Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > Facility Question and Answers
Hyde
Ursus:
--- Quote from: ""TS Waygookin"" ---That just made my brain hurt.
So it wasn't an official policy, but the amount of pressure to shape up in body and attitude was so intense that purging became a reasonable method?
--- End quote ---
You got it. Note that these purging methods were in use quite some time ago, long before this issue became more mainstream to the point it is now.
Wish there was some more input from someone more recent, to confirm how it is now. I am basing my suppositions on the current state of affairs on personal information from people two, three years ago, but that is hardly the same thing as them chiming in with the verdict themselves.
Hyde has a lot of these so-called non-official policies. I am guessing it enables them to fine-tune the "character education" on an as-need basis...
Ursus:
Student Jobs: Everyone had a student job. These would be things like cleaning your dorm's bathroom, or cleaning up the congregating area in your dorm (if there was one), etc. Basically something that could be done in about half an hour, scheduled to take place before or after room inspection in the morning, if I recall correctly. These jobs were to be done each day. The lineup would rotate.
More responsible students had jobs with less structure and less oversight; they might be assigned a job that was less intense, but took longer, e.g., be monitor for study hall.
Students on scholarships had additional, more extensive, jobs. Typically something like pots and pans work for the kitchen chef.
Work Crew, aka 2-4: If you were on work-crew, you usually were exempt from your student job, as it would have enabled more fraternization with your fellow students than the school deemed appropriate. Part of the reason you were on work-crew was for you to think, in isolation, of whatever it was that you did that was so bad. Same comment, of course, about wilderness and outpost, when you would be completely off-campus altogether.
Of course, if you were on work-crew aka 2-4, you would be doing a student job, of sorts! You might be doing landscaping work on the school grounds, or other similarly beneficial labor... During my time this work was typically more involved and yet more pointless: digging 6x6 pits and filling them up again. The distance you had to move the dirt increased with the magnitude or number of your transgressions.
Here is a quote from Joe Gauld's own book, Character First: The Hyde School Difference (ICS Press, 1993), pp78-79:
The desystemization process is highly effective, even in the case of kids who have been notorious troublemakers in the past, like Jim. After Jim was expelled from his high school for repeatedly cutting classes and breaking the school's no-smoking rule, his mother read an editorial about Hyde School. After an interview Jim was given a trial in our summer program and underwent desystemization.
A year later we wrote his parents: "We believe Jim will not only continue to grow at Hyde but will also be an asset to the community... Jim is well on his way to becoming a young man of conscience and character."
How could a problem student like Jim make such a transformation in just a year? Jim's mother helps to explain, in a letter she wrote to her local newspaper about her son's summer school experience at Hyde.
Last spring you wrote an editorial about Hyde School... About this time my son was expelled from G. High School... His father took him for the required interview, and both made a commitment to Hyde.*
During the eight weeks that followed, weekly calls were made home: "Get me out of here, these kids rat on each other"; "Our canoe was swamped by a wave, and my tennis shoes are at the bottom of the ocean"; "We nearly starved on the ocean course in the dory" (ate all their provisions too soon and had only apples left the last day); then there were the pits dug "to bury the old image in" (my son's math class figured he dug enough dirt to cover an acre), not to mention work crews, being a shadow (having to constantly follow around some more responsible student), and what the kids termed the worst punishment, banishing a student to live by himself until he could prove he was ready to join the group again.
All of these experiences brought this group of 120 kids to the realization Hyde had a lot to offer them. They found they could get along without cigarettes, lose weight or a bad image, overcome shyness, etc. A more confident, thoughtful, happy group emerged, visibly proud of their accomplishments.
My son had no intention of returning to Hyde in the fall and was one of the last to decide to go back... He confided he was not sure he hadn't been brainwashed. Finally, he said he thought Hyde was like Listerine: you hate it, but you know you need it.*
Addendum: See also the following re. ICS Press:
http://wwf.fornits.com/viewtopic.php?t=21774
nimdA:
Describe more of these unofficial policies regarding character education.
Che Gookin:
Where are we with this interview?
Ursus:
Okay, I'm trying to get back into the swing of things here... Sorry, folks, got distracted with some other stuff.
This in from a recent grad, re. some details pertinent to allowable communications with your loved one stuck at Hyde. I have taken the liberty to alter some phraseology to protect said person's identity, otherwise the info, and the words for the most part, are theirs:
"...the students at hyde are assigned e-mail adresses, most of the time they are the first initial+last name at hyde.edu... For the most part e-mails are safe as long as they don't have profanity in them, then they are screened. Sending "snail mail" is the safest way, although they have confiscated mail of students who are in constant trouble. Also, if you are on '2-4,' their punishment for breaking ethics, you cannot receive any kind of mail."[/list]
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