Word: hydes
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Character Grades. Success at Hyde is measured largely by "character growth" rather than academic excellence. Students are given two sets of grades: one for performance in a traditional curriculum laden with remedial courses; the other, which is considered more important, for overcoming personal problems such as being shy or cowardly, as shown in survival tests the school has copied from Outward Bound. The grades in character development are hammered out in a kind of encounter group, where classmates and teachers urge a student to confess his strengths and weaknesses. In similar sessions, teachers are evaluated publicly by the students...
...parents. As one alumnus puts it, "A family, not a kid, comes to Hyde." Parents are required to make a strong commitment to Hyde's philosophy. They participate in two encounter weekend seminars annually, at which everyone criticizes everyone else. One father, for example, may say to another: "Mr. Smith, I have to agree with Bill. You do seem more concerned with your own image than anything else...
...difficult to take. Says Margie Malone, 17: "Everyone wants to run away from here sometime." In fact, each year about 50 students do run away-and 20 never return. Gauld blames the dropout rate on the parents' failure to uphold their pledge to make runaways return to Hyde. Margie ran away, but returned because "my mother stuck by her commitment. It brought us closer together...
Gauld believes all schools could benefit from his methods. For a while he gave up his headmaster post to travel around the country lecturing about Hyde, and he is now writing a book about it. As part of its proselytizing effort, the school also put on a traveling Bicentennial road show called America's Spirit. Starring Hyde teachers and pupils, the show played in Broadway's Circle in the Square theater because the theater's director, Ted Mann, is a Hyde parent...
Despite its small enrollment, Hyde turns out exceptionally good athletic teams, and 95% of its graduates, according to Gauld, have gone on to college. Many are loyal alumni. Says Will Collins, 22, a student at Grinnell College in Iowa: "Hyde is a conservative school advocating not a return to traditional values but to excellence." Some parents credit the school with changing their own lives for the better, as well as "remarkably" improving their children...