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Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win.

Jonathan Kozol

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Jonathan Kozol
Age: 88
Born: 1936
Born: September 5
Author
Writer
Boston
Massachusetts
Winning
Pick
Goal
Picks
Bigs
Profound
Inspirational
Battle
Battles
Matter
Motivational
Priorities
Enough
Learning
Humorous
Wise
Educational
Small
Insane

More quotes by Jonathan Kozol

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Apartheid does not happen spontaneously, like bad weather conditions.
Jonathan Kozol
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We know that segregation is evil. We know that the sickest children should not go to the worst hospitals.
Jonathan Kozol
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I have been criticized throughout the course of my career for placing too much faith in the reliability of children's narratives but I have almost always found that children are a great deal more reliable in telling us what actually goes on in public school than many of the adult experts who develop policies that shape their destinies.
Jonathan Kozol
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I am opposed to the use of public funds for private education.
Jonathan Kozol
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If there are amazing graces on this earth, I believe that they are these good children sent to us by God and not yet soiled by the knowledge that their nation does not love them.
Jonathan Kozol
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The ones I pity are the ones who never stick out their neck for something they believe, never know the taste of moral struggle, and never have the thrill of victory.
Jonathan Kozol
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False hope is worse than despair.
Jonathan Kozol
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President Obama still places far too much emphasis on relentless testing with standardized exams.
Jonathan Kozol
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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?
Jonathan Kozol
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There is something deeply hypocritical in a society that holds an inner-city child only eight years old accountable for her performance on a high-stakes standardized exam but does not hold the high officials of our government accountable for robbing her of what they gave their own kids six or seven years before.
Jonathan Kozol
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It is a commonplace by now to say that the urban school systems of America contain a higher percentage of Negro children each year.
Jonathan Kozol
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I do get scared about the physical danger from drug dealers. But it's not in the same league as the danger I feel eating an $80 lunch with my privileged friends to discuss hunger and poverty. That's when my soul feels imperiled.
Jonathan Kozol
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Children sometimes understand things that most grown-ups do not see.
Jonathan Kozol
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Unlike these powerful grown-ups, children have no ideologies to reinforce, no superstructure of political opinion to promote, no civic equanimity or image to defend, no personal reputation to secure.
Jonathan Kozol
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As a matter of record, New York City spends a higher portion of its budget on instruction and associated costs within the schools themselves than any of the other 100 largest districts in the nation.
Jonathan Kozol
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Nationally, overwhelmingly non-white schools receive $1,000 less per pupil than overwhelmingly white schools.
Jonathan Kozol
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Well, teachers have been profoundly demoralized in recent years and are often treated with contempt by politicians. There's a great deal of reckless rhetoric in Washington about the mediocrity of the teaching profession - and I don't find that to be true at all.
Jonathan Kozol
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Instead of seeing these children for the blessings that they are, we are measuring them only by the standard of whether they will be future deficits or assets for our nation's competitive needs.
Jonathan Kozol
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In public schooling, social policy has been turned back almost one hundred years.
Jonathan Kozol
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The answers I remember longest are the ones that answer questions that I didn't think of asking.
Jonathan Kozol