Jonathan Kozol Quotes

I believe we need a national amendment which will guarantee every child in America the promise of not just an equal education but a high-quality equal education.
Jonathan Kozol

Education, America, Child

I emphasize teachers because they are largely left out of the debate. None of the bombastic reports that come from Washington and think tanks telling us what needs to be 'fixed' - I hate such a mechanistic word, as if our schools were automobile engines - ever asks the opinions of teachers.
Jonathan Kozol

Hate, Word, Opinions

I encourage teachers to speak in their own voices. Don't use the gibberish of the standards writers.
Jonathan Kozol

Speak, Writers, Encourage

I feel, in the end, as if everything I've done has been a failure.
Jonathan Kozol

Failure, End, Everything

I once made a check of all books in my fourth-grade classroom. Of the slightly more than six hundred books, almost one quarter had been published prior to the bombing of Hiroshima; 60 percent were either ten years old or older.
Jonathan Kozol

Made, Old, Once

I think a lot of people don't have any idea of how deeply segregated our schools have become all over again. Most textbooks are not honest in what they teach our high school students.
Jonathan Kozol

School, Become, Honest

I think a moment of critical energy has suddenly emerged. But moments like this come and go unless we seize them at their height.
Jonathan Kozol

Energy, Moment, Moments

I wrote the first book, and I thought people would say: 'Separate and unequal schools in the City of Boston? I didn't know that. Let's go out and fix it.'
Jonathan Kozol

Book, Thought, City

I'd love to go back and teach primary school. I used to teach fourth grade and fifth grade. I'd love to spend several years teaching kindergarten or maybe third grade.
Jonathan Kozol

Love, School, Used

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

School, Used, Support

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 school.
Jonathan Kozol

School, Children, Job

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

Future, Children, Blessings

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

School, Children, America

Many of those who argue for vouchers say that they simply want to use competition to improve public education. I don't think it works that way, and I've been watching this for a longtime.
Jonathan Kozol

Education, Public, Simply

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

Struggle, Goal, Young

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

Less, White, Schools

No Child Left Behind widens the gap between the races more than any piece of educational legislation I've seen in 40 years. It denies inner-city kids the critical-thinking skills to interrogate reality.
Jonathan Kozol

Reality, Between, Kids

No Child Left Behind's fourth-grade gains aren't learning gains, they're testing gains. That's why they don't last. The law is a distraction from things that really count.
Jonathan Kozol

Learning, Law, Why

Now, I don't expect what I write to change things. I think I write now simply as a witness. This is how it is. This is what we have done. This is what we have permitted.
Jonathan Kozol

Change, Done, Write

Our nation's oldest sin and deepest crime is the isolation of minority children - black children, in particular - in schools that are not only segregated but shamefully unequal.
Jonathan Kozol

Children, Black, Nation

People rarely speak of children; you hear of 'cohort groups' and 'standard variations,' but you don't hear much of boys who miss their cats or 6-year-olds who have to struggle with potato balls.
Jonathan Kozol

Struggle, Children, Speak

President Obama still places far too much emphasis on relentless testing with standardized exams.
Jonathan Kozol

Far, President, Exams

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 preschool for our children.
Jonathan Kozol

Children, Far, President

Racial segregation has come back to public education with a vengeance.
Jonathan Kozol

Education, Public, Vengeance

Separate and unequal didn't work 100 years ago. It will not work today.
Jonathan Kozol

Work, Today, Separate

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Biography

Nationality: American

Type: Writer

Born: September 5, 1936

Links

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Cite this Page: Citation

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