Quotes by Jonathan Kozol

About Jonathan Kozol:

Jonathan Kozol is an American writer, educator, and activist. best known for his books on public education in the United States.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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

Jonathan Kozol

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

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

Jonathan Kozol

Discrimination is alive and soaring.

Jonathan Kozol

In many of the high schools in the South Bronx, more children will end up in prison than will go to college.

Jonathan Kozol

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.

Jonathan Kozol

Congress has an opportunity to take advantage of the opening created by Justice Kennedy later this year when it reauthorizes the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

Jonathan Kozol

Governor Romney has said nothing about preschool. I think that giving the poorest kids in America wonderful preschool, and three years of it, starting when they are two-and-a-half, is absolutely crucial.

Jonathan Kozol

President Obama's first term in office has been better for intentions than for actual changes in planning and policy. I do believe, and he has several things to this effect, that he would like to provide universal preschool or at least far more presc...

Jonathan Kozol

Childhood ought to have at least a few entitlements that aren't entangled with utilitarian considerations. One of them should be the right to a degree of unencumbered satisfaction in the sheer delight and goodness of existence in itself.

Jonathan Kozol

I have always felt my role was to do anything I could to enable the powerless to speak. I want America to hear these voices because they are beautiful voices.

Jonathan Kozol

In the book, I write about children in first grade who were taught to read by reading want ads. They learned to write by writing job applications. Imagine what would happen if anyone tried to do that to children in a predominantly white suburban scho...

Jonathan Kozol

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.

Jonathan Kozol

A culture in which guilt is automatically assumed to be neurotic and unhealthy has devised a remarkably clever way of protecting its self-interest.

Jonathan Kozol

The fact that a crime might have been committed with impunity in the past may make it seem more familiar and less gruesome, but surely does not give it any greater legitimacy.

Jonathan Kozol

Our political establishment refuses to use the word 'segregated.' They call the schools diverse, which means half black, half Hispanic, and maybe two white kids and three Asians. 'Diverse' has become a synonym for 'segregated.'

Jonathan Kozol

If we allow public funds to be used to support our relatively benign, morally grounded schools, we will have to allow those public funds to be used for any type of private school.

Jonathan Kozol

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

Jonathan Kozol

Consider what it is like to go into a new classroom and to see before you suddenly, and in a way you cannot avoid recognizing, the dreadful consequences of a year's wastage of so many lives.

Jonathan Kozol

When I was young, I was religious.

Jonathan Kozol

No human being who wants to read and own a book should ever have to go on a bended knee to get it.

Jonathan Kozol

Author Bio

  • NameJonathan Kozol
  • DescriptionAmerican activist and educator
  • BornSeptember 5, 1936
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionAuthor
  • AwardsNational Book Award; Conscience-in-Media Award