The Cronenberg College Annex: our main sponsor

Early History

Elias Cronengerg is our founder

Early Genesis

Elias Cronenberg was a wealthy merchand from Albany, Ny who raised with his wife Ruby 11 children, born between 1863 and 1874.

When his oldest daugther, Opal, was arrested for indecency (the details are lost to history ) in 1879 at the age of only 15, Elias fought for an alternative to prison back when rehabilitation wasn't the objective of the prison system. Juvenile offenders weren't really a thing yet.

The first State Reform School for boys had opened in 1848 and he used that history to open his own private reform school for girls in rural East Greenbush near Albany, NY, just to save his daugther from prison.

It was a dorm only reform school reusing a former private boarding school which closed during the civil war.

How nudity was added as a punishement

Like most other contemporary reform schools, a rigid schedule was used, a heavy discipline and a strict control of every aspect of the student's lives was used.

The theory behind these rules was that wayward kids needed to learn how to lead a proper life.

In 1881, a uniform was first imposed. It's not the same as today, notably thanks to improvements in fabric. Students were in charge of maintaining their uniform, having to wash them, iron them, sew any repairs and were expected to be in perfect condition at all time.

In 1884, one student, only recorded as being named Mabel, failed systematicaly to properly maintain her uniform. Wearing damaged, dirty or wrinkled uniform elements being banned, she found herself with only underwear to wear on a fateful day in February.

Underwear being see as obsene, she was forced to attend class completely nude (oddly seen as more appropriate), shivering from the cold, and ashamed of her nudity.

That night, she worked hours fixing her uniform and from that point, never failed a single inspection, terrified of doing it again.

By 1885, it was offical policy that any student with an unacceptable uniform would no longer be sent to change, but rather, would spend the rest of the day in the nude. Infractions lowered, and general respect of the rules increased.

In the 1880s, it was believed that discipline was the only way to cure children of their bad behaviors. We still believe at the annex that it's the only way, but woke liberals prefer talking about emotions, something that would have been laughed at back then.

In 1887, a fight occured between two students. After seperating them, on the spot, the teacher made them undress to ease the tension. It worked and nudity became an official punishment for most infractions to the school rules.

In 1888, all other punishements, including adding additional chores, a favorite of the time, were removed, leaving only public nudity as it was deemed more effective.

No longer a reform school

The reform program was unusally effective. Most parents were impressed enough to want to send their younger daugthers to prevent them from offending.

In 1893, the Cronengerg Academy began phasing out it's reform focus over a 7 year period.

In the first year, Grade 6 was reserved to the general public, while grades 7 to 12 were still a reform school. In the fall of 1894, the first 2 years were for the general public, so that in 1899, the Chronengerg Academy was no longer reform school at all, but it kept the same rigid education framework and still dispensed nudity as the only punishment

In 1901, the campus for renovated to triple capacity, and again in 1910. in 1903, a private school for girls in nearby Connecticut switch to the Cronenberg methods and by the start of the roaring 1920, 42 other schools in 23 states either converted to the Cronenberg methods or were founded with the methods in mind.

The Cronenberg Foundation

Elias Croneberg died in 1923 as a rich and powerful man. In his will, he donated 90% of his fortune to the creation of the Cronenberg Foundation to help establish a network of private schools for girls based on his methods. Please note, that at this time, Elias saw the nudity punishment as only a fraction of the values offered by his academy. At the annex, we are closer to his original values than those of the foundation, by enforcing limited play time, imposing self-reflection time, providing a natural simple food regime in restricted quantities and by pushing for hard work based on education. These were the values important for our founder.

There are reviews that he never even personally pushed for the nudity punishement, he simply trusted the professionals he hired.

By 1927, the Cronenberg Academy network grew to 92 schools in 37 of the 48 states. 90 of those schools are still operational, and one closed due to a fire during a renovation. The other was in North Dakota and never had full enrollement.

Walk-in students

Until 1949, all students were resident in the dorms, but that changed when one of the schools built in 1923, in Richmond, VA, had too much demands for admission compared to the size of its dorm. With 320 beds, it was a decent size school, but each year, it rejected over 400 admission requests. It was the first to expand by building only classrooms and not dorms, allowing walk-in students to attend during the day, and return home at the end of the day.

This seems more trivial than it was at the time. The core focus of the academies was on the discipline and chores performed by the students outside of the school time. With walk-in students, the school no longer has any reach on the student's chores. Parents would be encouraged to let the girls tend to their own uniform and do more chores, but the school couldn't control it.

It was controversal enough that it's only 4 years later that another school allowed walk-ins, in Norfolk. It wasn't a full school, with only 120 beds then (90 were converted to classes), when the next door private school closed, the building was purchased and it was the first school with a focus on walk-in students, keeping the remaining 30 beds only as a legacy.

Gradually, more schools opened without any dorms at all, and those with dorms often built expansions to allow walk-in students.

By 1961, over 230 Academies were functioning in 47 of the states (The one in Idaho deaffilated and stopped the nudity punishment in 1983).

Rural Academies

The original school was built in a forested area by the pre-civil war school. New Academies were often built more urban areas to more easily recruit staff, get students and get city services.

Overall, urban schools did better with recruitment but in 1971, a return to nature movement after the hippie deviance seemed to sweep the nation.

The foundation wondered how to capitalize when rural areas have no student pool, no teachers and no services.

Rural Academies were the answer: massive schools with dorms for the student, and free housing for the staff.

The first one, in the Olaton area of Kentucky, didn't use the Cronenberg branding. This was chosen in order to focus more on the fresh air offering and the strict education than on the nudity punishement to make sure it would fill its 522 beds dorm within 5 years. It took 3. More were opened, culminating in 2013 with the opening of the Cronenberg Everglades Rural Academy in Florida, with 8432 dorm students, filled 100% in 6 years while the dorm was still being constructed, so that each year, one more year of high school would be availble, instead of taking in older students like at Olaton.

Today, Rural Academies, unlike their urban counterparts, no longer accept any students past Grade 6 (Grade 7 for a few where Grade 6 is elementary ).

Modern sensibilities

Child Protection Services investigated several schools for the nudity punishment. The few times accusations were sent for prosecution, the District Attoney Office refused to prosecute.

The reality is that numerous studies had proven the track record of the academies:

• Graduates of the academies have on average 2.3 fewer sexual partners than those from other schools
• Teenage pregnancies are virtually absent in Cronenerg Academies, even for walk-in students. The national rate is 13.6 live birth per 1000 female 15-19. The rate for Cronenberg students and graduates is 2.1 live births per 1000 female 15-19, and that includes those who get married and have a child soon after high school.
• Age of first sexual relation with a boy is on average 3.1 years later
• Teenage delinquency is 84% lower
• Graduation rate on time is 99.6%. To be higher, we would need to not lose any of our students to car accident or cancer, and to not have them lose months to threat sicknesses.
• Divorce rates is 43% lower. A longitudinal study reveals that girls from the program are better at choosing a good partner, and more willing to work out on issues affecting the couple
• And more importantly, 93% of the graduates who answered the surveys would want their daugthers to a Cronenberg school if they could

Several small towns an academy have decided to allow punished students to be nude in public outings without fear of prosecution.

In truth, many of the most powerful women in country are from a Cronenberg Academy, and many of the most powerful men are married to a Cronenberg Academy wife.

When the boys came in

Elias Cronenberg believed that education was a solution mainly for troubled girls, that what troubled boys needed, was hard labor to prepare them for working what is now called blue-collar job.

It's in the 1960s that pressure to allow boys began mounting, mainly from parents who saw how well their daugthers were doing at Cronenberg and not finding a proper private school for their sons

Warning: this gets controversal

Elias Cronenberg was a product of his time and was a deeply racist man. He was against slavery, because he believed that white people and black people shouldn't cohabitate at all.

It's only in 1976, after the Runyon V. McCrary (1976) supreme court decision that black students were allowed in Cronenberg academies.

To set the record straight on other "races". Elias saw Italians and Irishmen as white, which was rare at the time. He also welcomed Asian Americans starting in 1904 in his school.

Elias had a high respect for Native Americans and only began accepting them in 1906 because before then, he thought that as a white man, he shouldn't teach them how to live.

Back to boys

Elias sincerly thought that there were two types of people, the troubled ones and the proper ones. He also believed, deep in his soul, that troubled teenage girls could become proper adult woman, but that troubled teenage boys would never be respectable members of society.

It is hard to tell if his stance is simply because he mainly focused on reforming troubled girls and protecting them from troubled boys or if he fully believed this.

In all cases, it's only in 1964 that the first Cronenberg Academy for boys opened, in Norfolk, on the same lot at the Academy for Girls.

It has seperated buldings with a tall brick fence between the two schools to prevent any mixing of the students.

The school was a success, with siblings on both sides of the fence, often from mothers (and now fathers) who studied at Norfolk.

It took 5 years for the 10th academy for boys to be opened, but by 1985, there were 100 opened, some a few blocks away from the always bigger Academy for girls.

Reformed Schools: co-ed facilities

The Alexandria academy was the first to end the gender segregation. It is a walk-in only school, and their facilitied were partially time-shared. They had a single physical education block, used in alternace between the boys and the girls. They had a single parking lot, and food was prepared in the girl's building and carried over to the boy's cafeteria.

In 1981, an experiment was tried to allow some combined school outings, with no punished students attending. That year, students shared a prom.

in 1982, the first joint classes and activities began. First, punished students were excluded, but in late October, a punished girl didn't want to miss an exam and insisted she didn't mind boys were in her class.

It's only in 1984 that the two schools were fully integrated, with an ending to splitting the groups in two genders. The school population was then 72% female, and is now close to 61%.

The school was expulsed from the foundation in 1982.

In 1987, two more schools had integrated their two halves, first Virginia Beach (but not the dorms who are still different buildings), then Fort Knox, a walk-in only school.

In 1990, a mixed gender private school in Atlanta, who had nothing to do with Cronenberg, decided to apply the principles to help with violence in the school.

When it worked, it formed with the 3 mixed schools the Reformed Cronenberg Schools association, which helped open 27 more reformed schools by 1999.

In 1997, the Cronenberg Foundation and the Reformed Cronenberg Schools association made a pact to work together in their common goal, with Reformed Cronenberg Schools association promising to not convert any more schools, and both promising not to encroach on each other's territory, after both groups began fighting for Lousiana and couldn't fill their schools 100% for several years, both losing money in the process.

Cronenberg today

Today, there are 351 Cronenberg Academies (including 21 rural academies, branded or not) for girls and 192 schools (including 18 rural academies, branded or not) for boys. There are 68 reformed schools for Boys and Girls, for a total of 611 schools, and over 862,000 female students and about 470,000 male students.

It is estimated that there are about 7 millions living graduates from the various schools.

There are also 4 regional reform colleges and one state level one, which allows Cronenberg graduates from many schools to avoid prison time for small to mid level of felonies and get a college degress instead.

Most states education programs and the majority of universities consider the Cronenberg schools to be a positive influence for society.

A study showed that 34% of the female politicians at all levels (municipal, county, state and federal) in Florida attended at least one year of a Cronenberg school, and 14% of the male politicians.

Four female federal members of parliament (3 Republicans and 1 Democrats) and one male federal member of parliement (Republican) openly talk about their time at their Cronenberg academy in session.