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 (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.

He 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.

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.

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.

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..

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, are educated.

Kozol is still active in advocating for public education in the United States and is an outspoken critic of the voucher movement. He continues to condemn the vicious inequalities of education and speaks unrelentingly of the apparently perpetual apartheid of black and Hispanic children in the deeply 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). He asks rhetorically whether it is right that the place of one's birth should determine the quality of one's education.

Criticism

Kozol was the keynote speaker at the Pennsylvania State University College of Liberal Arts graduation ceremony in 2003 and was booed by the crowd (some people even walked out) after he told graduates they should be ashamed of graduating college while many people were unable to get an education.

He is also listed at #9 in Bernard Goldberg's controversial book, 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America, which has sold close to 300,000 copies.

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 0452262925
• Free Schools (1972) ISBN 0395136067
• The Night is Dark and I am Far From Home (1975)
• Children of the Revolution (1980) Describes his visit to Cuba. ISBN 0385281528
• Prisoners of Silence: Breaking the Bonds of Adult Illiteracy in the United States (1980) ISBN 081649004X
• On Being a Teacher (1981; revised 1994) Revised edition ISBN 1851680659
• Alternative Schools: A Guide for Educators and Parents (1982) ISBN 0826402267
• Illiterate America (1986) ISBN 0452258073 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 0449903397
• 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 0060974990 Bookfinder collected reviews.
• Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation (1995) Reprint ISBN 0060976977 Review and appreciation by Mary Leue.
• Ordinary Resurrections: Children in the Years of Hope (2000) Reprint ISBN 0060956453. Review by Jana Siciliano at BookReporter.com.
• The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America (2005) 1400052440

Co-Authored works

• Choosing Excellence: "Good Enough" Schools Are Not Good Enough (2001) With John Merrow. ISBN 1578860148

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

American educationists | Education reform | African Americans' rights activists | People from Massachusetts | 1936 births | Living people

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