I have never responded to this website, and only learned about it after we had taken our child out of Hyde. I went to it because of something I had recently read about it, and started reading. Much/some of what I read on it confirms our experience there.
We looked at Hyde not because our child was "troubled" or in trouble, nor was our child in any substance abuse or the like. Our reason for looking at various schools other than our local public school was because the aspirations rate at our school was extremely low with only about 20% of the graduates attending a 4 year school after graduation. We felt those lack of aspirations were as infectious as when a school enjoys high aspirations. We also made the mistake of geography. We only looked at schools within a day's driving distance of our home, which Hyde is.
After reading all the literature, doing the well presented campus tour with a polite and amiable student and sitting in on the "are you ready to accept excellence in your life?" interview, we thought - hmmm, excellence as a goal for every student! What a great concept. How could it be wrong? Let's do it. Our child trusted us and agreed with our motives and plans and willingly went along to enroll at what we called this "once in a lifetime opportunity."
Until I die, I will be haunted by the fact that I took my good, naive kid and turned him/her over to what is now clear to me to be a cult. I also introduced my child to kids with more problems than I had ever heard of. My child's roommate, the dorm captain, ran a tight ship. There was a chronic Dorm thief and this captain punished the group collectively. At one point, accusing my child of being the thief, which was very distressing for my child. Come to find out, at almost the end of the year, they found the thief - the thief was the Dorm Captain. Great stuff to subject your kid to, while spending a fortune on their supposed development of excellence.
I wish someone would investigate this school, its administration most of whom are nepotists, and its young underacheiving, ill educated, brainwashed "faculty." The only scholarly thing I found among any of the faculty members is some of them "graduated" with a bachelors from Bowdoin, although without any kind of education degree. They spent so many hours dealing with kids trying to keep them from their worst- they had no time to really look at the good kids and move them to the best. Their promotional materials are a glossy patina over a very troubling place.
I think the school, whether intended or not, is a holding tank for desperate well off parents, who are willing to surrender their parenting to abusive mind-game playing individuals while surrendering their personal liberty and dignity. If you don't fit that mold, I suspect you, like me, will have serious misgivings about the place.
I wish I had done what you are doing. ..to ask the parents of former Hyde students. The year our child was there was the worst year of my life and theirs. I hope I am forgiven for what we did by putting our child there, despite our good intentions.
I could go on for hours detailing what I experienced and what my child experienced. Suffice to say it started the moment of our arrival when the parents were shuffled off to the first of what became about 20 "group counseling" sessions run by non-professionals, where parents were confronted and severly pressured to talk about humiliating or private troubles. Of course if you could not identify a specific horror affecting your life, you were a liar and called such and confronted for hiding something even deeper. It was insanity. At one point, throughout the year of these mandatory sessions (which have all kinds of acronyms such as - regional meetings, FLCs, Parents' weekend (watchout for these two, they are a nightmare) retreat weekend etc. etc.) I revealed my most horrific life experience. It was being at Hyde having entrusted them with my child and then discovering it was a cult. Well, despite all the endless endorsements for honesty, this was honesty that no one could accept, and I became a bullseye, not only for some of the people in the room, but the rest of the weekend and the rest of the year. Faculty and administration all over campus were pulling me aside to confront me and knock me, my spouse and my kid, who was one of the few there that didn't have what I call 'life altering" problems. It confirmed to me this is exactly what a cult does. The irony was I was a consumer of education spending about 43K a year, and I had a choice.
The next year, it was not Hyde. Our child is thriving in the new school, which we carefully selected, together. Academically, the entire year needed to be repeated due to the weak academics at Hyde. Now, we are on the 5 year high school plan, thanks to Hyde, and recovering from the worst trauma of our lives.
I heard Joe Gauld say in passing once, he looked carefully at what the Hoffman Institute does and Hyde does more of it and goes further. Well, take a look at that website. Hyde encourages kids to reveal private and personal things about their parents, and pressures them to even make stuff up, so that they don't get "confronted" with being a liar or being "dirty." They encourage the kids to let the school know if the parents haven't bought into the Hyde philosophy. Sound Familiar? Children "turning in" their parents on their philosophical differences with the Party? Then they put on a full court press the likes of which would impress the Moonies. I have some letters written to us from the administration at Hyde that are so classic of cult pressure tactics that I can't believe they put this stuff in writing.
Hyde has a place, I guess for kids who have NO options. There was a 17 year old rapist at Hyde the year my child was there! But they have no mental health staff, they do not even have a full time infirmary or nurse, and they have a young adult faculty not much older than the students telling parents what their family dynamics are.
I had one 24 year old "facutly member" pull me aside during one of the 20+ "Layman group counselling sessions" called by some other acronym. The highly enlightened 24 year old told me in no uncertain terms what was wrong with my family from what she has observed. (All of about 45 minutes with 10 other people in the room taking turns to speak.) She was so off base, I looked at her and said, you apparently don't know us at all. If anything we go too much in the other direction. It confirmed to me these people know nothing about us, yet confront, humiliate, contradict and impose their non professional psycho-jargon on families. Yet, the vast majority of the faculty had no psychology training, no real world life experience, widely abnormal family dynamics, and here's a scary one...no parenting experience. The ones that do have some life experience or training are there because their kids get free tuition.
I considered reporting them to someone, except I feared retaliation against my child. I feared their sabotaging my child's chances to get into another school. We surreptiously and fearfully started looking for a new school and then in writing with no notice ended the ordeal. We of course got letters from the administration saying we didn't give the process a full and fair chance, and had we done so, it would have worked. Believe me, we entered believers. It only took a person of average intellegence, with an open mind and the gift of having a child who had options to realize that no one should have to go through this, neither parents, or their children.
One example of a dozen I could cite was in the dead of winter when our child was suffering from a sinus infection,. It was reported to me our child carried their head down throughout campus and did very poorly on a quiz that day. Based on this behavior, one amibitious and well programmed 25 year old "dean" made the unsubstantiated accusation that our child was "Dirty" (which is Hyde speak for violating the ethics code) The punishment? Immediate 2-4 (outside all day isolation work detail) until there was an admission of wrongdoing. Our child was so sick that by day three I had to intervene, because our child had been informed they would be outside all day, missing classes, until they admitted what they had done without an end in sight. After three days in bitter cold weather with an untreated sinus infection (because you aren't allowed to visit the nurse to get out of 2-4) our child called us and told us they were ready to admit to anything. I insisted there be no lies or false admissions. I tried to keep their courage up and focused on trying to get them an antibiotic. Can you imagine a child feeling this kind of pressure? Of course, when we sheepishly called the Dean after day 3 to see what the really story was, becuase naturally they tell you your children lie to you about Hyde, I found out this "dean" did not even know about the sinus infection and had no evidence of our child being "dirty." This Dean's conclusion was based on our child's appearance and behavior and quiz results from the day they felt so lousy.
At that point we said we did not want our child outside anymore, and in fact, since we were paying tuition for an education we'd like our kid to get back into the classroom rather than raking branches from the campus. Curiously, we were told by the Dean that our child's 2-4 was going to end "tomorrow" anyway. I asked if it was their intention to get our child to fess up to somehting they didn't do just to get off 2-4 and the answer was the expected...never! But think about it, if you had no end in sight to this type of "punishment" after 3 days, would you make something up? I think many honest people might.
I close this piece by stating that I have tried to be very careful not to identify my child, although I anticipate the clan will try to figure out who this is. I don't trust them at all. I have nothing to gain by writing this, and it is sometimes just easier to think of the year as a learning experience (a negative one for sure, but still a learning experience.) Yet I felt compelled when I saw your question to answer it.
