Word: knights
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...East Palo Alto blacks made up 85% of the student population a decade ago; today almost 70% of the 5,000 students are Latino. But while the composition of the schools has changed, the composition of the people who run them has not. A black woman, Charlie Mae Knight, has served as superintendent for the past 11 years; the five-person school board has just one Hispanic member; and only one of the district's school principals is Latino. Says David Giles, a lawyer who represents East Palo Alto's Latino parents in their battles with the district: "African Americans...
Bilingualism isn't the only point of conflict. Hispanics in East Palo Alto are using their increasing clout to protest what they say is the schools' overall mediocre performance and the inefficiency of its bureaucracy, as well as alleged instances of cronyism and graft. Parents like Sanchez accuse Knight of stirring up racial resentments among blacks to deflect criticism about her administration. Knight dismisses her critics, saying, "Whenever whites are in charge of Latinos, they don't get the same kind of push that a black superintendent does. People...tend to distrust those who look more like them...
...much should graders be required to have their comments make sense? "I believe in free speech," Knight says. "Teachers are allowed to write whatever they want, but professionally there is a line." Shrier has experienced that line. On his first paper written at Harvard, he wrote an overzealous introduction, declaiming about 'mankind.' He didn't get any comment about his bad introduction, or anything else, he remembers. Instead, the T.F. just circled the word 'mankind' and wrote a "weird cryptic comment that said, 'Use humanity. Though it seems like P.C. mumbo jumbo, they tell me I have to say that...
...overlooked--they are just plain mean. Nicholas K. Davis '99, who is a Crimson editor, recalls his Expos preceptor commenting: "I don't think we're reading the same stories...Let's see if we're sharing some of the same reality." Also on an Expos paper, Sarah A. Knight '00 discovered that her grader "liked this paper in spite of itself." "That's a terrible thing to say," Knight says. "It's not constructive criticism...
...situations are so drastic, though. Shrier, Knight and Davis, despite the various strange things they've had written on their papers, agree that comments on papers are useful and are often a good way to get to know professors. "The teacher's personality shines through in the comments," Shrier says. "For example, [Dorot] Professor [of the Archeology of Israel] Lawrence Stager writes large, rambling, loving mini-essays at the end of each student essay because he's a large, rambling, loving kind...