Louisa May Alcott would applaud the Hyde School experiment as outlined in this history by its founder and former headmaster. In Jo's Boys, a sequel to Little Women, Alcott sent Jo and her Professor Baer off to the woods to start a school for incorrigible boys. Gauld did much the same, turning a historic estate in remote Bath, Maine, into a private boarding school for boys and girls who struggle unsuccessfully with traditional academic programs. Like Alcott, Gauld emphasized character. Not all of his youngsters had behavior problems—some were simply unable to get into the college of their choice and looked to Hyde to maximize their SATs. But Gauld holds no brief for SAT scores and high grade-point averages: The goal at the Hyde School is to instill values and to cultivate each student's ``unique potential.'' Diplomas are awarded on the basis of maximum personal growth, and academics do not count (although Hyde will certify to admissions offices that students are academically prepared for college). Mottos (``Courage, Integrity, Concern, Curiosity, Leadership''); principles (``Humility, Conscience, Truth''); an honor code; and quotations from Kahlil Gibran help map the way for Hyde students. Most important is the involvement of the parents, who are required to attend retreats and workshops, and to participate in the school's Parent Learning Center programs, where they explore their own behavior, values, goals, and relationships. Although the Hyde program smacks of elitism—a foreword by Cher, whose son attended the school, strengthens that impression—Gauld's philosophy of education parallels that of inner-city school leader Madeline Cartwright (Lessons from a Visionary Principal, reviewed above). Hyde's program is worthy—but a plethora of patting-our-own- back anecdotes, as well as accolades from parents and former students, make this more testimonial than guidebook.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1993
ISBN: 1-55815-262-8
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1993
American schools at every level, from kindergarten to postgraduate programs, have substituted ideological indoctrination for education, charges conservative think-tanker Sowell (Senior Fellow/Hoover Institution; Preferential Polices, 1990, etc.) in this aggressive attack on the contemporary educational establishment. Sowell's quarrel with "values clarification" programs (like sex education, death-sensitizing, and antiwar "brainwashing") isn't that he disagrees with their positions but, rather, that they divert time and resources from the kind of training in intellectual analysis that makes students capable of reasoning for themselves. Contending that the values clarification programs inspired by his archvillain, psychotherapist Carl Rogers, actually inculcate values confusion, Sowell argues that the universal demand for relevance and sensitivity to the whole student has led public schools to abdicate their responsibility to such educational ideals as experience and maturity. On the subject of higher education, Sowell moves to more familiar ground, ascribing the declining quality of classroom instruction to the insatiable appetite of tangentially related research budgets and bloated athletic programs (to which an entire chapter, largely irrelevant to the book's broader argument, is devoted). The evidence offered for these propositions isn't likely to change many minds, since it's so inveterately anecdotal (for example, a call for more stringent curriculum requirements is bolstered by the news that Brooke Shields graduated from Princeton without taking any courses in economics, math, biology, chemistry, history, sociology, or government) and injudiciously applied (Sowell's dismissal of student evaluations as responsible data in judging a professor's classroom performance immediately follows his use of comments from student evaluations to document the general inadequacy of college teaching). All in all, the details of Sowell's indictment—that not only can't Johnny think, but "Johnny doesn't know what thinking is"—are more entertaining than persuasive or new.
Pub Date: Jan. 4, 1993
ISBN: 0-02-930330-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The sub-title of this book is "Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools." But one finds in it little about education, and less about the teaching of English. Nor is this volume a defense of the Christian faith similar to other books from the pen of C. S. Lewis. The three lectures comprising the book are rather rambling talks about life and literature and philosophy. Those who have come to expect from Lewis penetrating satire and a subtle sense of humor, used to buttress a real Christian faith, will be disappointed.
Pub Date: April 8, 1947
ISBN: 1609421477
Page Count: -
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1947
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