Jonathan Kozol Quotes

Quotes about:

• More money is put into prisons than into schools. That, in itself, is the description of a nation bent on suicide. I mean, what is more precious to us than our own children? We are going to build a lot more prisons if we do not deal with the schools and their inequalities.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Education, Suicide, Children

  36 Copy quote

• 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

  Education, Teacher, Hate

  53 Copy quote

• I always want to tell these young idealists that the world is not as dangerous as many in the older generation want them to believe...The [people] for whom I feel the greatest sadness are the ones who choke on their beliefs, who never act on their ideals, who never know the state of struggle in a decent cause, and never know the thrill of even partial victories.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Struggle, Believe, Sadness

  53 Copy quote

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

  Jonathan Kozol

  Inspirational, Motivational, Wise

  30 Copy quote

• I have been criticized throughout the course of my career for placing too much faith in the reliability of children's narratives; but I have almost always found that children are a great deal more reliable in telling us what actually goes on in public school than many of the adult experts who develop policies that shape their destinies.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Children, School, Destiny

  Jonathan Kozol (2005). “The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America”, p.12, Broadway Books

  42 Copy quote

• 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 floor managers in a production system. They are specialists in opening small packages. They give the string a tug but do it carefully. They don't yet know what's in the box. They don't know if it's breakable.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Teacher, Children, Military

  Jonathan Kozol (2012). “Ordinary Resurrections: Children in the Years of Hope”, p.10, Crown

  34 Copy quote

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

  Jonathan Kozol

  Years, Today, Years Ago

  "Confronting the Inequality Juggernaut: A Q&A With Jonathan Kozol". Interview with Anthony Cody, blogs.edweek.org. July 18, 2011.

  28 Copy quote

• There is something deeply hypocritical in a society that holds an inner-city child only eight years old "accountable" for her performance on a high-stakes standardized exam but does not hold the high officials of our government accountable for robbing her of what they gave their own kids six or seven years before.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Children, Kids, Eight

  Jonathan Kozol (2005). “The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America”, p.53, Broadway Books

  20 Copy quote

• Charity isn't a good substitute for justice.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Adversity, Humility, Justice

  8 Copy quote

• Apartheid education, rarely mentioned in the press or openly confronted even among once-progressive educators, is alive and well and rapidly increasing now in the United States.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Alive, United States, Progressive

  22 Copy quote

• Like grain in a time of famine, the immense resources which the nation does in fact possess go not to the child in the greatest need but to the children of the highest bidder-the child of parents who, more frequently than not, have also enjoyed the same abundance when they were schoolchildren.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Money, Children, Parent

  Jonathan Kozol (2012). “Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools”, p.97, Broadway Books

  25 Copy quote

• So long as these kinds of inequalities persist, all of us who are given expensive educations have to live with the knowledge that our victories are contaminated because the game has been rigged to our advantage.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Games, Long, Victory

  4 Copy quote

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

  Jonathan Kozol

  Children, Sometimes

  Jonathan Kozol (2012). “Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation”, p.126, Broadway Books

  9 Copy quote

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

  Jonathan Kozol

  Teacher, Voice, Use

  16 Copy quote

• The ones I pity are the ones who never stick out their neck for something they believe, never know the taste of moral struggle, and never have the thrill of victory.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Struggle, Believe, Victory

  17 Copy quote

• The first goal and primary function of the U.S. public school is not to educate good people, but good citizens. It is the function which we call - in enemy nations - 'state indoctrination.'

  Jonathan Kozol

  School, People, Goal

  Jonathan Kozol (1990). “The Night Is Dark and I Am Far from Home”, Touchstone Books

  26 Copy quote

• Even if you never do anything about this, you've benefited from an unjust system. You're already the winner in a game that was rigged to your advantage from the start.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Games, Unjust, Winner

  14 Copy quote

• I write books to change the world. Perhaps I can only change one little piece of that world. But if I can empower teachers and good citizens to give these children, who are the poorest of the poor, the same opportunity we give our own kids, then I'll feel my life has been worth it.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Teacher, Children, Book

  6 Copy quote

• You have to remember. . .that for this little boy whom you have met, his life is just as important to him, as your life is to you. No matter how insufficient or how shabby it may seem to some, it is the only one he has.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Boys, Important, May

  9 Copy quote

• Political struggle is the most important thing any of us can do as a citizen in a democracy; and that means the old joining the young to fight for elemental kinds of justice.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Struggle, Mean, Fighting

  7 Copy quote

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

  Jonathan Kozol

  Children, Giving, Glimpse

  Jonathan Kozol (2007). “Letters to a Young Teacher”, p.45, Broadway Books

  5 Copy quote

• But what is now encompassed by the one word (“school”) are two very different kinds of institutions that, in function, finance and intention, serve entirely different roles. Both are needed for our nation’s governance. But children in one set of schools are educated to be governors; children in the other set of schools are trained for being governed. The former are given the imaginative range to mobilize ideas for economic growth; the latter are provided with the discipline to do the narrow tasks the first group will prescribe.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Children, School, Ideas

  Jonathan Kozol (2012). “Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools”, p.212, Broadway Books

  11 Copy quote

• Childhood is not merely basic training for utilitarian adulthood. It should have some claims upon our mercy, not for its future value to the economic interests of competitive societies but for its present value as a perishable piece of life itself.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Should Have, Childhood, Training

  Jonathan Kozol (2005). “The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America”, p.95, Broadway Books

  14 Copy quote

• Hypersegregated inner-city schools - in which one finds no more than five or ten white children, at the very most, within a student population of as many as 3,000 - are the norm, not the exception, in most northern urban areas today.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Children, School, Cities

  4 Copy quote

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

  Jonathan Kozol

  Use, Fund

  11 Copy quote

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