...Hyde has a tendency to think they have the right to delve into everyone's present and past. They teach kids to be intrusive. They tell parents to be intrusive. Hyde thinks it is normal to sit around in a circle and to break down a poor young girl into talking about her rape. This was humiliating, embarrassing and down right wrong. Everyone just stared at this poor girl while she cried about her painful experience. I feel like a heel that I allowed this to go on and didn't stop it. We were taught to obey and to be loyal to the all mighty Hyde. Looking back I realize how wrong this was. I ask myself why I was afraid to speak up. Why did I sit there watching this and participating. The only reason I can think of is that I felt fearful. I felt that if I spoke up I might be in a situation like others where I would have to find a place for my son in the middle of the school year in our hometown. I was afraid to be called in like the others and told that I was not welcome at Hyde anymore and should get my son's things packed up and leave on a moments notice. This is why I obliged Hyde and stayed loyal to them. I shut my mouth and went along with what everyone else was doing.
I feel ashamed of what I did. I wish I had not been afraid of the outcome had I done what I felt was right. A little late, but I did learn something from Hyde. I learned not to keep silent and also learned that Hyde is a toxic place that everyone should stay away from.
A Former Hyde Parent
This was originally posted about a month and a half ago; I am not sure whether the parent in question is still viewing our forum. However, I wish to comment that the said former parent is by far not alone in his or her personal quandary. It takes most parents some time to figure out just where Hyde is coming from.
It is a normal human reaction to defer to the "experts," particularly when they present themselves as being eminently so. Sixty-five percent of the subjects in Milgram's studies on obedience persisted in "shocking" the "learner" all the way up to the 450 volt mark. Why? Not because they were base, sadistic fringe elements, giving vent to sublimated "potent aggressive tendencies," but because of an inherent and ordinary desire to do a good job as an experimental subject, to please the experimenter. As per what the experimenter had informed them of, said job entailed obeying and fulfilling the commands to shock the learner for certain behavior.
Similarly, Hyde School portrays itself as being the expert in "character education," and informs parents just what is expected of them to do the job they, as any good parent interested in the welfare of their child,
should be doing. Bolstering the image of "expertise" is the publishing of 3 books on "character education," along with a seemingly unscathed 40 year run of success at doing what they do.
Notwithstanding the fact that said three volumes were all written by the same family, and consist of little more than common sense homilies and hokey hackneyed character catch phrases, interspersed with excessively self-congratulatory vignettes of "experience in the life of" (many if not most of whom are still currently associated with said institution), who could possibly stomach reading these annals in their entirety enough to comprehend that their content is less than benign?
And as to that seemingly unblemished reputation which has a great deal to do with the excessive funds invested in public relations firms, who would also know of the extent of involvement of a savvy and vigilant legal team preying on the reluctance of parents to force their kids through yet more trauma, let alone the virtual monopoly of state-wide media of all milieu owned by extended family members of the Hyde cabal?
Is it any wonder that most people go along with this at first?
"The essence of obedience is that a person comes to view himself as the instrument for carrying out another person's wishes, and he therefore no longer regards himself as responsible for his actions. Once this critical shift of viewpoint has occurred, all of the essential features of obedience follow. The most far-reaching consequence is that the person feels responsible to the authority directing him but feels no responsibility for the content of the actions that the authority prescribes. Morality does not disappear -- it acquires a radically different focus: the subordinate person feels shame or pride depending on how adequately he has performed the actions called for by authority.""For many people, obedience is a deeply ingrained behavior tendency, indeed a potent impulse overriding training in ethics, sympathy, and moral conduct. ...ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority."http://wwf.fornits.com/viewtopic.php?t=21676[/url]
