games.
One-of-a-Kind; Once-in-a-Lifetime
All of us (who do not qualify for “arrested maturity”) have had to outgrow those games but the point is, if you have not yet outgrown them, don’t come here now and mess up the one opportunity you will have to encounter the one-of-a-kind and once-in-a-lifetime experiences that await students here. These experiences and the people with whom you will experience them will create vivid memories that you will never forget — experiences you will always enjoy recalling with your FMA classmates in the years ahead of you
The world of your future is not going to belong to the students in your generation who have the highest grade-point averages but rather to the students who use their minds to dream grandly and then have the self-discipline and self-control to push themselves forward and realize that grand dream. That is what we teach and live here at FMA.
Welcome Aboard!
If you have read this far and still think that Freedom Mountain Academy will provide you with an important year of high adventure in your life — and you think that now is the time for that adventure, welcome aboard! We are looking forward to having you join us for this grand venture. You, your classmates, and the rest of us here will soon be embarked on a great year of adventure, meaningful work, meaningful studies, growth, and friendships.
— Patricia and Kevin Cullinane
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