Hyde School Survivors

This book paints an appealing image of an enlightened high school that involves the whole family in developing positive character traits. We do not doubt the authors' sincerity, genuine enthusiasm for, and commitment to the Hyde Schools. Clearly, these authors are eager to spread the good word. However, our actual experience as parents of a Hyde School (in Woodstock, Conn.) student showed us that the practices and policies used to teach "character" often, paradoxically, violate the noble principles articulated in this book and espoused at the school. In our view, it is ironic that a school whose mission is character education is misrepresented in this book, which provides a misleading, partial picture of the Hyde we experienced. Also, it's unfortunate that this book on education, written by educators, does not explicitly refer to the research and theoretical literature on effective behavior management, adolescent development, and education; much of this literature que...

 Survivor testimony: I went through hell at Hyde. Of course right when you get there your parents basically have to sign your rights away. So they can’t get sued. First of all, I wasn’t a kid that went there because there parents sent me there; I went willingly. When I visited, I thought it was a regular old prep school. I had no idea what was really going on. I wanted to get out of my old school because my friends were selling drugs and there was violence, and I wanted a healthy environment, so I thought Hyde was my way out where I could play sports and not be around so much danger. So when I got there, I was in for a big shock. The dorms were absolutely out of control. When I mean out of control I mean fight clubs at night like real deal MMA with no gloves, beating the absolute crap out of each other. There was one time when Hyde’s champion wrestler got drunk and beat up 8 kids in my dorm…. We came in for breakfast the next morning and there were multiple kids with black eyes and...

Hyde seems to being trying to improve its credibility by attempting to pass off founder Joe Gauld's son in law, Donald MacMillan, as a "clinician" in a promotional brochure : In the following excerpt entitled "A View of Hyde School— From a Clinician’s Point of View" Don Macmillan writes about the primary ways in which Hyde differs from typical therapeutic boarding schools in how it handles students with cognitive, behavioral, and psychological diagnoses, such as ADD, ADHD, substance abuse, depression, anorexia, oppositional defiance disorder (ODD), etc.: [Therapeutic boarding schools] tend to embody a problem-solving paradigm in which diagnosed deficits are remedied. Rather than remedy deficits, Hyde seeks to build upon strengths. Hyde offers a holistic approach to personal and family growth that has often proved to coincidentally help many teenagers with issues pertaining to a given diagnosis. So, rather than REMEDY any issues, Hyde staff essentially pretend th...

I am amazed & heartened to see this site. I'm a parent whose child left Hyde last year - after 2 years. He transferred to another boarding school, one we should have enrolled in in the first place. ANY good small school with caring faculty would have done it for us - without the high drama of Hyde. People put their kids into Hyde in a crisis - often on the advice of a consultant. It was negligent to do this. Leaving Hyde was leaving a cult. I won't go on about this - lest I be accused by a Hyde fan of being over- emotional. My son wanted to go to a real school - one that valued academics and didn't use him as a 'proctor'. Hyde pressured him intensely, wanting him to stay and 'face his fears'. I had several horrendous phone calls with staff. At Hyde the first day they tell parents not to believe what your child tells you: Deciding to listen to my son and advocate for his leaving was the best and hardest thing I have ever done. Hyde doesn't want to hea...

Hyde likes to change its narrative about its intentions and student body as an institution depending on who its recruiters are talking to.  If Hyde School is "not for troubled teens" like the owners and surrogates of Hyde like to sometimes claim, why have they had thousands of "troubled" teens attend their institution for 55 years? And why are they still to this day on sites like Troubled Teen Directory, Family Sanity, Our Troubled Teen, and numerous education consultant websites, right next to residential treatment centers (RTC's), wilderness programs, therapeutic boarding schools, etc.? As stated below on an #educationconsultant website: " Hyde Schools... do not offer any integrated clinical services, since they view the problems of youth as ones of character, rather than as psychological or psychiatric. " Hyde has always actively recruited "troubled" kids with a wide range of diagnoses and issues, while purposely never offering any evidenc...

TW: Rape, victim blaming  Penelope's story: I was a senior at Hyde during 2020. One night I snuck into the boys' dorm to hang out with my two friends. I was drunk already and wanted something to do other than sit in my room. I walked across campus without being seen and got to Emero Dorm. When I got there, one of the guys started coming on to me, but I didn't give much thought to it. I started blacking out from the alcohol, so we went into one of the guy's rooms so that I could drink some water, eat something, and sit down. I don't remember much, but the guys decided to take turns having sex with me. After both of them were done, I lay alone in the bed in a drunken stupor. A third guy from the dorm came into the room and tried to talk me into having sex with him as well. I said "no" repeatedly and screamed. I slept there that night and woke up to a lot of pain and bruising on and around my vagina. My throat hurt because I had also been choked.  A few days ...

Reposted from an amazing blogger Tuesday, April 23, 2013 The Gym - The Most Depressing Place in America ...When I was about fifteen, I stopped going and found myself gaining weight at an alarming rate. I'd been taking ADHD medications since I was eight and was often told that I was in danger of serious weight gain. My mother had heard that a friend of hers got a trainer for her overweight son at the gym of the Pikesville Hilton who helped him lose quite a bit of weight. I went to the gym, and that's where I met Kathleen. Kathleen was twenty-one, a petite blonde shikse from Glen Burnie, whom for reasons I could not fathom worked at the Pikesville Hilton. She constantly wreaked of cigarette smoke and had a giant, multicolored tattoo on the small on her back. She was constantly telling me how much she couldn't stand the other trainers. Half-hour sessions turned into two hours as she regaled me with stories of her ex-boyfriends and how much her girl-friends slept around. I was ...

Reader response/Letters to the Editor, Maine Times 1992 Joe Gauld still loose? I was interested to read Diane L Potter’s letter . I hadn’t seen the article she was referring to and was very surprised to find that Joe Gauld is not in an institution. As the father of a student at Hyde School in the mid-80s, I have an insider’s perspective. Ms. Potter’s letter covers some very valid points but she doesn’t know the half of it!  When my wife first checked out Hyde school Timothy Wilson was in charge but when we brought our daughter there to start school Mr. Wilson was gone and Joe Gauld was in full charge. What a difference! Joe claims the school is not for kids with behavior problems, yet most of the students I’ve seen were there in a desperation situation. The next step for most of them was either running away from home or reform school or jail. That is the only reason the parents and students put up with what they did. One of Joe’s fun little games is what he calls a “Family Learning...

Our family has now been affiliated with Hyde for several years.  It has taken us some time to figure out Hyde's true colors.  We started Hyde in earnest.  We were not in a true state of crisis, although we had some concerns about our child's path.  Our child enrolled in Summer Challenge which, overall, seemed to be a rather benign experience (with the exception of a couple of group seminars where, clearly, the group facilitators were in over their heads when a couple of parents disclosed some incredibly powerful, sensitive, and provocative information in front of their children and the rest of us -- it was painful to watch and hear the staff's inept handling of the situations). Our child then started Hyde in September of that year.  Initially we bought into the program and attended all meetings (regional, FLCs) faithfully.  We gave it our best shot as we embraced Hyde's core message about character, attitude, and values.  Slowly, we began to realize ho...

An anonymous submission by a survivor of Hyde: I attended the Hyde Woodstock Campus for two years and graduated. I came to Hyde because my therapist recommended it due to another client who attended Hyde School. Before I went, I was in a residential facility for a year due to suicide attempt, self-harm, and alcohol and drug abuse. I was a victim of sexual abuse and physical abuse by a family member. During summer challenge, we were doing an activity and I shared this abuse. My discovery group turned on me and told me all I did was pity myself. I was told by two staff members that I took myself too seriously, I was too sensitive, and I live in a perpetual state of self-pity. I will never forget those words or forgive those who uttered them. Although now I believe in not dwelling in trauma, at that age I was not able to understand why anyone would say this to me. I was humiliated. I was belittled. After summer challenge, I started my junior year. I hitched a ride with another family and ...

"Slap May Be Just What Child Needs" by Hyde School founder and then-headmaster Joe Gauld. Originally published in Maine Sunday Telegram's column "Courage to Grow", July 8th, 1973, which later was published into a book. ______________________________________________________________ Should you ever slap a kid? How about a man teacher slapping a girl student? I think the place of such "physical" education in American childrearing is badly misunderstood. Most people who hit kids do it for the wrong reasons - like out of their own frustrations. Most people who don't hit kids, don't do it for the wrong reasons - like out of mistaken compassion. "Spanking", at best, has a mixed acceptance in our society, but slapping a kid is definitely out. As one educator recently said to me: "If I had to hit a kid to get the message across, I would consider myself a failure." Yet, with this seemingly "Christian" attitude in raising kid...

Maine Times Analysis: Is Joe Gauld's educational philosophy what the world needs? Remember some years ago a movement called Buchmanism: a lot of people getting together in a room and confessing their sins of omission and commission - a kind of alcoholics anonymous on a grape juice jag? The whole thing got retitled Moral Rearmament (MRA) and a tennis player named Bunny Austin made headlines by advocating world changing through life changing, the slogan of Frank Buchman himself. Well, something of this kind is now used as part of a system of growth through courage which has been put together by a man named Joe Gauld, headmaster of the Hyde School in Bath, an institution not primarily interested in studies but in a system which Gauld says builds character and develops each student's "unique potential." Gauld, according to his own account, began Hyde School with students who had very little academic talent and many behavioral problems. At that time he introduced a series ...

Strong pushback from a parent when Hyde School tried to take over Gardiner Area High School in 1992: _____ Letter to the editor, Maine Times 1992-08-14 : It's time that I speak out about my reservations on the Gardiner-Hyde Project at Gardiner High School. Like many parents, my husband and I were at first curious, then more interested as we heard some things that we would like to see happen at the high school, and finally completely turned off. Joe Gauld (the founder of the private Hyde School in Bath, who will implement his educational philosophy in the high school) is a manipulator par excellence. In large group meetings he deftly skirts around questions without completely answering them. I believe there is reason for our school board to look more closely into allegations of inappropriate and humiliating disciplines that have been made against the Hyde School in the past Last winter the school board hesitated on accepting the program at Gardiner on a trial basis until they receiv...

Parent of a former Hyde Student shares experience I. Sitting in Associate Head of School Mike Dawes’ office during our initial interview, I wasn’t convinced that the Hyde School was a logical fit for our family. For sure, our son, then 16, was in deep trouble... smoking dope four times a day, maxxed out oppositional defiant behavior... ach, you’ve heard it all a thousand times. So had Mike, and the self-deprecating way he described his alcoholism, the destructive ways Mike Jr. had behaved until they found the Hyde School, how he and Lynn both ended up working there, and his strong belief that we would all heal if we stepped inside the Hyde circle, made a persuasive case. And yet, there was something troubling about the deifying language Mike used when he discussed the school’s 77-year-old founder, Joe Gauld. Mike told me, however, that Hyde would welcome the challenging but open-minded attitude I seemed to possess, and my wife had a good feeling about the place. So absolutely, I said, ...