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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.

Jonathan Kozol

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Jonathan Kozol
Age: 88
Born: 1936
Born: September 5
Author
Writer
Boston
Massachusetts
Leader
Leaders
Alive
King
Freedom
Kings
Malcolm
Hope
Air
Emerging
Great
Teaching
Martin
Deal
Luther
Deals
Boston
Movement
Southern

More quotes by Jonathan Kozol

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The greatest difference between now and 1964, when I began teaching, is that public policy has pretty much eradicated the dream of Martin Luther King.
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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.
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If you could lead through testing, the U.S. would lead the world in all education categories. When are people going to understand you don't fatten your lambs by weighing them?
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On Mondays and Fridays in early May, nearly 18,000 children-the equivalent of all the elementary students in suburban Glencoe, Wilmette, Glenview, Kenilworth, Winnetka, Deerfield, Highland Park and Evanston-are assigned to classes with no teacher.
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Children, of course, don't understand at first that they are being cheated. They come to school with a degree of faith and optimism, and they often seem to thrive during the first few years. It is sometimes not until the third grade that their teachers start to see the warning signs of failure. By the fourth grade many children see it too.
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A dream does not die on its own. A dream is vanquished by the choices ordinary people make about real things in their own lives.
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Charity isn't a good substitute for justice.
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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.
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Let's concede that we have decided to let our children grow up in two separate nations, and lead two separate kinds of lives. If, on the other hand, we have the courage to rise to this challenge to name what's happening within our inner-city schools, then we also need the courage to be activist and go out and fight like hell to change it.
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My goal is to connect the young teachers to the old, to reignite their sense of struggle.
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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.
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Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win.
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Wonderful teachers should never let themselves be drill sergeants for the state.
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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.
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In public schooling, social policy has been turned back almost one hundred years.
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I am opposed to the use of public funds for private education.
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Children are not simply commodities to be herded into line and trained for the jobs that white people who live in segregated neighborhoods have available.
Jonathan Kozol
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East St. Louis-which the local press refers to as an inner city without an outer city-has some of the sickest children in America. Of 66 cities in Illinois, East St. Louis ranks first in fetal death, first in premature birth, and third in infant health.
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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.
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I encourage teachers to speak in their own voices. Don't use the gibberish of the standards writers.
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