Jonathan Kozol

When I was young, I was religious.

— Jonathan Kozol

It is our nation which is blind, and needs our prayers.

— Jonathan Kozol

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

— Jonathan Kozol

Young children give us glimpses of some things that are eternal.

— Jonathan Kozol

The cause of homelessness is lack of housing.

— Jonathan Kozol

I am opposed to the use of public funds for private education.

— Jonathan Kozol

I have an enormous sense of having failed in life.

— Jonathan Kozol

Discrimination is alive and soaring.

— Jonathan Kozol

Children sometimes understand things that most grown-ups do not see.

— Jonathan Kozol

All of my education at Harvard, then Oxford, then Paris was in literature - even my thesis was on Shakespeare.

— Jonathan Kozol

Apartheid does not happen spontaneously, like bad weather conditions.

— Jonathan Kozol

I beg people not to accept the seasonal ritual of well-timed charity on Christmas Eve. It's blasphemy.

— 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

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

— Jonathan Kozol

It is a commonplace by now to say that the urban school systems of America contain a higher percentage of Negro children…

— Jonathan Kozol

The 'niche' effect of charter schools guarantees a swift and vicious deepening of class and racial separation.

— Jonathan Kozol

Businessmen are not in business to lose customers, and schools do not exist to free their clients from the agencies of mass…

— Jonathan Kozol

I do get scared about the physical danger from drug dealers. But it's not in the same league as the danger I…

— Jonathan Kozol

I wrote the first book, and I thought people would say: 'Separate and unequal schools in the City of Boston? I didn't…

— Jonathan Kozol

Public school was never in business to produce Thoreau. It is in business to produce a man like Richard Nixon and, even…

— Jonathan Kozol

During the decades after Brown v. Board of Education there was terrific progress. Tens of thousands of public schools were integrated racially.…

— Jonathan Kozol

There has been so much recent talk of progress in the areas of curriculum innovation and textbook revision that few people outside…

— Jonathan Kozol

I think a lot of people don't have any idea of how deeply segregated our schools have become all over again. Most…

— Jonathan Kozol

If we allow public funds to be used to support our relatively benign, morally grounded schools, we will have to allow those…

— Jonathan Kozol

Placing the burden on the individual to break down doors in finding better education for a child is attractive to conservatives because…

— Jonathan Kozol

Like grain in a time of famine, the immense resources which the nation does in fact possess go not to the child…

— Jonathan Kozol

Competitive skills are desperately needed by poor children in America, and realistic recognition of the economic roles that they may someday have…

— Jonathan Kozol

A great deal has been written in recent years about the purported lack of motivation in the children of the Negro ghettos.…

— Jonathan Kozol

I emphasize teachers because they are largely left out of the debate. None of the bombastic reports that come from Washington and…

— Jonathan Kozol

I always want to tell these young idealists that the world is not as dangerous as many in the older generation want…

— Jonathan Kozol

The White House, in advancing the agenda for a [school] "choice" plan, rests its faith on market mechanisms. What reason have the…

— Jonathan Kozol

I have been criticized throughout the course of my career for placing too much faith in the reliability of children's narratives; but…

— Jonathan Kozol

“There is a belief advanced today, and in some cases by conservative black authors, that poor children and particularly black children should…

— Jonathan Kozol

“But just as legal segregation in the South was a huge national horror hidden in plain view, so too the massive desolation…

— Jonathan Kozol

“I can say it, but it doesn’t seem convincing to most people. I can call it an ‘injustice,’ but that doesn’t always…

— Jonathan Kozol

“What may be learned from the rebuttals made by the defendants in New Jersey and from the protests that were sparked by…

— Jonathan Kozol

But what is now encompassed by the one word (“school”) are two very different kinds of institutions that, in function, finance and…

— Jonathan Kozol

“If any lesson may be learned from the academic breakthroughs achieved by Pineapple and Jeremy, it is not that we should celebrate…

— Jonathan Kozol

“Shorn of unattractive language about "robots" who will be producing taxes and not burglarizing homes, the general idea that schools in ghettoized…

— Jonathan Kozol

“New York City manages expertly, and with marvelous predictability, whatever it considers humanly important. Fax machines, computers, automated telephones and even messengers…

— Jonathan Kozol