Hyde School, Virginia Tech and other musings

[Anonymous]

Speaking of blood and marriage, whatever happened to all the other siblings of Laura and Claire?  Weren't there like one or two more at Hyde?

[Anonymous]

Beth is married with kids nothing to do with Hyde and Debbie Jones is in TX with no ties.

[Anonymous]

Beth is married with kids nothing to do with Hyde and Debbie Jones is in TX with no ties.

 Beth is still beautiful.

[Ursus]

I remember Debbie... did she stay very long?  For some reason I have a recollection of Hyde not influencing her overly much, but I could be wrong.

Beth I can but barely recollect.  I remember her having very long hair and a very nice smile.

Four kids is a lot of tuition!

[Anonymous]

What we now know about Hyde, and this is indisputable, is that the school has a history of accepting quite a few deeply troubled students.  Some of these students walk through Hyde's "hallowed" front door with histories of substance abuse, defiant behavior, legal troubles, and very complicated emotional and mental illness issues.

So, what does Hyde do?  Hyde foists upon them lectures about character, as if Hyde's superficial, glib and formulaic preachings are going to get at the root of that kind of complex set of challenges.  Joe Gauld and his minions know how to cure all these ills.

Give me a break.  Hyde takes in these students and doesn't have one iota of bona fide mental health services on its campus.  This is a recipe for disaster, and Hyde has had plenty of them.  What Virginia Tech has taught us, yet again, is that academic institutions, Hyde included, need to have sophisticated protocols in place.  Virginia Tech, at least, has a genuine student mental health center, the way any legitimate, professionally run school would.  (There's only so much a school can do to prevent what happened at Virginia Tech.)  Hyde, on the other hand, takes in a very high-risk population (unlike Virginia Tech) and has NO THERAPISTS ON STAFF.  Is that bizarre, or what?  

What will it take for Hyde to learn? Parents, is this the environment you want your child in?

I don't find it bizarre that Hyde has no therapists on staff. As has been pointed out elsewhere, if therapists are under oath to report psychologically harmful practices by their employers, then it is not in Hyde's best interests to hire them. This forum is a testimonial to Hyde's psychologically harmful practices. Hyde would have to renounce its seminar- and brother's keeper-oriented approach in order to hire therapists. Given the personalities involved, I don't see that happening anytime soon.

Mike

I think you're right, Mike.  Hyde is not likely to admit that many of its students need serious mental health counseling.  And no professional mental health therapist would last at Hyde; they'd be caught in a horrible double bind, given the emotional abuse and negligence at Hyde.

So . . . Hyde is making its own bed.  Everyone knows that a significant portion of Hyde's student body is troubled.  Hyde's own materials acknowledge that.  Hyde's narrow-mindedness and arrogance are now biting them where it hurts, in the admissions department.  Because of Fornits, word about Hyde's noteworthy and glaring shortcomings is now spreading far and wide.  Hyde is getting what it has deserved for a very long time.

The horribly sad, tragic event at Virginia Tech has alerted the world to the raw violence that can erupt when troubled students are in schools that, for whatever reason, aren't able to meet their emotional and psychiatric needs.  This kind of thing can happen anywhere, of course.

Virginia Tech is an institution that serves mostly "normal" students.  In contrast, Hyde serves an incredibly large number of troubled students.  The grand irony is that Hyde doesn't have a sophisticated cadre of professionals who are trained to deal with troubled students.  As a result, every year Hyde has its share of students who completely melt down, run away, use drugs, get tossed out, etc.  You'd think that Hyde would get with the program and hire staff who know what the hell they're doing with troubled students.  Instead, Hyde persists in its naive belief that the Gauld mantra --  attitude, attitude, attitude . . . -- will be sufficient with a population of students who have an amazing array of emotional disturbances.  No wonder Hyde produces horror stories every year.  Until recently, these horror stories were kept fairly quiet.  Now, the Internet is bringing them to light.

[Ursus]

I was on a website recently, the result of some search; I didn't find what I was looking for so I can't even remember why I was there...  It was some kind of  reunion-facilitating site for Maine high schools.  One of those heavily advertisement-laden numbers.  

I clicked on Hyde... just the address, contact phone number for the school plus website link showed in the relevant box.  The rest of the page was covered with ads for military schools, troubled teen sites, other "therapeutic boarding schools," hotlines, etc.  

I checked out a few of the other schools, both public as well as private.  The advertisements for these schools were for "find your old friends" type of sites, etc.  Nothing at all like Hyde's.  Curious.

[Anonymous]

I was on a website recently, the result of some search; I didn't find what I was looking for so I can't even remember why I was there...  It was some kind of  reunion-facilitating site for Maine high schools.  One of those heavily advertisement-laden numbers.  

I clicked on Hyde... just the address, contact phone number for the school plus website link showed in the relevant box.  The rest of the page was covered with ads for military schools, troubled teen sites, other "therapeutic boarding schools," hotlines, etc.  

I checked out a few of the other schools, both public as well as private.  The advertisements for these schools were for "find your old friends" type of sites, etc.  Nothing at all like Hyde's.  Curious.

I have said all along that Hyde needs to figure out who they want to be and then stick to it and advertise accordingly.  On one hand they want troubled kids to enroll, and on the other hand they are saying they are a prep school with character education therefore accepting kids who are basically good kids but might need a little motivation.  These "good kids" are then exposed to some pretty rough characters! This is dishonesty at it's best Hyde!!  You are trying to rake in the dough without any regard to the kids whose lives you damage!

[Ursus]

I have said all along that Hyde needs to figure out who they want to be and then stick to it and advertise accordingly. On one hand they want troubled kids to enroll, and on the other hand they are saying they are a prep school with character education therefore accepting kids who are basically good kids but might need a little motivation.

I hate to say it, but I think they really do want it that way.  Either population, by itself, is not going to make the kind of community they want.  Each has something to offer the other, and the mix is potentially more than the sum.

Kind of like what Charles Dederich was trying to do with Synanon.  He started out in AA, ran into some authority and methodology issues there, so struck out on his own, taking in drug addicts as well as alcoholics.  By and by he also started taking in "Straight Gamers," i.e., folks with no history of alcohol or drug problems but who were attracted to the idealism of the community.  The mix made for the incredibly vibrant and creative community Synanon was in its heyday.

It didn't last.  It depended too much on the vision and charisma of a sole person, a fallible human, as are we all.  Control issues developed, and core values were compromised, ultimately taking down the whole shebang.

[Anonymous]

Despite the large number of problem children, there are no psychologists on the school's staff, because Hyde teachers prefer to "use our gut feelings." When that approach fails, Gauld has referred students to Richard Evans, a psychiatrist in Brunswick, Me. Like many parents of Hyde students, Evans is willing to give the school the benefit of the doubt. Says he: "Frankly, I'm puzzled. But ordinary methods don't work with the kinds of kids going to Hyde. The school does make a real effort to reach these children. It is doing something no one else is willing to do."

So, this from that old Time article. Did anybody ever SEE this guy? He was a friggen TRUSTEE for crying out loud. "The kinds of kids" - what kinds of kids? Most of the kids were pretty NORMAL if you ask me (maybe some badasses sure).

[Anonymous]

Despite the large number of problem children, there are no psychologists on the school's staff, because Hyde teachers prefer to "use our gut feelings." When that approach fails, Gauld has referred students to Richard Evans, a psychiatrist in Brunswick, Me. Like many parents of Hyde students, Evans is willing to give the school the benefit of the doubt. Says he: "Frankly, I'm puzzled. But ordinary methods don't work with the kinds of kids going to Hyde. The school does make a real effort to reach these children. It is doing something no one else is willing to do."

So, this from that old Time article. Did anybody ever SEE this guy? He was a friggen TRUSTEE for crying out loud. "The kinds of kids" - what kinds of kids? Most of the kids were pretty NORMAL if you ask me (maybe some badasses sure).

Which came 1st? Being a trustee, or being the invisible psychiatrist?