Hyde School Survivors

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

Maine Times - Joe Gauld Presents His Educational Philosophy to the World Original: https://archive.org/details/mt-02-aug-1974-1/ and here https://archive.org/details/sim_maine-times_1974-08-02_6_44/ Joe Gauld promotes Bath's Hyde School and its character development program with the zeal of a salesman who has just conceived a better mousetrap. He exudes an evangelical fervor in his nonstop effort to convince Maine's educational leaders that Hyde, a grades 9-12 prep school, is the new model for what education can, and should be. Gauld, the founder, headmaster and spiritual leader of Hyde, believes that building a young person's character to cope successfully with a tumultuous world is every school's primary calling. Preparing a student for college admission should be almost incidental. "Hyde School was founded on a conviction that education must promote among young people a realization of their own potentialities and a respect for themselves as individuals," G

Maine Times - The Selling of Hyde Article link: https://archive.org/details/mt-16-jun-1978-1/ "Hyde is the model of a new education system. Keep that in mind and accept that it is so. Hyde is already effectively confronting segments of the present system of educating and raising kids in this country. Accept that fact. Hyde is presenting to families in America a vision of the type of relationships that should exist in families. Most of us accept this already." ON A COLD January night last winter, Joe Gauld, the ebullient, founder of Hyde School, invited to dinner a dozen or so Bath community leaders. He wanted to know what really had poured the city on Hyde, an experimental prop school whose towering goal is to emancipate the public school system. As it turned out, Gauld did most of the talking . . . and shouting and name-calling. Before the four-hour encounter was over; he mode a proposition to the group: school board members, representatives of the city Council and influenti