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Quote by Jonathan Kozol

“An awful lot of people come to college with this strange idea that there's no longer segregation in America's schools, that our schools are basically equal; neither of these things is true.”

Quote by Jonathan Kozol

Author

Jonathan Kozol (born September 5, 1936) is an American writer, educator, and civil rights activist, best known for his sharp critiques of inequality in the U.S. public education system. Born in Boston and a Harvard graduate, he taught in Chicago public schools, where witnessing racial segregation and resource disparities led him to advocate for educational equity. His seminal works, including 'Savage Inequalities' (1991) and 'Amazing Grace' (1995), expose the struggles of impoverished schools and have sparked national debate. Kozol's writing blends personal narrative with social analysis, emphasizing education as a fundamental human right. He has received awards such as the National Book Award and the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, and continues to speak and write on educational justice. more

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“But for the children of the poorest people we're stripping the curriculum, removing the arts and music, and drilling the children into useful labor. We're not valuing a child for the time in which she actually is a child.”

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“At that time, I had recently finished a book called Amazing Grace, which many people tell me is a very painful book to read. Well, if it was painful to read, it was also painful to write. I had pains in my chest for two years while I was writing that book.”

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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.”

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“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.”

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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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“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.”

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

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“President Obama still places far too much emphasis on relentless testing with standardized exams.”

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“Separate and unequal didn't work 100 years ago. It will not work today.”

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