Hyde School Survivors

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. ________________ 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 kids, assaults, rapes and murders mark us as the most violent society in the world today. We do seem

Excerpt from UNREQUITED TIME, James McCurrach Jim finally overstepped the boundaries on the bus ride home for the Thanksgiving break in 1977. He brazenly lit up a marijuana cigarette in full view of a bus full of students in the middle of the day. Totally foolish, of course, but also unnecessary in that within only a few hours he would have been out of the school jurisdiction and in the safety of his own home. Leniency wasn't going to work in to this instance- especially since he had already had several warning related to circumstantial situations. This time he had gone too far and was terminated from Berkshire. ...Whatever, young James now required even more serious attention since Berkshire had become ancient history. I was ashamed of him as well as myself.. I needed to get Jim relocated as quickly as possible without, hopefully, making wrong move. Eventually, I heeded the advice of some experienced educational people and we later settled on the Hyde School located in remote part

 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 bru