When Mr. Clark, a former Army drill sergeant, arrived at Eastside High School in Paterson in 1982, he declared it a “caldron of violence.” He expelled 300 students for disciplinary problems in his first week. When he tossed out — “expurgated,” as he put it — about 60 more students five years later, he called them “leeches, miscreants and hoodlums.”...Mr. Clark, who oversaw a poor, largely Black and Hispanic student body, denounced affirmative action and welfare policies and “hocus-pocus liberals.” When “60 Minutes” profiled him in 1988, he told the correspondent Harry Reasoner: “Because we were slaves does not mean that you’ve got to be hoodlums and thugs and knock people in the head and rob people and rape people. No, I cannot accept that. And I make no more alibis for Blacks. I simply say work hard for what you want.”
I'm surprised that the NYT allows comments. Comments on an obituary? I don't think that's the norm. But I can see why they wanted comments here, and I appreciate it. The film — which I've never seen — is remembered fondly by many people, and of course, the love for Morgan Freeman is lavish. But everything I'm reading in the obituary strikes me today as so archaic. Anyone talking like that today... it's hard to picture!
Here's the top-rated comment:
I am a teacher in a fairly diverse community, and I can see how some of his policies are problematic. However, the movement, led by postmodernists, to remove academic and behavioral accountability in the name of equity has been nothing short of an epic disaster for children.
There's also this (click to enlarge and clarify):
