Word: hurst
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Hurst immediately set to work to purge faculty members who were "not interested in the community, the school or the students." He now concedes that he used every technique "including intimidation," a precedent he could regret if the community ever turns against him. By the end of his first year, over half the original faculty had left. Chancellor of City Colleges Oscar E. Shabat ran powerful interference with the infuriated teachers' union, and Hurst assembled a faculty that is more than 60% black (he aims for 80%). It is heavy with recruits who had become frustrated by the city...
Redesigning Things. The college was originally named for Richard T. Crane, a white manufacturer of plumbing equipment, which prompted Hurst to declare the decrepit school he took over "an educational cesspool." After an eight-month battle with the board of the Chicago City Colleges, Hurst got Crane renamed for Malcolm X, raised the green, red and black flag of black liberation next to the U.S. and Illinois flags, and won the trust of Chicago's black radicals. Black Panther Leader Fred Hampton had been a student the semester before he was killed in a police shootout. This year, Hurst...
...Saturday and Sunday for 1,000 working students who are too weary for the school's night classes. This fall, it will open a day care center to help the several dozen mothers who now take their babies with them to class. Mindful of his own prison stay, Hurst recruits parolees, recently started an extension of the college in a reformatory. Several lawyers on the Malcolm X faculty defend students who Hurst says are often harassed by Chicago police...
...Hurst has scant patience with the notion that college is only for the "qualified." Says he: "College courses are overrated. There is nothing in college that the average person cannot learn if given time and the proper motivation. Here, we deal in motivation, and we give them time." Students have unlimited time to complete a course satisfactorily. Much of the motivation comes from Hurst's missionary encouragement of black pride through curriculum in black studies (Hurst teaches the course on institutional racism that is required of all students). In addition, students are spurred by the prospect of solid jobs...
...Profanity. Hurst bans profanity and expels anyone seen fighting or selling drugs. He has made academic standards more flexible, but insists that there be standards nonetheless. High school dropouts can be admitted, but they must undergo a probationary semester or pass a high school equivalency exam before fully matriculating; for those who need help with that exam, Malcolm X operates a street academy. Entire classes devoted to remedial work have been eliminated -"they convinced students of their un-educability"-but Hurst says many students come to understand that they need more basic skills. If so, they go to a "learning...