Education Quotes by Jonathan Kozol

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

— Jonathan Kozol

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

— Jonathan Kozol

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

— 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

In schools with a history of chaos, the teacher who can keep the classroom calm becomes virtually indispensable.

— Jonathan Kozol

In public schooling, social policy has been turned back almost one hundred years.

— Jonathan Kozol

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

— Jonathan Kozol

Wonderful teachers should never let themselves be drill sergeants for the state.

— Jonathan Kozol

Congress has an opportunity to take advantage of the opening created by Justice Kennedy later this year when it reauthorizes the federal…

— Jonathan Kozol

The inequalities are greater now than in '92. Some states have equalized per-pupil spending but they set the 'equal level' very low,…

— Jonathan Kozol

So long as these kinds of inequalities persist, all of us who are given expensive educations have to live with the knowledge…

— Jonathan Kozol

No Child Left Behind widens the gap between the races more than any piece of educational legislation I've seen in 40 years.…

— Jonathan Kozol

The first goal and primary function of the U.S. public school is not to educate good people, but good citizens. It is…

— 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

An awful lot of people come to college with this strange idea that there's no longer segregation in America's schools, that our…

— Jonathan Kozol

I believe we need a national amendment which will guarantee every child in America the promise of not just an equal education…

— Jonathan Kozol

The contrasts between what is spent today to educate a child in the poorest New York City neighborhoods, where teacher salaries are…

— Jonathan Kozol

Good teachers don't approach a child of this age with overzealousness or with destructive conscientiousness. They're not drill-masters in the military or…

— Jonathan Kozol

“Unless we have the wealth to pay for private education, we are compelled by law to go to public school—and to the…

— Jonathan Kozol

“Research experts want to know what can be done about the values of poor segregated children; and this is a question that…

— Jonathan Kozol

Well, teachers have been profoundly demoralized in recent years and are often treated with contempt by politicians. There's a great deal of…

— 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

Schooling should not be left to the whim or wealth of village elders. I believe that we should fund all schools in…

— Jonathan Kozol

The trouble is not that schools don't work; they do. They're excellent machines for achieving historically accepted purposes. In suburban schools are…

— 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

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

— Jonathan Kozol

The future teachers I try to recruit are those show have refused to let themselves be neutered in this way, either in…

— Jonathan Kozol

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

— Jonathan Kozol

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

— 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

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

— 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

On Mondays and Fridays in early May, nearly 18,000 children-the equivalent of all the elementary students in suburban Glencoe, Wilmette, Glenview, Kenilworth,…

— Jonathan Kozol

I'd love to go back and teach primary school. I used to teach fourth grade and fifth grade. I'd love to spend…

— Jonathan Kozol

I tell young teachers who are determined to dissent from some of the Draconian aspects of the current orthodoxy that the best…

— Jonathan Kozol

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…

— Jonathan Kozol

As a matter of record, New York City spends a higher portion of its budget on instruction and associated costs within the…

— Jonathan Kozol

Instead of seeing these children for the blessings that they are, we are measuring them only by the standard of whether they…

— Jonathan Kozol

Many of those who argue for vouchers say that they simply want to use competition to improve public education. I don't think…

— Jonathan Kozol