The Moral Imperative: Character Education, Soul by Soul, at the Hyde Schools
2005; Routledge; Volume: 5; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1539-9664
Autores Tópico(s)Religious Education and Schools
ResumoEarlier this year, at Hyde School, a private high school in Bath, Maine, dedicated to family-based education, witnessed a confrontation in an 11th-grade honors English class likes of which, it is safe to say, few educators or scholars have ever seen. The teacher, Barbara Perry, asked if everyone had finished reading assigned novel, Edwidge Danticat's The Farming of Bones. All but two of dozen or so students had. was a Monday, and Perry asked Brad, one of two, if he had done any of reading at all over weekend. No, said Brad. It was a really rough weekend for me. I've had a lot of trouble with believing in myself, and I've been trying to figure out where it comes from. Mr. Gauld [Malcolm Gauld, president and CEO of Hyde Schools] thought it came from my father, and should talk to him. brought it up, and he got really upset. One of kids jumped on Brad. You say you don't believe in yourself, but you don't give yourself an opportunity to believe in like how you didn't go to lacrosse practice on Saturday. don't know how not doing your work, not going to lacrosse, is going to make you believe in yourself. A chorus of uh-huhs rose around room. Miss Perry said gently, Do you know what you're doing? Do know what doing? Brad repeated, in a heart-breakingly toneless, defeated voice. Hardly. And now other students tried to direct Brad to deeper causes of his malaise. He was, they said, holding something back. I'm really worried about you, said one of girls. A boy turned to Brad and said, I was talking about you to my mom yesterday--how you have this reputation for being kid who fluctuates most. up to you whether you're going to be in charge or not. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Brad listened silently. Finally, he said, So guess should leave now? It's up to you, Miss Perry said. Brad pushed his chair back, gathered up his books, and left. And only then did class begin to discuss The Farming of Bones. Both students and teachers assured me that this exercise in tough love was nothing out of ordinary at Hyde; several kids said that they had been on receiving end of it themselves, to their lasting benefit. Radical truth telling, accompanied by an ethos of mutual responsibility known as Brother's Keeper, lies at core of Hyde's vision of development. And these principles are meant to guide conduct of not just students but all adults in what is very consciously referred to as the Hyde community--teachers, administrators, parents. Everyone is obliged to hold everyone else to standards they themselves would wish to be held to. The Hyde experience is, if nothing else, exhausting. A Secular Morality The Hyde School is scarcely typical of schools professedly dedicated to education; it is, if anything, extreme case, where principles that elsewhere have been applied halfheartedly have been most deeply considered and uncompromisingly followed. Hyde is, in fact, so peculiar, so supremely dedicated to its eccentric founding principles, that it's not easy to imagine school's serving as a useful examplar of anything. Nonetheless, Hyde schools are now flourishing in Woodstock, Connecticut, and in inner-city systems of New Haven, Connecticut, and Washington, D.C. The school's founder, Joseph Gauld, Malcolm's father, says that he hopes to have charter schools operating in New York City and Oakland, California, by 2005. In great, ongoing laboratory project known as whole-school reform, Hyde may turn out to be leading entry under heading character And a very large heading it is, too. (See sidebar.) Thomas Lickona, head of Center for Fourth and Fifth Rs (the fourth and fifth being respect and responsibility) at State University of New York at Cortland and a leading figure in field, says that two-thirds of states' schools are now required either by legislative mandate or by administrative regulation to implement programs in education. …
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