List of Jonathan Kozol Quotes

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.

President Obama Still Places Far Too Much Emphasis On Relentless Testing With Standardized Exams.

The Answers I Remember Longest Are The Ones That Answer Questions That I Didn't Think Of Asking.

As Damaging As The Obsessive Emphasis On Testing Often Proves To Be For Kids In General, I Believe That The Effects Are Still More Harmful In Those Schools In Which The Resources Available To Help The Children Learn The Skills That Will Be Measured By These Tests Are Fewest, The Scores They Get Are Predictably The Lowest, And The Strategies Resorted To By Principals In Order To Escape The Odium Attaching To A Disappointing Set Of Numbers Tend To Be The Most Severe.

You Need Massive Recruitment To Tell The Poorest Of The Poor What Is Possible.

Apartheid Does Not Happen Spontaneously, Like Bad Weather Conditions.

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.

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.

When I Was Teaching In The 1960s In Boston, There Was A Great Deal Of Hope In The Air. Martin Luther King Jr. Was Alive, Malcolm X Was Alive; Great, Great Leaders Were Emerging From The Southern Freedom Movement.

As A Matter Of Record, New York City Spends A Higher Portion Of Its Budget On Instruction And Associated Costs Within The Schools Themselves Than Any Of The Other 100 Largest Districts In The Nation.

But When I Went To Harvard, It Kind Of Got Washed Out Of Me, Partly Because People Made Fun Of You In College. If You Said You Believed In God, They Would Look At You Clinically, You Know, Suggest That You Needed A Referral.

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.