Jonathan Kozol at Pomona College April 17, 2003

Jonathan Kozol (born 1936 in Boston, Massachusetts) is a non-fiction writer, educator, and activist, best known for his books on public education in the United States. Kozol graduated from Harvard University summa cum laude in 1958 with a degree in English Literature and was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford. He did not, however, complete his Rhodes, deciding instead to go to Paris to write a novel. He spent four years there writing his only published work of fiction, The Fume of Poppies, and getting to know the likes of William Styron. It was upon his return that he began to tutor children in Roxbury, MA, and soon became a teacher in the Boston Public Schools. He was fired for teaching a Langston Hughes poem, as described in Death at an Early Age, and then became deeply involved in the civil rights movement. After being fired from BPS he was offered a job to teach for Newton Public Schools, the school district that he had attended as a child, and taught there for several years before becoming more deeply involved in social justice work and dedicating more time to writing. Download high resolution version (2272x1704, 714 KB)Jonathan Kozol at Pomona College 17 April 2003 File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... Download high resolution version (2272x1704, 714 KB)Jonathan Kozol at Pomona College 17 April 2003 File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... The Smith Campus Center Fountain at Pomona College during the inauguration of College President David Oxtoby Pomona College is a small private residential liberal arts college located 30 miles (48 km) east of Downtown Los Angeles in Claremont, California. ... April 17 is the 107th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (108th in leap years). ... 2003 (MMIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Nickname: City on the Hill, Beantown, Athens of America, The Hub (of the Universe)1 Location in Massachusetts, USA Counties Suffolk County  - Mayor Thomas M. Menino (D) Area    - City  89. ... // Public education is education mandated for the children of the general public by the government, whether national, regional, or local, provided by an institution of civil government, and paid for, in whole or in part, by taxes. ... Harvard University (incorporated as The President and Fellows of Harvard College) , is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. Founded in 1636,[1] Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning still operating in the United States. ... // Latin honors are Latin phrases used to indicate the level of academic distinction with which an academic degree was earned. ... This does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... College name Magdalen College Collegium Beatae Mariae Magdalenae Named after Mary Magdalene Established 1458 Sister College Magdalene College President Professor David Clary FRS JCR President Jessica Jones Undergraduates 395 MCR President Kader Allouni Graduates 230 Homepage Boatclub Magdalen College (pronounced ) is one of the constituent colleges of the University of... The Eiffel Tower has become the symbol of Paris throughout the world. ... William Clark Styron, Jr. ... For the place in Connecticut, USA called Roxbury, see Roxbury, Connecticut. ... Langston Hughes (February 1, 1902 – May 22, 1967) was an American poet, novelist, playwright, short story writer, and newspaper columnist. ... A book by Jonathan Kozol, Death at an Early Age: The Destruction of the Hearts and Minds of Negro Children in the Boston Public School was first published in 1967. ... Civil rights or positive rights are those legal rights retained by citizens and protected by the government. ...

Kozol has since held two Guggenheim Fellowships, has twice been a fellow of the Rockefeller Foundation, and has also received fellowships from the Field and Ford Foundations. Guggenheim Fellowships are awarded annually by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts. ... The Rockefeller Foundation is a charitable organization based in New York City. ... The Ford Foundation is a charitable foundation based in New York City created to fund programs that promote democracy, reduce poverty, promote international understanding, and advance human achievement. ...

Writing career

Death at an Early Age, his first non-fiction book is a description of his first year as a teacher in the Boston Public Schools. It was published in 1967 and received the 1968 National Book Award in Science, Philosophy, and Religion. It has sold more than two million copies in the United States and Europe. A book by Jonathan Kozol, Death at an Early Age: The Destruction of the Hearts and Minds of Negro Children in the Boston Public School was first published in 1967. ... The National Book Award is one of the most important literary prizes in the United States, presented annually for the best books by living U.S. citizens published in the U.S. The awards have been presented since 1950 in at least one category, and are presently awarded in each... This article is 150 kilobytes or more in size. ...

Among the other books by Kozol are Rachel and Her Children: Homeless Families in America, which received the Robert F. Kennedy Book award for 1989 and the Conscience in Media Award of the American Society of Journalists and Authors, and Savage Inequalities, which won the New England Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1992. Savage Inequalities is a book written by Jonathan Kozol in 1991 that discusses the disparities in education between schools of different classes and races. ...

His 1995 book, Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation, described his visits to the South Bronx of New York, the poorest congressional district in the United States. It received the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in 1996, an honor previously granted to the works of Langston Hughes and Martin Luther King, Jr.. The Bronx is one of the five boroughs of United States. ... Nickname: Big Apple, Gotham, NYC, City That Never Sleeps, The Concrete Jungle, The City So Nice They Named It Twice Location in the state of New York Coordinates: Country United States State New York Boroughs The Bronx Brooklyn Manhattan Queens Staten Island Settled 1676 Government  - Mayor Michael Bloomberg (R) Area... Martin Luther King, Jr. ...

He published Ordinary Resurrections: Children in the Years of Hope in 2000. His most recent book is The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America, which was released September 13, 2005. Kozol documents the continuing and often worsening segregation in public schools in the United States, and the increasing influence of neoconservative ideology on the way children, particularly children of color and poor children of urban areas, are educated.

Kozol is still active in advocating for integrated public education in the United States and is an outspoken critic of the voucher movement. He continues to condemn the inequalities of education and speaks unrelentingly of the apparently worsening segregation of black and Hispanic children from white children in the segregated public schools of almost every major city of the nation.

Kozol's ethical argument relies heavily on comparisons between rich and poor school districts. In particular, he analyzes the amount of money spent per child. He finds that in school districts whose taxpayers and property-owners are relatively wealthy, the per-child annual spending is much higher (for example, over $20,000 per year per child in one district) than in school districts where poor people live (for example, $11,000 per year per child in one district)^{[citation needed]}. He asks rhetorically whether it is right that the place of one's birth should determine the quality of one's education.

Criticism

Kozol does not always distinguish between cultural subgroups. Hispanics of all types, African Americans and Blacks of Caribbean descent are usually lumped together in his writing. Kozol also seems to overlook the plight of poor whites and predominantly white schools in impoverished communities in his analyses, although he does mention them in Savage Inequalities. He concentrates on the problem of "equitable" education rather than questions of quality in the American education system as a whole. Savage Inequalities is a book written by Jonathan Kozol in 1991 that discusses the disparities in education between schools of different classes and races. ...

The subtitle of The Shame of the Nation is The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America, which draws an analogy between legally enforced racial segregation(Apartheid) and the de facto re-segregation of whites and nonwhites in public schools. While the subtitle may have been chosen for its promotional shock value, in the book Kozol often seems to suggest that more thorough racial integration would solve inequities in schools of low income communities. He also seems to assume that better education, by itself, will lift these communities out of poverty, but he does not discuss whether the problems of racial justice and economic inequities might need different solutions. A segregated beach in South Africa, 1982. ...

Kozol is listed at #9 in former CBS employee Bernard Goldberg's controversial best-selling book, 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America. CBS is one of the largest radio and television networks in the United States. ... Bernard Goldberg (born 1945) is a writer and a political comentator for Fox News. ... 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America (and Al Franken is #37) (ISBN 0-06-076128-8) is a book by [1] Bernard Goldberg that was published in 2005. ...

Works

• Death at an Early Age: The Destruction of the Hearts and Minds of Negro Children in the Boston Public School. First published in 1967, it won the National Book Award and sold more than two million copies. It describes his year of teaching in the Boston Public School System. Reissue ISBN 0-452-26292-5
• Free Schools (1972) ISBN 0-395-13606-7
• The Night is Dark and I am Far From Home (1975)
• Children of the Revolution (1980) Describes his visit to Cuba. ISBN 0-385-28152-8
• Prisoners of Silence: Breaking the Bonds of Adult Illiteracy in the United States (1980) ISBN 0-8164-9004-X
• On Being a Teacher (1981; revised 1994) Revised edition ISBN 1-85168-065-9
• Alternative Schools: A Guide for Educators and Parents (1982) ISBN 0-8264-0226-7
• Illiterate America (1986) ISBN 0-452-25807-3 History of Education website by Daniel Schugurensky discusses the importance of this book.
• Rachel and Her Children: Homeless Families in America (1988) Awarded the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award for 1989 and The Conscience in Media Award of the American Society of Journalists and Authors, and the Christopher Award, 1988. Reprint ISBN 0-449-90339-7
• Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools (1991) A finalist for the 1992 National Book Critics Circle Award and awarded The New England Book Award. Reprint ISBN 0-06-097499-0 Bookfinder collected reviews.
• Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation (1995) Reprint ISBN 0-06-097697-7 Review and appreciation by Mary Leue.
• Ordinary Resurrections: Children in the Years of Hope (2000) Reprint ISBN 0-06-095645-3. Review by Jana Siciliano at BookReporter.com.
• The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America (2005) 1400052440
• I am a Whore (2006) 11345324546

A book by Jonathan Kozol, Death at an Early Age: The Destruction of the Hearts and Minds of Negro Children in the Boston Public School was first published in 1967. ... The National Book Award is one of the most important literary prizes in the United States, presented annually for the best books by living U.S. citizens published in the U.S. The awards have been presented since 1950 in at least one category, and are presently awarded in each...

Co-Authored works

• Choosing Excellence: "Good Enough" Schools Are Not Good Enough (2001) With John Merrow. ISBN 1-57886-014-8

External links

• Brandeis Libraries brief biography (Link No Longer Supported - page archive)
• The My Hero Project repeats some of the Brandeis Libraries biography and provides other links
• Keppler Associates provides another brief biography
• Third World Traveler has excerpts from some Kozol books and a few brief articles
• Brief article and reviews of Kozol books by Alan Nicoll
• 1985 Audio Interview of Jonathan Kozol with Don Swaim, RealAudio
• Essay Still Separate, Still Unequal: America's Educational Apartheid published in Harper's Magazine (v.311, n.1864 1sep2005)
• Kozol bio at International Creative Management
• Explanation of Modern US Education 2005 Talk given by Jonathan Kozol (MP3)