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Jonathan Kozol Biography

Jonathan Kozol (born September 5, 1936) is an American writer, educator, and activist, best known for his books on public education in the United States.

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Jonathan Kozol Quotes

Political struggle is the most important thing any of us can do as a citizen in a democracy; and that means the old joining the young to fight for elemental kinds of justice.

Fighting, Joining, Mean, Struggle, Young

It is a commonplace by now to say that the urban school systems of America contain a higher percentage of Negro children each year.

Children, School, Years, Commonplace, Year, America

Competitive skills are desperately needed by poor children in America, and realistic recognition of the economic roles that they may someday have an opportunity to fill is obviously important, too. But there is more to life, and there ought to be much more to childhood, than readiness for economic functions.

America, Children, Obviously, Opportunity, Readiness, Roles

But what is now encompassed by the one word (“school”) are two very different kinds of institutions that, in function, finance and intention, serve entirely different roles. Both are needed for our nation’s governance. But children in one set of schools are educated to be governors; children in the other set of schools are trained for being governed. The former are given the imaginative range to mobilize ideas for economic growth; the latter are provided with the discipline to do the narrow tasks the first group will prescribe.

Children, Different, Entirely, Former, Ideas, School

You need massive recruitment to tell the poorest of the poor what is possible.

Needs, Poor, Poorest, Recruitment, Tell

What I tell these young people is, the world is not as dangerous as the older generation would like you to believe. Anyone I know who has ever taken a risk and lost a job has ended up getting a better one two years later.

Believe, Generation, Jobs, Lost, Taken, World

In public schooling, social policy has been turned back almost one hundred years.

Teaching, Years, Social, Hundred, Public, Schooling

My goal is to connect the young teachers to the old, to reignite their sense of struggle.

Teacher, Struggle, Goal, Teachers, Connect

Children sometimes understand things that most grown-ups do not see.

Children, See, Sometimes, Things, Understand

I beg people not to accept the seasonal ritual of well-timed charity on Christmas Eve. It's blasphemy.

Beg, Charity, Christmas, People, Seasonal

The primary victims of Katrina, those who were given the least help by the government, those rescued last or not at all, were overwhelmingly people of color largely hidden from the mainstream of society.

Color, Government, Help, Katrina, People, Primary

When I was teaching in the 1960s in Boston, there was a great deal of hope in the air. Martin Luther King Jr. was alive, Malcolm X was alive; great, great leaders were emerging from the southern freedom movement.

Kings, Teaching, Air, Malcolm, Hope

Nationally, overwhelmingly non-white schools receive $1,000 less per pupil than overwhelmingly white schools.

Overwhelmingly, Per, Pupils, School, Schools, White

I am opposed to the use of public funds for private education.

Education, Fund, Funds, Public, Use

The White House, in advancing the agenda for a [school] "choice" plan, rests its faith on market mechanisms. What reason have the black and very poor to lend their credence to a market system that has proved so obdurate and so resistant to their pleas at every turn?

Education, Faith, Mechanisms, Obdurate, School, White

An awful lot of people come to college with this strange idea that there's no longer segregation in America's schools, that our schools are basically equal; neither of these things is true.

College, Equal, Ideas, Longer, School, Segregation

The first ten, twelve or fifteen years of life are excavated of inherent moral worth in order to accommodate a regimen of basic training for the adult years that many of the poorest children may not even live to know.

Basic, Children, Order, Years

I feel, in the end, as if everything I've done has been a failure.

Done, Ends, Everything, Failure, Feels

When I was young, I was religious.

Religious, Young

President Obama still places far too much emphasis on relentless testing with standardized exams.

Exam, Exams, President, Standardized, Too Much

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Jonathan Kozol Biography

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