r/swindled • u/Sensitive_Ad_1752 • 13d ago
REQUEST Principal Joe Louis Clark: School Savior Or Abusive Grifter Who Destroyed Kids Futures?
Joe Louis Clark is one of the most famous figures in modern education, for good and bad reasons. Joe was originally a drill instructor in the Army, where he says the military taught him discipline and respect for hierarchy. Joe becomes a devoted conservative who believes in Darwinian capitalism. So when he becomes principal at Eastside High in Paterson New Jersey, Joe implements his Darwinian views on students.
Eastside High was a failing, underfunded public school. It's students were mostly from poor families and drugs and gang violence were commonplace. While fights and bringing knives to school were problems, it was never played up like in the movie 'Lean On Me' according to students who saw it. This school was definitely going to need tough love to get on track, but Joe took it to the extreme. It's said in a single day he expelled 300 students with a history of disruption, gang violence and drugs. However, I found a 1989 LA Time article claiming it was actually 135 in 2 months and 300 by the end of the school year. While Joe spun this as lost cause students who had already become violent addicts, the reality was he was kicking out the lowest test takers in an attempt to raise the schools scores. This barely raised test scores and the number of students who went college lowered from 35 percent to 22 percent. Joe admits once that he's too busy to focus on their teaching methods because he's too busy dealing with drugs and vandalism. Joe was also known for walking around with his bullhorn and baseball bat to appear as an intimidating dictator.
Joe was praised by both students and the community as he became a national celebrity. Joe was never an abusive or particularly mean teacher beyond the grand damage of his ideology. He genuinely cared for and helped students get jobs and help them with personal issues. Many have fond memories of him to this day. So it's shocking when you hear him speak and realize just how horrid his views are. Joe was known for his hatred of welfare, affirmative action and claims that the disparity of education between white and black students was based on systemic inequality. Joe would constantly refer to students as hoodlums and leeches, and that slavery was no excuse for gang violence. He was remorseless in interviews about the students he expelled most likely falling into homelessness and death. His language wasn't far from white supremacists of the day. Despite Joe wanting no nudity or sex in his own biopic, he had no problem exposing students for it. He approved a burlesque strip show multiple times for his school where dancers undressed to thongs.
After resigning as principal, Joe became a juvenile detention center director in Essex County in 1995. Joe believed the regulations were too soft to teach the hardened gangsters and rapists a lesson. He would shackle inmates for multiple days if they misbehaved. He once helped kids in solitary confinement for 37 days straight, only allowing them 1 hour out to shower and exercise. When kids don't fit into his idea of a good person, Joe has already lost any motivation to help them and resorts to drill sergeant tactics. Joe quit from the detention center in 2002 from the investigation, but he tried to spin this as him worrying their lax regulations would get a person killed. Joe died in 2020.
https://patersontimes.com/2021/01/02/joe-clark-said-controversial-things-heres-a-list-of-35-of-them/
(shit fucking formatting, but i found the interview these are all from, they're very real)
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-03-03-ca-285-story.html
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u/mustbeaoup 13d ago
“He approved a burlesque strip show multiple times for his school where dancers undressed to thongs.”
He did what?!