Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > Hyde Schools

History question

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Anonymous:
And this has WHAT to do with the topic of the post?

Anne Bonney:
Gives a good insight as to how Hyde works, since you don't seem to interested in attempting an answer.

Anonymous:
If you read that article carefully and you have half a brain, then you can figure out that Hyde is a Cult.

Anonymous:

--- Quote from: ""Anne Bonney"" ---Interesting reading.


http://www.educationnext.org/20051/22.html

Earlier this year, at the Hyde School, a private high school in Bath, Maine, dedicated to ?family-based character education,? I witnessed a confrontation in an 11th-grade honors English class the likes of which, it is safe to say, few educators or scholars have ever seen. The teacher, Barbara Perry, asked if everyone had finished reading the assigned novel, Edwidge Danticat?s The Farming of Bones. All but two of the dozen or so students had. It was a Monday, and Perry asked Brad, one of the two, if he had done any of the reading at all over the weekend.

?No,? said Brad. ?It was a really rough weekend for me. I?ve had a lot of trouble with believing in myself, and I?ve been trying to figure out where it comes from. Mr. Gauld [Malcolm Gauld, president and CEO of the Hyde Schools] thought it came from my father, and I should talk to him. I brought it up, and he got really upset.?

One of the kids jumped on Brad. ?You say you don?t believe in yourself, but you don?t give yourself an opportunity to believe in yourself. It?s like how you didn?t go to lacrosse practice on Saturday. I don?t know how not doing your work, not going to lacrosse, is going to make you believe in yourself.?

A chorus of ?uh-huh?s rose around the room. Miss Perry said gently, ?Do you know what you?re doing??

?Do I know what I?m doing?? Brad repeated, in a heartbreakingly toneless, defeated voice. ?Hardly.?

And now the other students tried to direct Brad to the deeper causes of his malaise. He was, they said, holding something back. ?I?m really worried about you,? said one of the girls.

A boy turned to Brad and said, ?I was talking about you to my mom yesterday?how you have this reputation for being the kid who fluctuates the most. It?s up to you whether you?re going to be in charge or not.?

Brad listened silently. Finally, he said, ?So I guess I should leave now??

?It?s up to you,? Miss Perry said. Brad pushed his chair back, gathered up his books, and left. And only then did the class begin to discuss The Farming of Bones.

Both students and teachers assured me that this exercise in tough love was nothing out of the ordinary at Hyde; several kids said that they had been on the receiving end of it themselves, to their lasting benefit. Radical truth telling, accompanied by an ethos of mutual responsibility known as ?Brother?s Keeper,? lies at the core of Hyde?s vision of character development. And these principles are meant to guide the conduct of not just the students but all the adults in what is very consciously referred to as ?the Hyde community??teachers, administrators, parents. Everyone is obliged to hold everyone else to the standards they themselves would wish to be held to. The Hyde experience is, if nothing else, exhausting.
--- End quote ---


Do you cite this as an endorsement of Hyde?  Read the rest of the article.  The author refers to Hyde's cult-ish qualities and clearly had major concerns about what happens at Hyde.

Anonymous:

--- Quote from: ""Anne Bonney"" ---Interesting reading.


http://www.educationnext.org/20051/22.html

Earlier this year, at the Hyde School, a private high school in Bath, Maine, dedicated to ?family-based character education,? I witnessed a confrontation in an 11th-grade honors English class the likes of which, it is safe to say, few educators or scholars have ever seen. The teacher, Barbara Perry, asked if everyone had finished reading the assigned novel, Edwidge Danticat?s The Farming of Bones. All but two of the dozen or so students had. It was a Monday, and Perry asked Brad, one of the two, if he had done any of the reading at all over the weekend.

?No,? said Brad. ?It was a really rough weekend for me. I?ve had a lot of trouble with believing in myself, and I?ve been trying to figure out where it comes from. Mr. Gauld [Malcolm Gauld, president and CEO of the Hyde Schools] thought it came from my father, and I should talk to him. I brought it up, and he got really upset.?

One of the kids jumped on Brad. ?You say you don?t believe in yourself, but you don?t give yourself an opportunity to believe in yourself. It?s like how you didn?t go to lacrosse practice on Saturday. I don?t know how not doing your work, not going to lacrosse, is going to make you believe in yourself.?

A chorus of ?uh-huh?s rose around the room. Miss Perry said gently, ?Do you know what you?re doing??

?Do I know what I?m doing?? Brad repeated, in a heartbreakingly toneless, defeated voice. ?Hardly.?

And now the other students tried to direct Brad to the deeper causes of his malaise. He was, they said, holding something back. ?I?m really worried about you,? said one of the girls.

A boy turned to Brad and said, ?I was talking about you to my mom yesterday?how you have this reputation for being the kid who fluctuates the most. It?s up to you whether you?re going to be in charge or not.?

Brad listened silently. Finally, he said, ?So I guess I should leave now??

?It?s up to you,? Miss Perry said. Brad pushed his chair back, gathered up his books, and left. And only then did the class begin to discuss The Farming of Bones.

Both students and teachers assured me that this exercise in tough love was nothing out of the ordinary at Hyde; several kids said that they had been on the receiving end of it themselves, to their lasting benefit. Radical truth telling, accompanied by an ethos of mutual responsibility known as ?Brother?s Keeper,? lies at the core of Hyde?s vision of character development. And these principles are meant to guide the conduct of not just the students but all the adults in what is very consciously referred to as ?the Hyde community??teachers, administrators, parents. Everyone is obliged to hold everyone else to the standards they themselves would wish to be held to. The Hyde experience is, if nothing else, exhausting.
--- End quote ---


Much of what the Hyde PR machine touts sounds very good in theory.  And, I'll concede that during my time at Hyde I met some genuinely committed, dedicated professionals.  But there's no doubt in my mind that when you look at the big picture at Hyde you find so many examples of poorly qualified staff who mistreat students, staff who don't come close to living up to the Hyde ideals.  There are so many problems at Hyde that the nice sounding literature and speeches are misleading.  The good stories that come out of Hyde (I know there are some) are completely overshadowed by the tidal wave of bad stories.

Hyde reminds me a lot of what happened to Karl Marx's vision.  On paper the model sounds quite good.  But the implementation has been so flawed (see the former Soviet Union and China) that the system can't survive or live up to the ideals.  Sounds like Hyde to me.

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