I just confirmed with a friend of mine. It was Don McMillan who lost his temper after a kid spit at him. He grabbed him by the neck and choked him. I guess that Psychology degree did him a lot of good.....not! It must have been one of the other Gauld's who admitted to plagiarism and then took a leave of absence or "resigned." As you said, the staff who run this school are quite the hypocrites. The Administrators try to put a different spin on their disfunction by saying things like, "so and so is going to take a leave of absence to try and work on himself and do some discovery." This would all be pretty funny if these were not the same people you were intrusting your kids to. These are the ones who are supposed to be a good example to your kids?
Mmmmm.... And what happens to the kid who, by ill-thought happenstance, is found guilty of such a sin, e.g., plagiarism? Are they given such same benefit of "doubt"? Ay-yaeh-yaeh... NO! They are expelled under a veritable typhoon cloud of shame and disgust! What a circus!
CIRCUS, n.
A place where horses, ponies and elephants are permitted to see men, women and children acting the fool.
http://www.alcyone.com/max/lit/devils/c.html
Ursus, you sound like a disgruntled ex-student and you are very childish in your postings. Grow up.
Also, if you can't point out positives and negatives, then you are very biased and not capable of giving a fair objective view. A frustration of mine is the ignorance. Not ignorance in the disrespectful sense, but the descriptive. Many of you think you know what you are talking about. My mom even thinks she knows what she's talking about sometimes. But you never really know until you've been there. For former students, you need to have seen both sides: been the off track and the on track. I wasn't off-track for terribly long, and I was off in a different way that didn't involve going out and getting messed up at night. Once you're on, you have a better chance of seeing what really goes on in the innerworkings. Granted, not to the extent that you hear the entire schemings going on in the headmistress's office, but enough to know. But I can't stress enough, for some reason, that the philosophy at the core of it all is all-good. There's no negative to trying to be a better person. Some ideas that branch off of that good idea don't have to be your bible, nor are the practices of the concept perfect or even close. But I'd like you to point me to a school that does have it almost all correct because I guarenttee (to prospective families), your child's current public school DOES NOT have it. No school's perfectly right and I think they all want us to be better people, but Hyde (along with others, although the practices do vary) pursues that idea. It's not for everybody, but you never know until you try it. Not attend, but truly try it without taking things personally. And I think that's a big reason why so many parents (including my own) get disgruntled: because some just can't let something slide. Talking to parents, I hear a lot of complaints about feedback given to them. There's a reason why we have seminar guidelines. One of them says not to take them personally. I used to take them personally too. But I am now comfortable with myself enough to know that I can dismiss something, think about it later, and if it still doesn't apply, then I can forget about it, no strings attached. I say "Chill angry-parent-who-heard-something-they-didn't-like, it's okay." But students, faculty, parents, many people have a hard time with that because the ego gets in the way. Ego is a tough son-of-a-bitch to break, but it needs to be done in order to ever be a learner going into any conversation. I wish some of ya'll could see it as objectively (or as close as any real human being can get to objective, b/c there's got to be a bias inside of all of us to some extent) or as close to objectivity (word check) the way I feel I do. Because it is a lot simpler than the bickering, the seminars, the 5:30s, the 2-4, inspection, classes, sports, lights out, Mr. Felt, confrontations, AICR, action-reflection, ditto, bing, EEMO, Mr. Bragg, IPSES, the Words and Principles, Summer X, crews, attitude, being dirty, Joe Gauld, breaking ethics, push-ups, outpost, inpost, feedback, seminar guidelines, truth over harmony, the 10 Priorities, The Biggest Job, retreats, regionals, sober breaks, serenity, FLC, allowance, accountabilities, Summer Challenge, Family Weekends, Mrs. Gauld, Mr. Walsh, busts, senior year, 4 year seniors, a rose at graduation, seeing my family and friends stand up as a I make a speech...it's about "Hey. I'm on a journey to become a better person. I see you are too. Let's help each other. You may not be right, but I'm open to hear suggestions." To simplify it more: "I want to be a better _____". Practice and protocol aside, it boils down to that. If you can let go of imperfections in the help you get, good for you. Apparantly, we're some of the few.
Don't turn it into a belief. It's about a very good idea. But don't build a belief structure around it (although many have).
BTW, Europe's pretty cool. I'm in an internet cafe in London. Weather's nice. Going to go see a bunch of cool stuff tomorrow apparantly. Didn't realize how weak our dollar is though. Tsk tsk. Let me know what ya'll thought, but of course I didn't need to ask for that.
