Robert Docter, an L.A. faculty board member within the Seventies who efficiently pushed to finish corporal punishment and who sacrificed his political profession attempting to combine campuses by busing, has died at 97.
Docter additionally taught for 56 years at Cal State Northridge and served for many years as a regional chief inside the Salvation Military.
He died at house in Northridge from what relations describe as neurological problems on Nov. 3.
“He all the time might see the likelihood for college kids and their academics and their households,” stated Diane Watson, a former ally on the college board who went on to serve within the state Legislature and Congress. “You may comply with him since you knew that he selected to do the proper factor for the younger individuals.”
As a college board member from 1969 to 1977, Docter was most carefully recognized with two points — taking away the long-held proper of college employees to hit kids and attempting to rapidly and aggressively deal with the harms of segregation.
Docter had been a college board member for six years when he and allies, after a number of tries, pushed by a ban on corporal punishment — additionally known as spanking or paddling — by a 4-3 vote in 1975.
“It’s child-beating and we must always eradicate insurance policies that let child-beating,” Docter stated. “Directors and academics shouldn’t be capable of do what a Marine Corps drill sergeant is prohibited from doing.”
On the time, an estimated 7% of California districts had banned corporal punishment, though Gov. Jerry Brown had simply signed a legislation requiring parental permission. Banning corporal punishment additionally had been a main demand of scholar and instructor activists who took half in widespread Latino scholar walkouts from L.A. colleges in 1968.
It took a number of years for the ban to take full impact as the college district developed different disciplinary strategies.
The problem stays unsettled. In 2023, then-U.S. Training Secretary Miguel Cardona wrote that “corporal punishment at school is both expressly allowed or not expressly prohibited in 23 states” and that “corporal punishment in colleges is probably going underreported.” Cardona known as for its use to finish.
Robert Docter is given a poll at Darby Avenue Faculty in Northridge in 1977, within the election that killed his political profession.
(Joe Kennedy / Los Angeles Instances)
Battle over pressured busing
Docter’s efforts to advertise complete integration have been to fail.
As the college board president, Docter grew to become the face of the college system’s effort to hold out court-ordered, necessary integration, together with by pressured busing, which he supported as a social-justice crucial.
“I consider in a multicultural, multi-ethnic society,” he stated in a 1992 interview. “I used to be on the lookout for smart methods to realize this.”
The dispute over busing divided the town, and was particularly opposed within the San Fernando Valley, the place Docter lived. Officers have been despatched to protect his house amid demise threats.
“Individuals have been anxious, confused,” Docter stated in 1992. “They have been involved concerning the lack of management: ‘I purchased my home on this neighborhood so my baby might go to this faculty!’ They have been bitter. Many felt betrayed.”
There additionally was strain from the opposite facet — with liberal activists together with future faculty board member Jackie Goldberg asserting that citywide integration must be the usual and may very well be mapped out to keep away from bus rides longer than 20 to half-hour. She was involved that Docter would weaken in his resolve, Goldberg recalled this week.
Docter remained agency.
In 1977, anti-busing guardian activist Bobbi Fiedler ran towards Docter, successful 56% of the vote.
“He was the epitome of the left-wing, social-planning liberal,” Fiedler stated years later. “He was on the fallacious facet of the difficulty. He was out of contact.”
Docter stated later that busing “ought to have been launched on a voluntary foundation to dispel fears among the many majority inhabitants and resist white flight.”
Finally, the authorized and political panorama shifted and L.A. Unified — with court docket approval — developed voluntary integration that centered considerably on magnet colleges, which have particular, fascinating applications and prioritize admissions that promote integration.
Restricted pressured busing barely ever began — and was by no means really carried out.
By then, nonetheless, 1000’s of white mother and father had moved out of the district or pulled children from Los Angeles public colleges, accelerating an evolution in demographics that already was in progress. White enrollment was 55% in 1963 — when the primary faculty desegregation swimsuit was filed — and 37% white in 1976 because the busing dispute peaked.
It stands at 10% at present — a slight enhance over latest years — and stays closely concentrated in comparatively few areas.
Integration by busing “didn’t fail,” Docter stated later. “We simply by no means tried it.”
Salvation Military connection
Robert L. Docter was born July 20, 1928 in San Francisco to Lloyd and Violet Physician, who labored as Salvation Military pastors, and moved to L.A. in 1945 — and Docter graduated from Fairfax Excessive the next yr.
His connection to the Salvation Military was to be lifelong. He met his future spouse, Dolores Diane Beecher, at a Salvation Military summer season camp. They married in 1953.
He performed within the Military band for greater than 70 years, marching in its Event of Roses band greater than 50 occasions. He led open-air companies on the nook of Hollywood and Vine.
In 1983, he based New Frontier Publications for the Salvation Military, serving as editor till 2017. On this function, he additionally wrote greater than 600 columns. His writing grew to become “a companion to 1000’s, providing wit, knowledge and religious honesty” the Salvation Military wrote in a tribute.
“He invited us to see the world by a lens of hope, sincerity and conscience,” wrote Christin Thieme, his successor as editor. “He believed deeply within the energy of phrases, sure — however much more within the energy of the character behind them.
in 1992, the group admitted him to the Order of the Founder, the very best honor bestowed by the Salvation Military to a lay member.
Robert Docter sits on the curb in entrance of Darby Avenue Faculty, throughout from his Northridge house within the early Nineties.
(George Wilhelm / Los Angeles Instances)
A bond with native colleges
After his mother and father took the household to L.A., Docter attended native public colleges, graduating from Fairfax Excessive.
He earned a bachelor’s diploma in English from UCLA in 1952 after which in 1956 a grasp’s in training from USC, and a doctorate in academic psychology from the college in 1960.
He additionally served within the U.S. Military from 1952 to 1954, stationed at Fort Ord in Monterey, and performed trumpet within the sixth Infantry Division Band. After that, he taught at Vanalden Elementary in Tarzana for six years whereas incomes his superior levels.
In 1960 he Joined the training college of San Fernando Valley State School — which later grew to become Cal State Northridge.
Dr. Docter — as he was broadly recognized — was an affiliate professor of training and a father of youngsters within the public colleges in 1969, when he grew to become one in every of 21 candidates for 3 board seats, saying that the state’s largest faculty system too typically maintained an unsatisfactory establishment fairly than updating its tutorial strategies.
On the board, he grew to become an ardent L.A. Unified defender whereas additionally pushing for change. He known as out fellow board member J.C. Chambers as “racist” when The Instances quoted Chambers saying he didn’t need to “combine the races” and made different derogatory feedback about Black college students.
Though Docter staunchly supported union bargaining rights, he had a falling-out with the academics union that undermined his doomed reelection marketing campaign. He misplaced the union endorsement after supporting a plan to combine academics in addition to college students — which might have resulted in some pressured reassignments.
He wrote three books: “A View from the Nook” (2008), alluding to the identify of his common column, “Integrity: A Full Life” (2015) and a novel, “Misplaced and Discovered
in Montana” (2022).
Docter didn’t run for workplace after leaving the college board.
He “didn’t have political ambitions,” stated daughter Sharon Docter. “He simply cared about training. This was his ardour. … What he wished was to make a distinction.”
He continued to ponder the state of education, expressing qualms about lowering training to numbers on standardized assessments. As an alternative, he stated in interviews, there must be extra emphasis on ethics and morality in addition to essential considering and humanities training.
He’s survived by his twin brother, Richard F. Docter. His spouse of 71 years died on April 27. Different survivors are six kids — Sharon in addition to Richard L. Docter, Janet Pollock, Mary Docter, John Docter and Julie Jennings — 15 grandchildren and 4 great-grandchildren.
A celebration of life can be held on the Salvation Military Pasadena Tabernacle Corps on Sunday, Dec. 7, at 2 p.m.
