Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > Hyde Schools
Joe Gauld... on Education
Ursus:
--- Quote from: ""Joe Gauld"" ---I'd like to shoot whoever first decided American schools could be run by "elected'' officials.
--- End quote ---
Uummm... Was the editor at Education Week asleep the day this got published? Hmm... Perhaps allowing this through was deliberate.
Later, in the same paragraph:
--- Quote from: ""Joe Gauld"" ---By contrast, the "Hyde Board of Governors'' assigns itself just three tasks: 1) approve all short- and long-range plans; 2) evaluate the administration; and 3) keep us from shooting ourselves in the foot. They expect us to operate like high-level professionals and will simply find someone else if we don't.
--- End quote ---
Fat chance the Board "will simply find someone else" when Gauld got them the job in the first place. I do believe one could call that being "elected" by Joe Gauld, ha!
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Addendum: Oops! Just noticed that Guest beat me to the punch! Guess I was not the only one whose eye was triggered by that phrase! :lol:
Ursus:
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/1997/ ... d.h16.html?
Education Week
Web Only
Published: April 23, 1997
DEPARTMENTS
Why American Education Is Failing
Two new, crucial, and interrelated skills will control the fate of American education: (1) How to more deeply motivate growing youngsters; and (2) How to systemically address parental growth and family issues.
Last year, the president of IBM called all U.S. governors together and got them to agree that establishing national standards is the way to solve America's educational woes. Clearly, they believe the problem is underachieving American teachers, students, and parents, who simply need to be held to a higher standard.
But the late W. Edwards Deming, who is credited with transforming Japan's industry into world leadership, brilliantly taught business leaders how to distinguish between problems caused by an underachieving system, as opposed to those caused by underachieving workers. When asked what he thought of America's educational system, he replied, "It is horrible."
In 1962, as a dedicated teacher, I suffered a crisis of conscience when I realized I was part of an educational system that was failing kids everywhere. This led to my founding a private school in Bath, Maine, to explore more deeply the process of how youngsters are effectively prepared to live meaningful lives. Here is what I believe the 30-year experiment at my school has uncovered:
Motivation holds the key to educational success. Horace Mann noted that, given a year to teach spelling, he would spend the first nine months just on motivation. The Hyde School experiment rediscovered that the deepest human motivation is self-discovery. We learned to appreciate why the ancient Greeks stressed the dictums "Know thyself" and "Become what you are."
Hyde found that at about age 13, our deeper intellectual, physical, emotional, and spiritual capacities begin to empower us to fulfill a unique and larger vision of ourselves; and further, that adolescence is to serve as its foundation. Just as we will not grasp algebra without first mastering the fundamentals of arithmetic, so we will not fulfill our larger selves without first discovering and developing our deeper intellectual, physical, emotional, and spiritual resources during this critical period.
This comprehensive human-growth process is well beyond the scope of our present educational system, which essentially expects to motivate student achievement through the vision of better jobs and more money. As powerful as these ego motivations might seem, they fail to reach the deeper and more spiritual motivations and resources in students. In fact, this system distracts students from their deeper self-discovery motivation by unwittingly encouraging their more instant-gratification ego motivations--often expressed in drugs and alcohol, sex, cigarettes, aggression, image, cliques, vandalism, shoplifting, cheating, and other negative outlets.
Moreover, this system's narrow and shortsighted focus on academic achievement unfortunately favors certain inborn abilities and learning styles, which often results in widespread resistance, apathy, and even hostility in students. If we study the varied human learning styles based on the individuation theory of psychiatrist Carl Jung, we will realize that the learning styles of only 12.5 percent of us really fit well in traditional classrooms. If the rest of us hope to succeed in schoolwork, we must scurry around adjusting our more innate approaches to thinking and learning. This may help explain why years of schooling play such a limited role in how most of us actually conduct our lives.
But the American business-university complex has sold the public--and therefore our politicians--on the idea that "world-class academic standards" hold the key to America's future. Therefore, test-score "achievement" will increasingly dominate our schools, thus further exacerbating America's continuing conflict between what it rigidly defines as "academic excellence" and the reality of America's wide diversity of individual potential.
The losers? Many of those who fail to adjust their diverse learning styles to fit the system. Some who get stuck in family dysfunctions that nobody addresses. Others that lack the kind of family support that is almost essential to success in our system. And all of this is producing growing hordes of kids who get seduced into what our wrongheaded system has helped create: today's overpowering and hedonistic youth culture. Kids are born with a deeper spirit that will seek to express itself; if we don't give it a right path, it will usually take whatever it can get.
If we were to examine the educations of all those who actually achieve excellence and fulfillment in life, we probably would be shocked by how many had rebelled against our narrow system, and instead listened to their own inner calling. Do we know the number of Thomas Edisons, Orville Wrights, Albert Einsteins, and Eleanor Roosevelts who made it in spite of us, and who ended up leading most of those who trusted our system?
A recent poll indicates that students also overwhelmingly want higher academic standards. Why? Just for the sake of "getting a college degree." The study sadly reports: "The vast majority of youngsters showed little curiosity or sense of wonder." Do we really believe our system will somehow magically transform such kids into dynamic individuals in life?
If our system is in fact failing to help American students discover and develop their deeper potentials, then when they become parents, they will likely support the same faulty indoctrination of their children.
Is this happening today? Our experiment in Maine found that effective child rearing depends on parental growth. A child cannot raise a child; effective parents need to learn: (1) how to "let go" of their own unproductive childhood experiences and attitudes; (2) how to let go of their own parents; (3) how to grow emotionally and spiritually, as well as intellectually and physically, en route to (4) pursuing the discovery of their own deeper selves and larger purpose in life. Few American parents today have experienced this deeper growth. So how can "national standards" address this deeper systemic problem?
The Hyde concept, which has now been successfully tested in public schools, first and foremost seeks to draw upon the powerful self-discovery motivation in students. Its "Character First" process builds on the premise that each of us is gifted with a unique potential that defines a destiny.
This premise gains further strength by renewing America's commitment to the dignity and worth of each individual. It radically restores character development as a school's primary task. (As Heraclitus noted, "Character is destiny.") This in turn firmly centers the entire educational process on the family; because in character development, parents are the primary teachers, and the home the primary classroom.
Our work has proven that this simple intrinsic rather than extrinsic focus can dramatically transform education as it is practiced in America today:
* It creates a strong student-teacher-parent bond; character and unique potential are primarily developed by example, so parents, teachers, and students alike individually participate in the overall process.
* It leads students to realize that their many ego responses to the present achievement system are counter to their deeper desire to fulfill their true selves.
* Students dramatically come to expect the best in each other; they help each other maintain high academic and ethical standards.
* Character excellence inevitably leads to academic excellence; while we do not prescreen students academically, 97 percent of our graduates have matriculated to four-year colleges.
* Teachers can be trained to fully oversee the Character First process in just three years; in fact, we have observed teachers leading students and colleagues after only a six-day workshop.
But this is hard stuff. It requires both parents and teachers to realize that they themselves grew up in the wrong system, and that now they must lead by the example of their own changes and growth. We find that students, in time, gratefully and enthusiastically respond to this leadership. And in every case so far, when the parent "gets" the concept, so does the kid, although not always by graduation time.
The choice is ours. We can buy the national-standards solution, blame the school "workers," and hold them responsible through test scores. Or we can finally begin to act like Americans, roll up our sleeves, and inspire growing kids by our own example of growth. I guarantee they will follow.
Joseph W. Gauld is the founder of the Hyde School in Bath, Maine, and the author of Character First: The Hyde School Difference (San Francisco: ICS Press, 1993). The Hyde School's home page can be accessed on the Internet at http://www.hyde.pvt.k12.me.us.
silentlysinging:
--- Quote from: ""Joe Gauld"" --- Even beginning Hyde teachers have proven effective in this new role.
--- End quote ---
Hyde teachers? If you could call them that. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it true that a lot of the staffmemembers that teach at Hyde don't even have teaching degrees, and some don't have college degrees at all? Of course, he failed to mentioned that. Wouldn't an educational publication find this horrifying? I think so.
--- Quote from: ""Joe Gauld"" ---The biggest educational concern of adults today seems to be that the poor academic skills of young people are screwing up our businesses and universities. What incredible arrogance! Kids are not some herd of cattle designed for our purposes. As Kahlil Gibran so wisely wrote about children: "... [T]heir souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.'' So help children believe in their own spirit, and they will provide the leadership for tomorrow's world.
--- End quote ---
You're right, Joe, kids are not some herd of cattle designed for your or anyone's purposes. Do you realize that Hyde is not improvement from the school system you claim to loathe so much, but in fact much worse? Much, much worse. In so many ways. Do you beleive all this shit about how wonderful Hyde is? Are you so deluded as to really think that the environment you've created is actually a healhty and positive one, an ideal one like the one you describe it as being? Do you really believe this? Are you that far gone? Or are you just an atrocious, psychopathic lying piece of shit with no regard whatsoever for actual morals? Help kids believe in their own spirit?? For fuck's sake, Hyde breaks more spirits than anything. Okay, and I love Khalil Gibran, and it really bothers me that Gauld quotes him, because it's fucking Gauld. and I think it's a bit out of context here. what the hell
--- Quote from: ""Joe Gauld"" --- 100 percent of Hyde graduates are being accepted to recognized four-year colleges.
--- End quote ---
Wow...just...wow. THAT IS A BLATANT LIE, and he has the nerve to preach integrity??
:flame:
silentlysinging:
--- Quote from: ""Guest"" ---
--- Quote ---* (cheating flourished because achievement outweighed the untaught value of integrity; helping others was discouraged because there were only so many A's to go around; conformity was encouraged because being what friends or teachers wanted you to be got you ahead; etc.)
--- End quote ---
Get real.
Conformity is necessary to SURVIVAL at Hyde. Its the only way you can get ahead or even just get everyone off your back.
"Helping others" is better known as "Brother's Keeper" also known as snitching and ratting out your best friends in the REAL world. For stupid shit like smoking a fucking cigarette or even having mean thoughts about your piss-ass roommate who uses your damn towel and wears your clothes without asking.
"Integrity" my ass. Its the same old game. They just switched the goal posts.
"Achievement" is not measured by how well you do in academics. no. Achievement is now measured by how well you confront your classmates about all their deficiencies and just how much you rip your guts out in public telling everyone about stupid shit you used to do, and stupid shit your parents do, and well you can cry in Disco Grp.
Whats the point? Think THATA gonna do anyone any good in the long run?
--- End quote ---
YES. Conformity is necessary to survival at Hyde; it is the only way anyone gets through Hyde... The irony of his comments about cheating and conformity here would almost be funny if it all wasn't so fucking sad.
Ursus:
--- Quote from: ""Joe Gauld"" ---This comprehensive human-growth process is well beyond the scope of our present educational system, which essentially expects to motivate student achievement through the vision of better jobs and more money. As powerful as these ego motivations might seem, they fail to reach the deeper and more spiritual motivations and resources in students. In fact, this system distracts students from their deeper self-discovery motivation by unwittingly encouraging their more instant-gratification ego motivations--often expressed in drugs and alcohol, sex, cigarettes, aggression, image, cliques, vandalism, shoplifting, cheating, and other negative outlets.
--- End quote ---
I beg to differ with Joe Gauld's characterization of the American school system as operating solely to "motivate student achievement through the vision of better jobs and more money." I think any decent self-respecting teacher who has gone into his or her profession with a love of kids and learning would take issue with him as well. To reduce our educational system to one functioning purely on "ego motivations" is laughable at best. Does he really expect to be taken seriously?
Who does Joe Gauld think he is to insinuate that only his particular brand of "life instruction" is worthy of a respect reserved for the real deal? It is insulting to all of us.
I am beginning to wonder about Education Week's motivation for publishing all these Gauld diatribes. Is this some right wing crackpot publication linked to some conservative think tank? Or are they hoping their tolerance for his rantings will enable him to figuratively hang himself, and save everyone else from the trouble?
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